Decolonization and Arctic Engagement: A Critical Analysis of Resource Development in the US Arctic

A quest for natural resource extraction continues to perpetuate colonial dynamics in the US Arctic. Photo: Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)

The Arctic Institute Arctic Collaboration Series 2023

• Arctic Collaboration: The Arctic Institute’s Spring Series 2023
• Decolonization and Arctic Engagement: A Critical Analysis of Resource Development in the US Arctic
• Where do we go from here? The Fate of Scientific and Cultural Collaborations for Young People in the Arctic
• Conflict or Collaboration? The Role of Non-Arctic States in Arctic Science Diplomacy
• The Like-Minded, The Willing… and The Belgians: Arctic Scientific Cooperation after February 24 2022
• Can Arctic Cooperation be Restored?
• China-Russia Arctic Cooperation in the Context of a Divided Arctic
• From the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress to the Arctic: the Cooperation Triptych
• The EU as an Actor in the Arctic
• Vulnerability in the Arctic in the Context of Climate Change and Uncertainty
• The Ukraine War and Arctic Collaboration: Final Remarks

An estimated 10 percent of the nearly four million residents throughout the entire Arctic region are Indigenous.¹⁾Arctic Council (n.d.) Arctic Peoples. Arctic Council, https://arctic-council.org/explore/topics/arctic-peoples/. Accessed on 24 August 2022. Indigenous populations have inhabited much of the Arctic for thousands of years, long before the land was claimed and divided into nation-states. Interest in opportunities for natural resource extraction drove the historic colonization in the Arctic²⁾Shadian JM (2013) Of whales and oil: Inuit resource governance and the Arctic Council. Polar Record 49(4): 392-405. and, today, the increasing accessibility of minerals and oil due to climate change is fuelling the so-called “Arctic resource boom”³⁾Silva PAM (2022) The Old Colonialisms and the New Ones: The Arctic Resource Boom as a New Wave of Settler-Colonialism. The Arctic Institute, 25 October, https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/old-colonialisms-new-ones-arctic-resource-boom-new-wave-settler-colonialism/. Accessed on 10 January 2023.—a quest to find and exploit the region’s remaining resources. As more international players hope to participate in Arctic affairs, it is critical to not only consider how these ventures impact Indigenous populations but to prioritize decolonization in these spaces.

Climate change is occurring more rapidly in the Arctic than in any other part of the world, with the most recent evidence pointing to a rate of warming nearly four times greater than the global average.⁴⁾Rantanen M, Karpechko AY, Lipponen A, Nordling K, Hyvärinen O, Ruosteenoja K, Vihma T & Laaksonen A (2022) The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the globe since 1979. Communications Earth & Environment 3(1): 1-10. This warming is driving the thawing of permafrost, loss of seasonal snow cover, and melting of sea ice, ice caps and glaciers; each, in turn, increasing the accessibility of natural resources and growing global interest in the Arctic.⁵⁾IPCC (2022) Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Pörtner HO, Roberts DC, Tignor M, Poloczanska ES, Mintenbeck K, Alegría A, Craig M, Langsdorf S, Löschke S, Möller V, Okem A, Rama B (eds.)]. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. This article uses a decolonization framework to analyze resource development with a focus on the United States (US), which is considered an Arctic state by way of Alaska. Decolonization will be defined as a concept and practice of confronting and reversing the historic and ongoing legacies of colonialism,⁶⁾Hudson A & Vodden K (2020) Decolonising pathways to sustainability: Lessons learned from three Inuit communities in NunatuKavut, Canada. Sustainability 12(11): 4419. including the structures of power that uphold inequalities.

After a brief background covering land ownership and some of the outcomes of resource development in Alaska, this article will delve into dynamics that reproduce and perpetuate colonial structures of power. This analysis will feature (i) the prioritization of state and federal interests through the idea of sovereignty and (ii) the primacy and assumed superiority of Western knowledge and conventions and, conversely, the disregard for Indigenous knowledge systems and worldviews. To bridge the gap between theory and action, the article will continually ask what it would mean to decolonize resource development in the US Arctic. Confronting the ongoing systems and dynamics of colonialism must be placed at the forefront of present-day and future Arctic engagement and collaboration—not only in the US, but throughout the region.

