Letter to the Editor
Remember values
Published Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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To the editor:
I am disheartened by our Doyon corporate leaders’ plans to drill for oil within the boundaries of the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, which is my homeland.
They’re not acknowledging that our way of survival for centuries was also their way of living before they succumbed to the way of money and greed.
The acceptance of a very large salary plus meeting fees overtook their minds as they chose to look the other way because of greed, and they are only thinking of themselves instead of their grandchildren and of the people as a whole. It saddens me, to say the least.
We were not raised by or for money. We were taught to live as our ancestors did, which was and still is, off the land. Subsistence living is what makes us a strong and cultural people.
You can talk about economics and how oil drilling will bring jobs, improve our living conditions, etc. But why can’t you just let us keep living off the land that the creator has given us for as long as the creator will allow? That, to me, is our economy.
The board members from Doyon have forgotten where they come from; from the actions against their own people, I can guess where they may be going, eventually.
Good leaders do not take from their tribal members; instead they give to and support their people. Remember cultural values?
Community Discussion
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Sir, your values are not my own. There is no universal set of values, though many values are (almost) universally shared. Even more, however, differ in interpretation.
Though I do agree that good leaders support and give until it hurts, I believe the best way to give is to help people help themselves. I believe Doyon's land swap plan will do that.
Hmmmmm......
Since subsistence lifestyle is what everyone is really complaining about all the time and how their way of life is being encroached on...
Will all villages who want to return to the old lifestyle:
please turn in your Federally supported airports - everyone can boat into town
please turn off your TVs and get rid of cable and the internet -
please turn off your generators and all electrical devices
please stop using the heavily subsidized postal service
you cannot pick and choose - if you want the benefits of society - time to contribute a bit and let the companies drill...you even get the benefits of a higher standard of living and good jobs in return...
and the guns and modern fishing tools, steel knives, warm clothes, medicines, imported foods like fruit.....
EBT cards.
PFD
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'How can you thank a man for giving you what's already yours? How then can you thank him for giving you only part of what is yours?'
-Malcolm X
Georgina Solomon
Let's not forget, 80% of State Revenue comes from oil, a fossil-fuel. Doyon will drill whether we like it or not, that is the corporate way. I do not agree with the drilling as well, but I do drive a car, fly in planes, heat my home- All with fuel and oil made from fossil fuels. There will come a time when that fuel will go away and what then?
I applaud those who protest the use of fossil fuels because we have technologies that can create and make other ways to fuel our vehicles and homes without polluting this Earth which is spurring furious climactic change (i.e. Polar Bear in Ft. Yukon, melting ice caps, etc.) Our government needs to enact more laws to protect nature and spur more advanced technological ways to fuel our vehicles and heat our homes. March on loyal Ambassadors of Earth (tree huggers, etc.).
Rejecting oil development in this wildlife refuge does not mean that this man and everyone who might live there, might have come from there, or be connected to it anyway throw every other piece of technology they might have (and for all any of you know, the OP does want to discard some of that). That really wasn't his point.
Imagine, if you will, that someone proposes we dynamite Mt. Rushmore to make a better road (maybe we discover the mountain has some valuable minerals). I don't think many people would jump at that opportunity, because land and tradition mean something. I don't think we always agree on what they mean or how best to respect it, but this certainly isn't the first or last time that people will sell out their past for a generation or two of prosperity.
Can someone explain whats happening with this? Isnt Doyon a native corporation? So what is the complaint exactly?
