NORTH SLOPE BOROUGH, P. O. BOX 69, BARROW ALASKA 99723
TELEPHONE (907) 852-2611
Issue No: Six_____________Part 2_____________Date:September, 1977
NATIONAL MARINE FISHERIES SERVICE CONDUCTS EIS HEARINGS ON SUBSISTENCE BOWHEAD WHALING MORATORIUM
Under the gavel of Hugh Dolan, Chairman of the Department of Commerce Appeals Board, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) conducted a series of Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) hearings on the risks associated with a decision to file a formal U.S. objection to the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) moratorium on Inupiat subsistence bowhead whaling. The hearings were held in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 8, in Barrow on Sept. 12, and in Kotzebue on Sept. 15. The U.S. government has until October 21 to file such an objection which would exempt it from the obligation to enforce the ban.
The hearings were also an outlet for the
opposition. The NMFS presented a controversial edited draft of its
environmental impact statement (EIS) to justify its 7-year effort to
lead the IWC to call for the subsistence whaling moratorium. This is
the first time the NMFS -- a division of the National Oceanographic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the Dept. of Commerce -has
had to present its case to the public.
The NMFS released two drafts of their EIS
which had been prepared with no knowledge or input from Inupiat
whalers or the Inupiat community. The second draft omitted much
material contained in the first draft relating to Inupiat cultural
integration of bowhead whaling and moratorium enforcement problems.
This material was evidently deleted through pressure applied by
militant, anti-Native whale conservationists both inside and outside
government.
This second draft contained no hard data on
the health and status of bowhead stocks. Considerable emphasis was
given in the draft to the possible loss of U.S. prestige in the
international politics of commercial whaling that would result from a
U.S. objection to the bowhead subsistence moratorium. The Washington,
D.C., attorneys of the NSB circulated both drafts of the NMFS EIS
among national conservation groups, pointing out their scientific
weakness, the deletion of the Inupiat cultural data and information
about enforcement difficulties in the second draft, and the close
anti-Native politics of the NMFS that led to the IWC ban.
In preparation for the hearings, the
officials of the North Slope Borough produced an 8 minute film
documentary (The Last Anchor: see related story) in which all aspects
of subsistence whaling were compared with commercial fishing. The
film was shown at the Washington, D.C., hearings and has been
distributed nationally.
The NSB also joined with the Arctic Slope
Regional Corporation (ASRC) to host a meeting of whaling captains
from all around the Arctic coast from St. Lawrence Island to
Kaktovik. Seventy-two whaling captains attended the August 29th
meeting in Barrow that led to the organization of the Alaska Eskimo
Whaling Commission. The new commission charged NSB Mayor Eben Hopson
with the responsibility to deal firmly with the government on the
issue and to make it clear that all whaling captains intend to hunt
the bowhead next Spring, regardless of the government decision on the
ban.
The following week, Hopson was in Ottawa to
solicit the aid of the Interim Committee of the Inuit Circumpolar
Conference (ICC) in opposing the ban. In addition to passing a
resolution calling upon the U.S. to file an objection to the
moratorium, the Interim Committee also decided to send most of its
membership in company with Hopson to the Washington, D.C., hearings
to be held on Sept. 8 and 9. Among them were Moses Olsen, leader of
Greenland's majority Siumut Party; Kristian Poulsen, journalist from
the Greenland Post; Ove Posing Olsen, a Greenlandic businessman;
Nelson Green, Inuvialuit land claims leader from Inuvik, N.W.T.; and
Mary Sillit, representing Bill Edmonds, President of the Labrador
Inuit Association.
The Washington Hearings
The first hearing took place in an old and
crowded multi-purpose storage room in the basement of the Department
of Commerce. It was SRO, with the observers competing for space with
old furniture, film projectors, and a film crew with equipment and
hot lights.
Moses Olsen and Nelson Green presented
testimony supporting the inviolability of Inupiat subsistence whaling
rights. Olsen criticized the Danish government for voting for the
moratorium in Australia in June. Green connected the bowhead
subsistence whaling rights to the subsistence hunting rights being
strongly asserted the Inuvialuit in the Western Arctic land claims
negotiations with the Canadian government. The Inuit were joined by
the Friends of the Earth, an influential national environmentalist
organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. FOE clearly startled
representatives of the other environmentalist organizations
testifying at the D.C. hearings, and signaled widespread acceptance
of the Inupiat argument that bowhead subsistence whaling is a
necessary part of the Arctic ecological system.
