The continued unrest in North Dakota, on the Standing Rock Sioux tribal lands, is jarring to say the least. In recent weeks, police have taken to spraying protestors with water for hours on end. Combined with frigid nighttime temperatures characteristic of Novembers in the north country, some have been forced to endure, the clothes literally freezing to their bodies. The lack of coverage by traditional media outlets, and the treatment of protestors as second-class citizens, seemingly parallels the plight of Native Americans over the course of US history – relegated to the society’s fringe, often forgotten.
But Standing Rock isn’t the only fight being waged against big oil for the sake of preserving the traditional way of life. Hundreds of miles to the northwest lies the 19-million-acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest National Wildlife Refuge in the country, and one of the last intact landscapes in America. It’s also home to a Porcupine Caribou herd of nearly 170,000 – a source of life for the Gwich’in people of Alaska and northern Canada for hundreds of generations. The Gwich’in refer to the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge as, “the sacred place where life begins.”
For decades, though, Big Oil has pursued efforts to target the coastal plain for drilling – the area is not designated as wilderness and therefore remains unprotected. Now, with a pro-oil administration due to transition into the White House, the fossil fuel industry is likely to work quickly to exploit the region, possibly driving the Porcupine Caribou from the area and endangering the Gwich’in way of life.
Patagonia and the Alaska Wilderness League have produced the above film, Refuge, which follows two Gwich’in women fighting for their ancestral home in an effort to shed light on the issue and urge you to stand up for our planet.
“For us, this is a matter of physical, spiritual and cultural survival,” said Gwich’in spokesperson Bernadette Demientieff in a press release. “It is our basic human right to continue to feed our families on our ancestral lands and practice our subsistence way of life. We ask that Congress take the next step to protect the Coastal Plain by designating it as wilderness.”
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