Native Corporations and Arctic Drilling

• Main Author: Dunaway, Finis
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: University of North Carolina Press 2021
• Subjects: Arctic; Gwich’in; Alaska
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469661100.003.0016

This chapter considers the impact of Native-owned corporations on the Arctic Refuge debate. It traces the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA)—a controversial federal law passed in 1971 that established Native corporations as the instruments for land claims rather than tribal governments. The settlement was explicitly tied to an assimilationist agenda, imposing a corporate model on Indigenous communities. The chapter explains how the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and the Kaktovic Iñupiat Corporation (both created following ANCSA) have shaped the Arctic Refuge debate and contributed to a simple media framing of the fight as a story of Gwich’in versus Iñupiat. The chapter complicates and challenges this narrative by including voices of Iñupiat, such as Robert Thompson, opposed to drilling and of other Indigenous critics of ANCSA, such as Faith Gemmill. It explains how leaders of Native corporations often present themselves as the voices and representatives of their communities. In addition, the chapter discusses Thomas Berger’s study of the effects of ANCSA, based on testimony from more than sixty villages across Alaska.