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The NSB observers were shaken by the explicit racist comments made by those who would ban Inupiat subsistence whaling. The low point was sounded by Defenders of Wildlife lobbyist Tom Garrett, deputy U.S. Commissioner to the IWC, and a leader in the plot to ban subsistence whaling. Calling the Inupiat a "bastard culture," his testimony contained slander very similar to that of Barry Lopez in his article in the September Harper's magazine which appeared on the newsstands a few days earlier. NSB attorneys are reviewing Garrett's testimony with a view toward seeking a public apology and a clarification of the Department of Commerce's policy toward the Inupiat community. NSB Mayor Eben Hopson has asked both Alaskan U.S. Senators, Mike Gravel and Ted Stevens, to help respond to Garret's offensive testimony. NSB officials regard Garrett's attitude toward the Inupiat to fairly reflect that of all who have worked behind the scenes so long to ban subsistence whaling, both in and out of government.
The Barrow hearings were attended by
Assistant Secretary of State Patsy Mink, formerly U.S. Representative
from Hawaii, who is familiar with the Native land claims movement
from her work on the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs.
Arriving in Barrow Sunday in the company of Alaska Governor Jay
Hammond, Mink was warmly received at a dinner of Inupiat food served
in the historic Cape Smythe Whaling and Trading Company building, now
Brewer's Cafe, in which Knud Rasmussen was once hosted on his
historic Arctic trek from Greenland in 1928. After dinner, Mink
thanked her hosts, and spoke about her role in answering the question
of objecting to the IWC moratorium. Her powerful delivery encouraged
Barrow's community leadership. It was said of Rep. Mink that no
government official had ever displayed so much compassionate
understanding of the social problems at issue in the subsistence
whaling question. After dinner, Mink met with several whaling
captains in the NSB Assembly Chambers where they answered her
questions about bowhead whaling, and about other whales mentioned in
the EIS as alternatives for subsistence harvesting.
The Barrow hearings began with Hearing Judge
Hugh Dolan making a special point of the fact that no testimony would
be accepted in Inupiaq, the only language capable of scientific
discussion of the Arctic environment. The NMFS had failed to provide
for translators, a failure that observers thought fairly reflected
the overall insensitivity of NOAA's entire handling of the bowhead
subsistence issue. NSB Washington D. C. Liaison, Charles Edwardsen,
rebuked Dolan harshly, charging "English supremacy", and invoked
constitutional language rights of all non-English-speaking whalers
wanting to testify. There was widespread disconcertion among State
and Federal officials present when Edwardsen announced in Inupiaq
that he would hold Inupiaq-language hearings in the NSB Assembly
Chambers, and most present followed him out of the room. Hasty
negotiations between Nolan and Hopson yielded agreement that the
Inupiaq testimony would be translated
and transcribed in English by the NSB and be included in the EIS
hearing record. The most significant testimony was delivered at these
"rump" hearings, with all of Barrow's most respected elders taking
opportunity to place their views on record. The hours of testimony
were translated, transcribed and edited within days of the hearings
and flown by priority pouch to Dolan and Mink in Washington, D.C. At
the English hearings, Dolan heard Governor Jay Hammond ask for a U.S.
objection to the moratorium, placing the State of Alaska in support
of Inupiat subsistence whaling rights, and the Alaska Chapter of the
Sierra Club and the active Fairbanks Center for the Environment
joined the Friends of Earth in support of a U.S. objection to the
moratorium. Nobody testifying in Barrow supported the subsistence
whaling moratorium.
NSB Washington, D. C. Liaison Charles
Edwardsen and NSB Game Management Coordinator Dale Stotts traveled to
Kotzebue with the Barrow Dancers to help organize the NANA region to
testify at the EIS hearings held on September 15th. Kotzebue has a
large community of people from Pt. Hope. Pt. Hope is the source of
muktuk and whale meat for the Kotzebue region and southward to
Unalakleet. Once aroused, the people of Kotzebue turned out to
testify at the hearings, now provided with a translator. Nobody in
Kotzebue testified in favor of the moratorium.
The hearing record closed September 23rd, and
now the government has until the end of October to decide whether or
not to file a formal objection. The NSB has planned a national public
information campaign in the hopes of securing widespread political
support for filing such an objection.
