I am Caribou People

by Sarah James and told to Brian Keane

I am Caribou People. Just like Buffalo People or Salmon People, we Gwich'in are Caribou People. We've lived with the caribou since time immemorial. We do caribou dance, we sing caribou songs, we tell caribou stories. It's everything to us.

Caribou is our clothing, our tools and our shelter. (We used to live in caribou-skin huts when we were nomadic.) Caribou is our food. Even today, seventyfive percent of our diet is wild meat, most of it caribou. We also eat moose, wild sheep, fish, berries, nuts and small animals. That's our traditional diet.

When the change came upon us from Western culture, we went through sickness and starvation and all that other stuff. Every time caribou came through our villages, or wherever we lived, it revived us. That's why we're still here. There's a spiritual connection we have with the caribou.

The Porcupine caribou herd numbers about 120,000. They travel thousands and thousands of miles every year between Canada and Alaska, going from their grazing area to their birthing ground. We used to be nomadic and follow them, but now we're colonized into village life. The villages are located according to where the caribou tend to migrate. One of them is Arctic Village, another is Old Crow in Yukon Territory. Some of us live along the Yukon River. We hunt caribou up in Arctic Village and Fort Yukon. The villages along the river fish for salmon and we trade and barter with them because we don't get salmon up in Arctic Village, only clearwater fish.

The caribou is never a target. It's given to us by the Creator for our food and our health. We don't talk about what a good shooter we are or things like that. The animals give us their lives, so we have respect for them. We respect where they are conceived; when they die we respect their remains; and we respect what we eat.

My parents raised me off the land.

I went trapping with my Dad. I went out hunting with my Mom. My brothers and sisters and I all did our share. We had to share, we had to work, because if we didn't we weren't going to survive.

What I remember learning is to respect the land, to help each other, to share. I learned to use little, based on need not on greed. That's my basic learning. Those are the values that I learned about life.

When I was growing up, seventy below zero in winter was normal. Now it doesn't get that cold any more because of global warming and climate change. Climate change is real in the arctic and it's affecting wildlife in many ways. One time, there was too much snow in late spring, and the cows couldn't make it to the coastal plain in time. They didn't give birth in the right place. We lost a lot of calves that year.

Gwich'in Nation covers fifteen villages. Our area covers the MacKenzie River region of the Northwest Territories and the whole north half of Yukon Territory, the Alaska Range between Fairbanks and the

A woman of
the Gwich'in
makes a plea
for the
preservation
of a way of life
in harmony
with nature

flats to Wind River in the west and the Brooks Range to the north. The Brooks Range is the area where the Eskimos and the Indians meet, the Inupiat Inuit and the Gwich'in.

There's seven thousand of us Gwich'in be tween the United States and Canada. We believe that we never came from anywhere and we believe that we're not going anywhere. The Creator put us in the part of the world that we're supposed to take care of. That's our responsibility and we think we've done a fine job. We've kept our ways. We've sustained our life and our way of life, and it still works. The ecosystem still works.

There's a place, the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and we call that place `Izhit Gwatsan Gwandaii Goodlit.' In English that means `Where life begins.' That's the only safe place and healthy place for the Porcupine caribou herd to go to have their calves. For thousands of years they've been giving birth there. All winter long the coastal plain is breezy and windy, so there's no snow there. Even though it's about seventy-five miles north of Arctic Village, that's the place where vegetation starts growing first every spring. That's what the mothers need to nurse their calves. It's predator-free; even the bears don't hunt caribou there. No mosquitoes go there during the time that the calves need nourishment. Once the mosquitoes come in, the caribou go up into the foothills where the predators are. But by that time the calf can protect itself. It can run away from grizzly and wolf and all of them and keep up with the mother.

This is the place where life begins, not only for the caribou and the Gwich'in, but for many other life forms. That's where the fish spawn and there's polar bear denning, grizzly denning, wolf denning; there's eagle, white owl, white fox...any birthplace is sacred to us. We don't even talk about where all these places are because they are birthplaces and they shouldn't be disturbed. Our life is based on that. Our calendar is made up of the conceiving times for all of our animals. We call November Divii Zhrii; that means `mountain sheep mating time.' October is Vadzaih Zhrii--'cari bou mating time'--and September is moose mating time so we call it Dinjik Zhrii.