Background

The United States purchased the land that is present-day Alaska from Russia in 1867. Just over a century later, in 1968, the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay made the Arctic relevant at a national scale.⁷⁾Nilsson AE (2018) The United States and the making of an Arctic nation. Polar Record 54(2): 95-107. The commercial export of oil to the lower 48 states was now possible for the first time. Hindering this ambition, however, was the fact that the planned pipeline to carry the oil south traversed lands claimed by Alaska Native populations. ‘Alaska Native’ refers collectively to the Indigenous populations who have lived in present-day Alaska for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans in the 1700s.⁸⁾Sandberg E (2013) A history of Alaska population settlement. Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, April, https://live.laborstats.alaska.gov/pop/estimates/pub/pophistory.pdf This term encompasses “many nations and tribes” and “widely diverse cultures, languages, lifeways, art forms and histories”.⁹⁾Alaska Federation of Natives (n.d.) Alaska Native Peoples. Alaska Federation of Natives, https://www.nativefederation.org/alaska-native-peoples/. Accessed on 25 August 2022 To enable the construction of the pipeline to the contiguous United States, land claims issues around Prudhoe Bay were settled with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. ANCSA extinguished Indigenous claims to nearly 400 million acres of land throughout the state in exchange for $962.5 million and ownership of 43.7 million acres.

ANCSA also divided the state into twelve regions, each with an Alaska Native Regional Corporation. The regional boundaries of the corporations do not, however, equate to land ownership; land in Alaska is predominantly owned by the state and federal governments. Just 10 percent of Alaska’s 663,000 square miles are owned by Alaska Native populations.¹⁰⁾ANCSA Regional Association (n.d.) The Twelve Regions. ANCSA Regional Association, https://ancsaregional.com/the-twelve-regions/. Accessed on 24 August 2022 The Regional Corporations operate under US corporate law to administer resources and serve the local communities. These for-profit corporations participate in the Alaskan natural resource industry, both directly and indirectly.

Federal Arctic policy in the US has tended to emphasize the exploitation of Arctic resources for US economic development.¹¹⁾Nilsson AE (2018) The United States and the making of an Arctic nation. Polar Record 54(2): 95-107. Within the new National Strategy for the Arctic Region (released October 2022), economic development continues to receive a strong emphasis—alongside security—and Arctic investments are expected to increase over the following decade.¹²⁾Middleton A (2022) Security and Economic Development: the US National Strategy for the Arctic Region 2022. High North News, 13 October, https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/security-and-economic-development-us-national-strategy-arctic-region-2022. Accessed on 10 January 2023 In the face of this ever-growing interest in Arctic engagement, Alaska Native communities may face new and renewed colonial intrusion in the form of large-scale resource development.¹³⁾Jensen L (2016) Approaching a postcolonial Arctic. KULT-Postkolonial Temaserie 14: 49-65.

Effects of resource development

Continual ‘boom and bust’ with periods of financial growth and decline characterizes resource development in the capitalist system.¹⁴⁾Hébert K (2015) Enduring capitalism: Instability, precariousness, and cycles of change in an Alaskan salmon fishery. American Anthropologist 117(1): 32-46. This instability prohibits many communities from relying solely on economies centered on resource extraction. Subsistence practices provide a source of greater stability within what would otherwise be an unstable extractive economy.¹⁵⁾Hébert K (2015) Enduring capitalism: Instability, precariousness, and cycles of change in an Alaskan salmon fishery. American Anthropologist 117(1): 32-46. Resource extraction has, however, had detrimental impacts on the land, water, and wildlife that reduce the viability of subsistence lifeways. Specifically, extractive activities have been found to increase vulnerability to biological invasion,¹⁶⁾Luizza MW, Evangelista PH, Jarnevich CS, West A & Stewart H (2016) Integrating subsistence practice and species distribution modeling: assessing invasive elodea’s potential impact on Native Alaskan subsistence of Chinook salmon and whitefish. Environmental Management 58(1): 144-163 bring changes to the land with built infrastructure,¹⁷⁾Newman D, Biddulph M & Binnion L (2014) Arctic energy development and best practices on consultation with Indigenous peoples. Boston University International Law Journal 32: 449-508. and introduce the risk of contamination, such as oil spills.¹⁸⁾Shadian JM (2013) Of whales and oil: Inuit resource governance and the Arctic Council. Polar Record 49(4): 392-405. The resulting decreased viability of subsistence practices is worsened by the threat climate change poses to hunting and gathering activities.¹⁹⁾Huntington HP, Quakenbush LT & Nelson M (2016) Effects of changing sea ice on marine mammals and subsistence hunters in northern Alaska from traditional knowledge interviews. Biology letters 12(8): 20160198.