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When the Interim Committee of the Inuit
Circumpolar Conference met in Ottowa September 10th, it reviewed a
document produced for the NSB and the ICC by the Metropolitan
Ecumenical Ministry, Seattle, Oil and Gas Exploration and Development
in the Circumpolar Region of Alaska, Canada and Greenland -- An
Analysis of corporate Involvement. Authored by consultant Gary
Mulhair, the complete analysis of all corporations and consortia with
leases or permits north of the Arctic circle in North America. The
study reveals that there are 217 million acres (the size of Vermont,
New Hampshire, Calif., Oregon, Wash. -- combined) under lease or
permit by a total of 134 different firms or partnerships. Of the 217
million acres tied up, 9.6 million acres are in the Alaskan Arctic,
205 million acres are in the Canadian Arctic, and 3.1 million are in
Greenland. These figures include all Arctic OCS and near shore
acreage. Ten firms own 59% of the 217 million acres.
Seattle management document presents a
The other 124 firms own small parts of the
remaining 41% of the Arctic acreage under lease or exploration
permit. Of the entire 134 firms in the Arctic, 111 operate in only
one country; 19 operate in two countries, and only four, BP, Cities
Service, Gulf and Standard, operate in all three North American
Arctic countries.
The report was produced under the direction of
the Rev. Charles R. White, ICC Liaison for Church Relations,
Metropolitan Ecumenical Ministry, Seattle. White was formerly pastor
of the Presbyterian Church in Barrow. White met in Chicago with the
Presbyterian's Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment
to discuss how the Churches might use this report to develop dialogue
and communication between the Arctic oil industry and the Inuit
Circumpolar Conference and the NSB. The Committee voted to help
organize the top ten Arctic oil operators through direct negotiations
and by voting stock and proxies at annual stockholder meetings of
these oil corporations and their financing institutions. Both the NSB
and the ICC seek orderly negotiations with the Arctic oil industry to
develop a common set of rules for all circumpolar offshore oil and
gas exploration and operations.
The NOAA-funded Outer Continental Shelf
Environmental Assessment Program, headquartered at the U. of A's
Geophysical Institute, Fairbanks, convened a three-day meeting of the
OCSEAP Users' Panel in Seward on September 19 - 21. The Users' Panel
is an innovation in consumerism in which 25 representatives of local,
State and Federal agencies and conservationist groups meet from time
to time to be briefed on the progress of preparations for Federal OCS
lease sales. The OCSEAP is working with the lower Cook Inlet area,
and the Beaufort Sea coastal area.
The Users' Panel reviewed and discussed the
draft Beaufort Sea Synthesis Report. NSB reviewers of this
impressively-detailed 219 typed page report were impressed by an
important feature: the detailing of important information gaps that
need to be filled before informed decisions about environmental risk
can be made.
OCSEAP staff are enthusiastic about the rich
biology of the near shore lagoon areas behind the barrier islands
east from Harrison Bay, and they are discovering what the Inupiat
have known all along: the great importance of the Beaufort Sea near
shore areas to the overall Arctic food chain.
The OCSEAP program is favorably viewed by NSB
officials because it has taken the time to establish helpful
communications with the NSB, and to include the NSB in program
planning and review. NSB Mayor Eben Hopson will ask the State's new
Coastal Policy Council to recognize the OCSEAP program as an
important existing component necessary for Sound Coastal Zone
Management.
Produced for use in the NMFS EIS hearings on bowhead subsistence whaling, The Last Anchor is an 7 minute film that lays out all of the important issues at stake in the bowhead whaling controversy. Produced from stock footage on hand, the film was produced by the NSB to be used in the EIS hearings, and in a national campaign to gather public support for the defense of Inupiat subsistence bowhead whaling. Available in either 16mm or 35 mm, the film is free of charge to those wishing to display it if they contact the NSB in Barrow, Box 69, or dial (907) 852-2611 or 274-2414 in Anchorage. Copies of the film have been sent to major network news agencies in the U.S., Canada and Greenland. The film is fast-moving and exciting, and contains sequences from an actual hunt, kill, and sharing of a bowhead whale. It is of professional quality, suitable for movie audiences and television stations. Copies can also be purchased for $50.
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER . . . . The NSB has received many inquiries about this Newsletter. Those wishing to subscribe can get their names on our mailing list by writing to the following address:
Anchorage, Alaska 99503
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Zone Management politics of the North Slope Borough. Those wishing to
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of the Mayor, North Slope Borough, Box 69, Barrow, Alaska.