Gates of the Arctic Gaunt Beauty ... Tenuous Life Historic Resource Study for Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve

¹Katrina Kassler, Discussion Guide to "The Oral Tradition: A Film Series on Three Alaska Native Elders," Alaska Native Heritage Film Project, University of Alaska Museum, 1984, 8.

²The account that follows is based on Joe Sun, My Life and Other Stories (from transcripts translated by Susie Sun andcompiled by David Libbey, published by the NANA Museum of the Arctic with a matching grant from Alaska Humanities Forum, 1985). Logistical support during the field survey with Joe Sun was provided by the National Park Service, with special help on site visits and overflights from ranger/pilot Ray Bane.

³Ibid., 26-27.

⁴Ernest S. Burch, Jr., "Cultural Revitalization Among the Northwest Alaskan Eskimos" (draft paper presented in a symposium on the culture history of Alaska Natives in Osaka, Japan, August 1978).

⁵Joe Sun, My Life, 110-11.

⁶Grant Spearman, Arctic John Etalook, Louisa M. Riley, "preliminary Report to the North Slope Borough's Inupiaq History, Language, and Culture Commission of the Ulumiut Territorial Land Use Inventory," Dec. 3, 1982. Logistical support for field work was provided by the National Park Service, including flight assistance rendered by ranger/pilot Ray Bane.

⁷Diamond Jenness, Dawn in Arctic Alaska (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1957), 41-130.

⁸Spearman, "Preliminary Report," 48-49; Walter Johnson interview of 6/16/84.

⁹Marshall, Arctic Village, 86.

¹⁰Walter Johnson interviews of 1/6/84 and 6/16/84.

¹¹W.P. Brosge, Notes on Wiseman (Menlo Park, 1959).

¹²Thomas R. Berger, Village Journey, The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission (Hill and Wang, New York, 1985), 53.

¹³For recent expressions of these views, see Berger, Village Journey, subsistence photos and quotations following 47; Chap. 2.

¹⁴Gubser, Nunamiut Eskimos, 24-277 Spearman, Anaktuvuk Pass, 66-71; Grant Spearman Nunamiut History (North Slope Borough School District, Barrow, 1982), 11-16.

¹⁵Simon Paneak, "We Hunt to Live," The Alaska Sportsman, 26(3), March 1960, 12-13, 55.

¹⁶Spearman, Anaktuvuk Pass, 75-93.

¹⁷Charles R. Metzger, "The Silent River, a pastoral elegy in the form of a recollection of Arctic adventure" (unpublished typescript, n.d., obtained from George Gryc, USGS, Menlo Park) 7 George Gryc, et al., Geology of the Chandler River Region, Alaska, USGS Prof. paper303-E (GPO, Washington, 1963), 224-25. Note: Metzger's work was recently published: Charles R. Metzger, The Silent River (Omega Books, Los Angeles, CA, 1983).

¹⁸Metzger, "Silent River," 15-17.

¹⁹Ibid., 69-72.

²⁰Ibid., 80-81.

²¹Ibid., 81-85.

²²Ibid., 99.

²³Ibid., 111-15. See Edwin S. Hall, Jr., "The Waiting," Alaska Sportsman, 32(12), Dec. 1965, 32-34, and "The Caribou Hunters ofAnaktuvuk Pass," Alaska Magazine, 38(11), Nov. 1972, 6-7, 53-55, for other hunt descriptions.

²⁴Spearman, Anaktuvuk Pass, 68-69.

²⁵Homer Mekiana, This is the Story About Anaktuvuk Pass Village, Special Report of the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory Barrow, Alaska, October 1972).

²⁶Ibid., entry of 1/14/51.

²⁷Hall, "The Caribou Hunters," 55. For details of this evolution see Edwin S. Hall, et al., In the National Interest: A Geographically Based Study of-Anaktuvuk Pass Inupiat Subsistence Through Time (North Slope Borough, Barrow, Alaska, 1985), I, 67-74.

²⁸Mekiana, This is the Story, entry of 4/5/51.

²⁹Ibid., entries of 8/8, 9, 14/52.