Although some measures of physical health have improved since ANCSA,²⁰⁾Adamsen C, Schroeder S, LeMire S & Carter P (2018) Education, Income, and Employment and Prevalence of Chronic Disease Among American Indian/Alaska Native Elders. Preventing Chronic Disease 15. resource extraction can compromise the health and wellbeing of nearby Indigenous populations. Significant health disparities remain among Alaska Natives compared to non-native Alaskans and other US residents. Generally, Alaska Natives have a lower life expectancy, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, and an elevated burden of infectious disease.²¹⁾Snodgrass J (2013) Health of indigenous circumpolar populations. Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 69-87. By exacerbating food insecurity, the negative impacts of resource development may contribute to and worsen health outcomes. Many of these disparities are rooted in the history of colonialism and socio-political marginalization; in addition, their persistence today may be attributed to the disproportionate exposure to environmental health hazards.²²⁾Mayer B, Joshweseoma L & Sehongva G (2019) Environmental risk perceptions and community health: Arsenic, air pollution, and threats to traditional values of the Hopi Tribe. Journal of Community Health 44(5): 896-902. Moreover, some researchers have found that health data fails to produce a holistic picture of well-being, suggesting that there must be a greater consideration for context-specific understandings of health status.²³⁾Jones J, Nix NA & Snyder EH (2014) Local perspectives of the ability of HIA stakeholder engagement to capture and reflect factors that impact Alaska Native health. International Journal of Circumpolar Health 73(1): 24411.

Importantly, the effects of resource development are not felt uniformly by Alaska Natives. Instead, various facets of identity among individuals and communities impact how they relate to extractive activities. Socioeconomic class divisions,²⁴⁾Hozid Z (2014) Alaska native corporations and the twice marginalised citizen. Critique 42(2): 287-304. gender identity,²⁵⁾Nightingale E, Czyzewski K, Tester F & Aaruaq N (2017) The effects of resource extraction on Inuit women and their families: evidence from Canada. Gender & development 25(3): 367-385. one’s location in a rural versus urban setting,²⁶⁾Probst JC, Moore CG, Glover SH & Samuels ME (2004) Person and place: the compounding effects of race/ethnicity and rurality on health. American Journal of Public Health 94(10): 1695-1703. and many other factors can all impact how resource development is experienced. The complexity of the relationship between resource development and Indigenous populations, and the diversity within the Alaska Native population, must not be ignored or simplified.