Any way of life that does not involve adapting to new circumstances is not a way of life; it is a way of death. From my knowledge of studying Creation, the Creator favors those that adapt well and punishes thus who fail to change.
doyon is this regions native corporation that was set up under the alaska native claims settlement act. it consists of several board members who are supposed to work for the shareholders, the native people in the villages and fairbanks.. doyon board is supposed to have those shareholders best interests in mind. but they have been using their positions on the board to pursue matters only of interest to themselves while they are manipulating and oppressing the voices of their own people. oil development is not wanted in this area for factual reasons that this will be devastating to the environment and the indigenous culture.
there are many other possibilities for development in the rural areas. by ways that people would WANT to have in these communities that would not have the negative impacts to the land.
the area was originally set up to protect the fish and wildlife aka those birds you've been seeing in the sky. they come from all over the world.. and where do you think they are all going? both doyon corporation and the us fish and wildlife service are going directly against their mission by trading this land for oil development. so to those who think that the native lifestyle should be sacrificed to oil development because of the use of snowmachines or rifles to feed the nations unsustainable oil dependence should think again. and who says that we want to return to "the oldstyle?" to us this is not the old style. we live it today. in modern times. it is only to you, that it is the old style because what you learn about native people (media,school,"history") are only in the past tense. we have a right to live on this earth just as any other person. even if we live differently.
www.youtube.com/user/GwinziiGirl
so you say that all people should live according to one standard because they have a laptop or television? maybe you've spared yourself already...
It sounds like some of these guys think they invented TVs, and snowmachines. Some of you apparently think that because we use this or that implement that it makes us this or that. This only shows how truly materialistic you are, without really stating anything of value. The manner in which Natives hunt and fish, is much less important than WHY they hunt and fish. Where some hunt and fish is also important to some folks because, as I am sure many of us understand, they feel a kinship to the country because their ancestors hunted and fished the same grounds. These folks up here who think that you're either Indian because you run around in the woods with a bow and arrow, or you're not because you use a rifle are in error. Cultures are what they are not merely because of the material that we use (though that does influence things), but because of a myriad number of things like history, geography, language, philosophy, stories, family, relationships, etc. I certainly feel right to be opposed to the Land Exchange while I use my computer. These either/or logical fallacies, and the veiled attacks on Natives using technology show frankly how far the dialogue needs to progress before something meaningful is said. So far I think Mr. Solomon stands with Tom 54 as the only ones who have said something interesting...
under who's way of life do you have to adapt for "the creator" to not punish you? wow! where have we heard this speech before?.. oh yeah, boarding schools! the same place my grandparents were beaten for speaking their language. wow, thanks but no thanks for the insight.
that is my point exactly.
if you are going to make such narrow minded remarks then maybe you should think about it.
In the film, "The Piano", a British colonist in New Zealand attempts to buy land from the Maori. They refuse, because the land is burial ground. He doesn't get it. "They don't do anything with it", he says.
Land isn't valuable unless you 'do' something with it. Some of the posters here seem to indicate that natives have an obligation to allow oil drilling, as though that were a necessary price for technology or 'civilization'. The subtext here feels horribly racist. Native hypocrisy? At the very least, this is broad and terrible stereotyping.
I stick by my original example: if we were asked to tear down a national mounument or memorial in order to obtain some precious material, we wouldn't do it. Western (white) uses of land are priviledged and valuable. Analogous uses of land by native peoples are somehow a waste.
And all of this is ignoring the fact that there reasonable environmental and economic reasons to be wary or cautious of oil drilling.
"under who's way of life do you have to adapt for "the creator" to not punish you?"
It is not a "who's," it is what is efficient in the long-run. Doing something a certain way just because one's ancestors did so is rarely efficient.
Readers,
Let's stay on topic, please.
Thanks gwinzii for that explanation. Would I be correct in saying that the native peoples that Doyon represents benefit finacially from this arrangment?
I was born in Alaska, does that make me a native alaskan? Can I claim anything? I think I will start. I urge all people born in Alaska to start getting a piece of the pie that we have been missing out on.
Gwinzzi- Your answer to the statement. I don't see the point your trying to make, was right on the money.
don't worry, gwinzii, you know they have nothing else to use as a way of attack of words when all they got left is "grammer standpoint."
reader1, wanna challenge to see whose ancestors was here the longest?
anyways, back to the subject, why is oil and gas the only way to make money? there are other alternatives, instead of wasting doyon's millions of dollars on paying fines and media hype. why not explore other options that doesn't destory mother earth?
