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Representatives of the Inupiat village of Nuiqsut on Alaska's North Slope are suing the Trump administration for canceling a program that gave protections to the Teshekpuk Lake area and the caribou herd that uses it. Teshekpuk Lake is the largest lake in the Arctic region, and the surrounding area is important to its namesake caribou herd as well as migratory birds and other wild resources harvested by the region’s Indigenous people for traditional subsistence purposes.
For decades, Teshekpuk Lake and the lands adjacent to it have been protected from development to varying degrees. Now the Trump administration is seeking to open the entire area, including the lake itself, to oil drilling. The lawsuit says the Trump administration's actions violate the subsistence rights of the region’s Indigenous people.
“Native communities in northern Alaska have relied on subsistence uses of natural resources since their ancestors crossed the Bering Strait thousands of years ago,” the complaint says. “The Iñupiat people’s physical and cultural survival depends on the continued harvest of natural resources.”
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As climate change plunges us deeper into the mass extinction event that we are all living through, and more of my friends and neighbors get sick and die as a direct result of the activities of the coal industry, I will continue to be haunted by Coalie’s twisted grin and uncanny eyes.”
