Biden admin invoked ‘indigenous knowledge’ to cut Alaska drilling, but some tribal leaders are ready for Trump

The Biden administration justified major crackdowns on fossil fuel and mineral development in Alaska by playing up its commitment to Native American tribes, but some community leaders who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation said they did not feel respected by the administration

Over the course of the last four years, the Biden administration moved to shut down drilling activity on tens millions of acres of land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), retroactively canceled lease sales and effectively blocked a major mining project in the state, often touting the administration’s commitment to protecting the environment for native communities in official statements and press releases. However, these actions were a major disappointment to some of Alaska’s natives, who told the DCNF that the administration seems to have mostly ignored their desire to allow development that generates revenues for their communities and that they are ready to work with the incoming Trump administration to strike an appropriate balance.

“With climate change warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, we must do everything within our control to meet the highest standards of care to protect this fragile ecosystem,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in a September 2023 statement after the administration moved to shield 13 million acres from drilling activity in the NPR-A and retroactively canceled lease sales. “President Biden is delivering on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in history. The steps we are taking today further that commitment, based on the best available science and in recognition of the Indigenous Knowledge of the original stewards of this area, to safeguard our public lands for future generations.”

However, the administration’s deference to “Indigenous Knowledge” did not mean much to some tribal leaders and officials in light of the government’s apparent disinterest in meaningfully engaging with them about key issues related to resource development.

Nagruk Harcharek is the president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, an organization that represents the interests of numerous native communities in the resource-rich North Slope region of Alaska. In his view, the Biden administration was not particularly interested in hearing what his organization had to say about the value of the economic benefits that resource development provides for his community.

“I started here in 2022. The first thing I did was try to get in there and make sure our voices were heard, because what we’re hearing from the administration is that we’re the most tribally-friendly administration in the history of the United States, right? ” Harcharek told the DCNF. “At least from our perspective, that’s not our impression.”

“We’ve always tried to stress that we are part of the environment. We utilize it for subsistence hunting, for our culture, and it’s extremely important to us. We don’t need to be protected from our own environment,” Harcharek continued. “We can make decisions and help administrations make decisions that are both good for the region and also good for the environment and good for the state, good for the nation. And that just wasn’t the case. There was a lack of engagement, meaningful engagement. Oftentimes, we heard of policy changes in the news and not from phone calls from folks, even though everybody has our number.”

Harcharek says his organization attempted to secure a meeting with Haaland on nine different occasions, but only managed to get a chance in June of this year. Other times, the Department of the Interior (DOI) sent staffers or other officials to meet with them, if their outreach to the government was even returned.

“Sometimes we didn’t even get a response from those emails, so saying that they’re the most tribally-friendly and then not speaking to most of our tribes or us in a timely manner or a meaningful manner, the just question is, who are you? Who considers you the most tribally friendly organization? Because it sure isn’t us, or we’re not getting that sentiment,” Harcharek said.

Doreen Leavitt, secretary for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope (ICAS), also ripped Haaland for lackluster engagement with her community since 2021 and expressed hope that Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum — Trump’s pick to replace Haaland — will be a better leader at DOI.

“Secretary Haaland’s leadership for ICAS and our region was not just deeply frustrating, but it was saddening because as an indigenous woman myself, who wants to see other indigenous women in leadership succeed and grow, her lack of respect for our region was frustrating, to say the least, despite her recognition of tribal stewardship, our requests for consultation on critical issues were ignored or dismissed,” Leavitt told the DCNF. “I don’t know much about Secretary Burgum, other than that he comes from the Dakotas, but we will expect the incoming secretary to provide that meaningful consultation, that transparent process and respect for our tribal sovereignty and self-determination and those things we did not see under Haaland.”

Leavitt also explained that resource development has provided the money her community needed over the past 50 years to establish and maintain basic things like running water, school systems, health clinics, emergency services and more.

Without taking a political stance, Leavitt noted that she and her organization are “especially looking forward to having the government-to-government relationship rights respected” by the incoming Trump administration.

Charles Lampe, the president of Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation, said that he and his people are looking forward to Trump’s return to power after sensing that most of his community’s concerns about cracking down hard on resource development were “pretty much just cast aside” by the Biden administration.

“We’re really excited about the next four years. With the previous administration, the Trump administration, we had a great relationship. We just felt like we were actually listened to during that time,” Lampe told the DCNF.

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