How does it make any difference whose long dead ancestors were here first? If that mattered for anything, you would return to Asia and I to Europe, as thats where our blood walked, paddled or sailed from.
Here, I will make it easier, at what point when your ancestors came to Alaska, did they cease being Asian and become Alaskan? The only measurement of that that makes sense is the "where you were born and grew up."
I am as Alaskan as you. For all you know, I was born in the woods and raised by a bear.
All this makes me frustrated and sad. Why should I let remarks bother me so?? Whether all this drilling is right or wrong, I don't like how SOME posters inconsideratley, look down their nose at Native people and think they know everything. Why do they have all this aggression towards Natives? Attacking grammar, putting us in our places, and having no idea how it is to grow up the way most of us did, with all the challenges we have faced and still face, completely no idea.
Gwinzii I think your comments outshined all other comments on this thread.
"Gwinzii I think your comments outshined all other comments on this thread."
I agree. Also, there was nothing grammatically wrong with the statement that Jet didn't understand.
2pennies, some of these remarks bother you because some these remarks are racist. There's no point in pussyfooting around that. For example, Jet's first post assumes that the man who wrote the letter is a hypocrite. Unless Jet knows the guy who wrote the letter, Jet is implying that all Alaska Natives who talk about the importance of culture and tradition are in fact frivolous consumers of expensive technology. The letter writer, Jet claims, does not have a television, he has a flat screen television. He does not have a snow machine, he has a fleet of snow machines. The man's concern for tradition and culture, Jet implies, are nothing but hot air.
Unless Jet knows the man who wrote the letter personally, plainly this is racist rhetoric. Why? Because Jet has assumed that the letter writer has certain negative characteristics, and Jet has made that assumption based on race alone.
JET: Do you know Mardow Solomon, Jr.? Or are you a racist?
When jet said I don't understand your point, and Gwinzii, said that is my point, I really thought that would be the end of the discussion. How wrong was I?
"The short answer's is 'no'"
So you don't know Mardow Solomon, Jr.?
The Natives of Alaska still have their traditions, songs, languages, and hunting grounds. Traditionally, they respect their lands and the animals-Always have.
Now here is some traditional debate:
1) Birds, animals, and fish need a healthy habitat in order to eat, reproduce, and sustain themselves perpetually,
2) Natives need these birds, animals, and fish to eat and survive, sustain their traditions and cultures,
3) Therefore, they respect the lands , birds, animals, and fish-they understand the delicate ecosystems and natural processes which has led them to endure in these unforgiving climates for at least 10,000 years,(you have been here since the pipeline? :P give me a break)
3) Drill rigs can and do disturb natural habitats by loud noises heard for miles, create oil spills, and pollution (i.e. Exxon Valdez, 100's of spills on the north slope, climactic change, etc., etc.) The birds, animals, and fish could and would be affected in a negative way, the risk is too great.
4) There would be many, many miles of roads built to these drill rigs, we all know that-the probability of spills are great, this is demonstrated all over the north slope.
5) Bottom line: All it would take is one great oil spill on the Yukon Flats to destroy many many miles of natural habitat-habitat many of these writers have never been to or care about-The risk is not worth it-That is a credible fear; the irreparable destruction of a habitat that sustains all birds, animals, and fish which would further damage a whole culture of traditions and peoples who have been here for thousands of years.
Just because you lost your cultures doesn't mean the Gwichin have to lose theirs. Now, you can't beat that debate-impossible, because we all know even if there was no oil in Alaska, the Gwichin would be here and you wouldn't- because you wouldn't know how. Ouch. Now that is Native, and definitely not "Asian." Good lord.
"Obsess much?"
I'm guessing that my use of the word "racist" made you uncomfortable. It's a volatile word, but I'm very comfortable using it in this context. Really, it's the only one that fits. I'm sorry if you think it's impolite.