Sovereignty and the prioritization of state interests

To decolonize resource development, Alaska Native populations must have greater control over the process. In other words, one overarching aim of decolonization in practice is Indigenous sovereignty. However, (neo)colonial narratives shape and are ingrained within the traditional concept of state-centered sovereignty. Within this concept, the aims of the government are continually prioritized; a hierarchy is established whereby the interests and concerns of the state are given primacy.²⁷⁾Gricius G (2021) A Decolonial Approach to Arctic Security and Sovereignty. Arctic Yearbook 2021. This dynamic is one of the reasons why, in the case of Alaska and Alaska Native populations, resource development continues to be experienced as a colonial enterprise. The gains from extractive activities do not necessarily or primarily benefit Alaska Native populations,²⁸⁾Jensen L (2016) Approaching a postcolonial Arctic. KULT-Postkolonial Temaserie 14: 49-65. and the interests of outside actors are prioritized.²⁹⁾Huntington HP, Zagorsky A, Kaltenborn BP, Shi HC, Dawson J, Lukin M, Dahl PE, Guo P & Thomas DN (2022) Societal implications of a changing Arctic Ocean. Ambio 51(2): 298-306. Oftentimes, wealth from resource development has been extracted from northern regions to benefit other populations.³⁰⁾Newman D (2020) ‘International Indigenous Rights Law and Contextualized Decolonization of the Arctic’ in The Palgrave Handbook of Arctic Policy and Politics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. An evaluation of the Red Dog Mine in northwest Alaska, for instance, found that the local population received a relatively modest share of benefits in terms of employment, income, and mobility.³¹⁾Berman M, Loeffler R & Schmidt JI (2020) Long-term benefits to Indigenous communities of extractive industry partnerships: Evaluating the Red Dog Mine. Resources Policy 66: 101609. 

As established through ANCSA, the Regional Corporations are the primary route for Alaska Native participation in governing resource development in the US Arctic. These corporations, however, operate under US corporate law and, therefore, within the frameworks of the capitalist order. Participation through the structure of the Regional Corporations, thus, limits the opportunity for Alaska Native populations to achieve self-determination outside of those conventions. In action, considering the embeddedness of the corporations within the capitalist and colonial dynamics of the state, decolonization may necessitate enhancing the power of and regard for local governments rather than governing resource development principally through the Regional Corporations.

Prioritization of Western knowledge and conventions

A deep-rooted colonial mentality that remains pervasive is the assumed supremacy of a Western knowledge system. This creates a paternalistic relationship wherein decisions are made by external ‘experts’ and imposed upon the Indigenous population. In short, Indigenous ways of knowing are undermined.³²⁾Hudson A & Vodden K (2020) Decolonising pathways to sustainability: Lessons learned from three Inuit communities in NunatuKavut, Canada. Sustainability 12(11): 4419. The term Indigenous knowledge is defined as “the understandings, skills and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings”.³³⁾IPCC (2022) Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Pörtner HO, Roberts DC, Tignor M, Poloczanska ES, Mintenbeck K, Alegría A, Craig M, Langsdorf S, Löschke S, Möller V, Okem A, Rama B (eds.)]. Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. Efforts to decolonize resource development in the US Arctic must not only embrace these different worldviews, perspectives, and knowledge systems, but put them first.

There is also a tendency to assume that the only route to achieving greater material benefits or power is to adopt a capitalist economy. What Aníbal Quijano—one of the preeminent thinkers of decolonization theory—terms ‘cultural Europeanisation,’ but can be understood as colonial Western society more broadly, is taken as universal and synonymous with being ‘developed’.³⁴⁾Quijano A (2007) Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies 21(2-3): 168-178. Before ANCSA was passed in 1971, Alaska Native populations had primarily engaged in subsistence activities. Since the settlement of land claims agreements, Alaska Native populations are increasingly entrenched in the capitalist economy, especially via resource development. Today, most Indigenous people in Alaska engage in a mixed economy, meaning a combination of both subsistence and market-based activities.³⁵⁾BurnSilver S, Magdanz J, Stotts R, Berman M & Kofinas G (2016) Are mixed economies persistent or transitional? Evidence using social networks from Arctic Alaska. American Anthropologist 118(1): 121-129. A desire to obtain the benefits from natural resource extraction on Indigenous lands is a primary reason for this growth in capitalist engagement.³⁶⁾Kuokkanen R (2019) At the intersection of Arctic indigenous governance and extractive industries: A survey of three cases. The Extractive Industries and Society 6(1): 15-21. Through a decolonization lens, it is understood that following the rhetoric and logic of Western society is a way to “reach the same material benefits and the same power as the Europeans: viz, to conquer nature in short for ‘development’”.³⁷⁾Quijano A (2007) Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies 21(2-3): 169. This model of development, however, has proven “environmentally calamitous on the global scale”,³⁸⁾Markussen U (2017) Towards an Arctic awakening: Neocolonialism, sustainable development, emancipatory research, collective action, and arctic regional policymaking. The Interconnected Arctic — UArctic Congress 2016. made even more dire by the rapid impact of climate change throughout the Arctic.