Now the Congress wants to allow oil drilling on this sacred place. They even put it in the budget. The Senate is going to vote on it, [see sidebar on page 5] but they vote based on who is going to get elected next time, or how much their constituents are going to get from the deal, and things like that. They're using the deficit for an excuse to keep it in the budget, but it's not going to make any difference on the deficit or the war or the oil. It's only a six-month supply of oil for our country, and it's going to take ten years. By that time maybe they'll have better technology or alternative energy that will be better for our air and our land.

Since 1988 they've tried to start drilling there eight times. Each battle has been a hard battle, but we've won eight times since 1988. That's the year we first took a position as the Gwich'in Nation against oil and gas development. That year we formed the Gwich'in Steering Committee under direction of the elders.

We were having a meeting because we didn't know what to do to stop the development, and the elders took over. They threw away the written agenda. They said we were going to do this in our own way and they took out a talking stick. That's how we organized. They chose four people from Canada and four from the U.S. and I was one of them. That's how the Gwich'in Steering Committee was formed, on prayers and on a spiritual foundation and under the direction of the elders. Once you get on the board, you are on it for life, and that's what keeps it alive.

"The Creator put us in the part of the world that we're supposed to take care of That's our responsibility and we think we've done a fine job.....We've sustained our way of life and it still works. The ecosystem still works."

There's four different caribou herds in Alaska, and ours is the most wild, natural and healthy one. They always talk about this caribou that flourishes in the development areas like Prudhoe Bay and along the pipeline. That's the Central Arctic herd, they number about 40 thousand and they migrate in a small area within a big coastal plain. They did increase in number a little because they don't have any predators anymore. The predators like polar bears, grizzly, wolf and others that depend on caribou, they got shot because they got used to the camps and became a nuisance to that development area. Also the semi-trucks, the trucks that run along the pipeline, ran over predators.

Those caribou are the ones that you see in the pictures with the pipeline in the background. But now, more and more, scientists are seeing that they're aborting their unborn calves. They think it's got something to do with a disturbance of their feeding grounds.

These four different herds, they don't mix up. They don't enter into relations. Sometimes the Central Arctic herd comes over to our area, but they're small and they're lean. They come over to find food, I guess. Our hunters don't want to hunt them because they're too small and too lean.

A lot of natives in Alaska say they're for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge development because they want to make profits. They went with the Land Settlement Act and had to form corporations. Now they're stockholders in the corporations and they have to make profits. One way to make profits is to go for big-time development with shorttime benefits. But it's not the traditional people who live in the villages and hunt and fish and respect their ways. They've got no voice. The corporation boards of directors are the ones that make these decisions. They're already into development with Prudhoe Bay and the pipeline. They're getting large benefits, they're comfortable, and they want more.

"We need to get back together like before, when the Earth was healthy... Mother Earth needs our help. What's Happening Now....

We Gwich'in, we didn't go with the Land Settlement Act. We didn't go with the corporation. What we're working for is permanent protection of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That's what we need. Right now we have to do it by the government's terms, so we're going for wilderness protection or to have it declared a monument. Like I said, we've already won the battle eight times. The Americans have spoken but the oil companies don't care. They just want more oil. This is human rights versus oil.

A long time ago, many of the animals weren't living right. Some of them were feeding on humans, some weren't the right size, things like that. So this guy, he could be a Creator, he went around and corrected the animals. He went around and said, `From now on, you're going to be this size, and this is going to be your food, and this is the way you're going to live.' He told them, `This is how you're going to be from now on.' When he came to the caribou, he didn't have to change anything about them. They had their own food, they were clean and well organized. In fact, when he was with the caribou, he even stayed with them and rested. What I believe is that if he didn't have to correct the caribou, or change them in any way, then that's an animal that respects creation. That animal's got its place in the world.

We need to get back together, like before, when the Earth was healthy. It's time we should get back together to revive our Mother Earth, to help Mother Earth. Mother Earth needs our help.



"I am Caribou People" was published in the Summer 2005 issue of Parabola, Vol.30, No.2. Sarah James was interviewed by Brian Keane while she was visiting Washington to lobby against oil drilling in ANWR.

The Gwich'in Steering Committee may be con- tacted at 122 First Avenue, Box 2, Fairbanks, Alaska 99701; by telephone at 907-458-8264; or by e-mailing Land is Life at lil@igc.org.

What's Happening Now....

Since the first publication of "I am Caribou People" the issue has come to a vote in the Senate and failed, by only two votes, to prevent drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This issue is still far from closed; at least one U.S. Senator has vowed to "use every legislative tool at my disposal to reverse this vote." The organization of a consumer boycott against any company or companies that initiate drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and advocates of preserving ANWR are being urged to contact the CEOs of various oil companies.