³⁰Robert Krumm, "The Long Road North" (undated, unsourced article written and published in 1969, found in NPS historical clipping file: Krumm was manager of the BLM District Office in Fairbanks), 8.

³¹Raymond R. Coffey, "Oil Boom Cuts Deep Scars Into Alaskan Wilds," San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, 9/14/69, A26.

³²See Mary Clay Berry, The Alaska Pipeline: The Politics of Oil and Native Land Claims, University of Indiana Press, Bloomington, 1975), and Robert D. Arnold, et al., Alaska Native Land Claims (Alaska Native Foundation, Anchorage, 1978 edition)for details of these major developments. David M. Hickok, who served on the Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska (FFC) during these critical times, cautions against attributing the passage of ANCSA solely to oil-development pressures. He notes that an FFC report to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 recommended no further economic development in Alaska pending settlement of Alaska native land claims. This report sparked renewed interest in Congress on this subject. It led to the drafting of bills on the land claims issue well before oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay. In a critique of my draft language on this subject he states: "It is a myth that the pipeline forced Congressional action on ANCSA. Bills were already in various stages. The FFC's Alaska Natives and the Land [a 1968 publication that provided the critical database forCongressional committees dealing with the land claims issue] was already finished, etc., before Prudhoe Bay was discovered. What Prudhoe Bay did was (a) provide urgency and (b) jack up the price of compensation." (Critique of October 9, 1986.)

³³Jane Pender, "Crisis on the North Slope: Last of the Caribou People," Anchorage Daily News, 3/4/69, 4.

³⁴The development/preservation controversy generated a huge literature, with subtopics such as the fight over environmental safeguards for pipeline construction filling large sections of libraries. Samplings of various viewpoints can be found in the following sources: Robert B. Weeden, "Arctic Oil: Its Impact on Wilderness and Wildlife," Alaska Chapter of the Sierra Club Newsletter, 1(2), 4/15/69, 1, 4-7; "Alaska Strikes It Rich," U.S. News & World Report, 12/9/68, 48-53; Robert Cantwell, "The Ultimate Confrontation," Sports Illustrated, 3/24/69, 67-76; Jeremy Main, "The Hot Oil Rush in Arctic Alaska," Fortune, April 1969, 120-25, 136-42: "We Ask Injunction Against Alaska Pipeline," Wilderness Report, April 1970, 7(1), 1-3.

³⁵The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) is another vast subject. The pros and cons of its effects, particularly as it affects the Native land base and the chances for perpetuation of traditional life ways, are hotly debated at the time of this writing. Many corporations are in financial trouble and the corporation-owned lands (individual Natives do not own lands conveyed under ANCSA), often selected for commercial rather than subsistence values, could soon be alienated from Native ownership through taxation or sale of stock. A number of Native groups seek amendments to the act that would safeguard Native land ownership and restructure the law in favor of traditional institutions for land control and governance. See Arnold, Alaska Native Land Claims, and Berger, Village Journey, for broadcoverage of these issues.

³⁶Spearman, Anaktuvuk Village, 117-38: Anaktuvuk Pass Village Folio, Arctic Environmental Information and Data Center, Anchorage, 1978: National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, 105(c) Study, Socioeconomic Profile (Arctic Environmental Information and Data Center, Anchorage, 1978).

³⁷Gubser, The Nunamiut Eskimos, 27.

³⁸Hall, "The Caribou Hunters of Anaktuvuk Pass," 55.

³⁹Spearman, Anaktuvuk Pass, 133-38.

⁴⁰NPRA Socioeconomic Profile, 5-6.

⁴¹David M. Hickok, "Nunamiut Experience and Current Approaches to Subsistence Harvest Problems by the People of Anaktuvuk Pass," Address before the Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission for Alaska, February 5, 1974, 8.

⁴²Ibid., 11.

⁴³Ibid., 11-14.

⁴⁴Annie Calkins, Puvlatuuq (North Slope Borough School District, Barrow, 1982), 4.

⁴⁵Robert J. Wolfe and Robert J. Walker, "Subsistence Economies in Alaska: Productivity, Geography, and Development Impacts," Division of Subsistence, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, 1985, 2.

⁴⁶Hall, In the National Interest, I, 89.