Conceptualizing Indigenous sovereignty

Notions of Indigenous sovereignty are connected to the right to self-determination. Decolonization must seek the conceptualization and expression of Indigenous sovereignty outside of the western hegemony and enduring colonial structures; self-determination and sovereignty are limited when they can only be articulated within the existing capitalist order.³⁹⁾Shrinkhal R (2021) “Indigenous sovereignty” and right to self-determination in international law: a critical appraisal. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples 17(1): 71-82. Dr. Melanie K. Yazzie presents the idea of anti-capitalist decolonization to challenge the “hegemonic formation of ‘extractivism’ and its liberal, capitalist, heteropatriarchal, and settler colonial valance of development”.⁴⁰⁾Yazzie MK (2018) Decolonising development in Diné Bikeyah: Resource extraction, anti-capitalism, and relational futures. Environment and society 9(1): 30. This approach to decolonization seems especially well suited to the Alaskan context as it critiques how resource development is carried out in a capitalist system, instead of presenting resource extraction as something inherently at odds with indigeneity. Indigenous sovereignty is reliant on the ability of communities to have autonomy over their resources and decision-making, as they have for thousands of years.⁴¹⁾Brewer JP, Vandever S & Johnson JT (2018) Towards energy sovereignty: biomass as sustainability in interior Alaska. Sustainability Science 13(2): 417-429. An anti-capitalist approach to decolonization offers a way to center Indigenous epistemologies and enable economic, societal, cultural, and political pathways conceptualized and implemented by Alaska Native people themselves.

The ideas presented throughout this article are applicable well beyond the US Arctic, and beyond the realm of resource development. Interest in exploiting natural resources drove historic colonization throughout the entire Arctic region and the lingering structures and systems of power continue to shape Indigenous lives and limit the capacity of communities and individuals to mold their own destinies. Therefore, interrogating and confronting the ongoing systems and dynamics of colonialism must be prioritized within Arctic engagement and collaboration going forward. In light of the new National Strategy for the Arctic Region—which differs, in one way, from the prior 2013 edition in making no mention of oil or gas⁴²⁾The Arctic Institute (2022) The Arctic Institute Reacts to the new U.S. National Strategy for the Arctic. The Arctic Institute, 17 October, https://www.thearcticinstitute.org/the-arctic-institute-reacts-new-us-national-strategy-arctic/. Accessed on 10 January 2023—there is a need for further research and analysis to identify the implications of this new strategy on efforts to decolonize and achieve Indigenous sovereignty. There is also a need to center and privilege Indigenous voices in this space and, as such, future research must be informed and conceptualized by and for Arctic Indigenous populations.

A note from the author

This article is based on and includes direct excerpts from the thesis completed by the author for the earning of a Master of Science in Development Practice at Trinity College Dublin, supervised by Dr. Quentin Crowley and Dr. Padraig Carmody. Approval and permission for this project, including the research aims, methods, and ethics, were authorized by the module coordinator. Data was collected via two methods: (i) desk-based research to produce a narrative review and (ii) a series of semi-structured interviews with key informants and stakeholders in Alaska. The primary outcome of this research was a descriptive foundation upon which future research can build. The ideas discussed are by no means comprehensive, nor do they represent the vast diversity of opinions, values, and priorities that exist among Alaska Native people and communities.

The author has reflected a great deal on her positionality, including identifying and examining her interest in the subject, and has questioned and critically engaged with her assumptions and preconceptions. The author recognizes her positionality as an outsider to this region and the communities she is writing about, as well as her being raised in a Western system of knowledge that has continually marginalized Indigenous voices. It is in no way her intention nor her place to speak on behalf of any Indigenous person or other residents of the Arctic region. Moreover, she acknowledges the need to decolonize academic spaces and research processes.

Elizabeth Moeser is a recent graduate of the Master of Science in Development Practice (MDP) program at Trinity College Dublin. She hopes to bridge the gap between research and action throughout her career and has a particular fondness for the oceans and polar regions.