Alaska governor awards $1m in state funds to Indigenous group backing oil drilling

Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat is a backer of the controversial Willow oil drilling project

The administration of Alaska’s Republican governor, Mike Dunleavy, awarded at least $1m in state funds to a group claiming to represent a consensus of Indigenous support for new Arctic oil drilling, new research shows.

The group, called Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat (VAI), had just months earlier communicated with the governor’s office on ways to counter other Alaska Native groups opposed to new drilling.

In Alaska, Indigenous voices hold sway in the Arctic drilling debate, an issue the upcoming presidential election will help settle. The Arctic is home to diverse Alaska Native communities dependent on healthy lands and caribou herds, which oil development can harm. Yet industry and for-profit Alaska Native corporations also bring in oil-related jobs and revenue.

“Our research shows a taxpayer-funded effort to tip the scale of public opinion toward Arctic drilling,” said Chris Marshall, spokesperson for Accountable.US, a non-partisan group that researched the VAI’s funding using public records requests. Indigenous groups who oppose drilling criticized the funding.

Next Tuesday’s election is due to bring about one of two visions for Alaska’s Arctic. One is Donald Trump’s self-described “drill, baby, drill” approach, which late during his presidency opened the massive ConocoPhillips Willow project in the National Petroleum Reserve and the first-ever oil leases in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, projects pushed by the VAI, Alaska’s congressional delegation and others.

In contrast, the Biden-Harris administration has pursued policies with more attempts to balance oil development, preservation and climate concerns. It added protections on millions of acres of National Petroleum Reserve lands, canceled Trump’s Arctic refuge leases and approved a downsized but still sprawling Willow project. It also invested historic funding in renewables in Alaska and nationally through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Biden moves, condemned by Trump and the VAI, more closely align with Alaska Native groups concerned about the climate crisis and Arctic environments. For his part, Dunleavy, an oil development supporter who heads a state where oil provides nearly 90% of state budgets, backs the Trump approach, saying Biden’s moves deprive Alaskans of jobs.

“The governor has an unusually close relationship with [the] Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat,” said Marshall, adding that Dunleavy attended a VAI board meeting and in 2021 announced a “joint effort” with the group, with purposes including ensuring development of North Slope natural resources. Dunleavy also co-wrote a Washington Examiner opinion piece with the VAI promoting Arctic drilling.

Research from Accountable.US shows that in 2021 Dunleavy requested $1m in funding for the VAI. Alaska’s legislature approved the request, which was later delivered as a five-year reimbursable state grant, also with purposes that include ensuring North Slope resource development.

Emails obtained by record requests show communications between the VAI and the governor’s office on ideas for statewide and national strategies to promote Arctic drilling. They include ideas about how to undermine arguments from other Indigenous groups, discrediting renewable energy and positioning VAI members to attend Biden administration meetings as it crafted its climate and Arctic policies.

In one section of the communications in 2021 headlined “Ideas for collaboration”, a strategy of taking out a full-page advertisement and accusing Indigenous opponents of destroying the local economy is floated and described as how it would be “one Indigenous group taking down another indigenous group”.

The VAI is a leading proponent of Arctic drilling and the Willow project, generating op-eds, press releases and social media activity criticizing Biden conservation measures and countering other Indigenous groups opposed to new drilling. Major media sources regularly quote the VAI president, Nagruk Harcharek, who claims to represent a “majority consensus” among Iñupiaq organizations. The Iñupiat are Alaska Native people whose homeland is in Arctic Alaska.

In a statement to the Guardian, Harcharek, who was appointed as the VAI’s president in late 2022, said the $1m funding “solely supports” its efforts to educate audiences about Iñupiaq culture and the unique challenges faced by the region and the importance of a robust regional economy.

He added: “[The VAI’s] … use of all … grant funds must be approved by the state of Alaska’s department of commerce, community and economic development.”

The VAI did not respond to questions about disparaging other Indigenous groups. The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

The VAI’s 21 member organizations include Alaska Native corporations, communities and tribal organizations. Aside from the state, its main funders are the North Slope Borough and the Alaska Native-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. Both entities depend on oil revenue and aggressively push for more Arctic drilling.

But others reject the idea of consensus. They include Nauri Simmonds, executive director of Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic. The group, which she calls a “100% Iñupiaq organization”, opposes new drilling at Willow and the Arctic refuge. Instead, it seeks a “just transition” from extraction to a more equitable economy that Simmonds said was healthier for people, the environment and the climate.

As a youth, Simmonds lived in the Arctic communities of Utqiaġvik and Nuiqsut, not far from Alaska oilfields. She recalls green smoke that resembled smog, word of increased respiratory illnesses and leaks containing chemicals, drilling mud and natural gas.

In 2019, the Nuiqsut tribal government unsuccessfully sued to stop the Willow project, and the Nuiqsut-based Grandmothers Growing Goodness, a group dedicated to the preservation of Iñupiat culture, remains critical of increased drilling.

Simmonds also said drilling interfered with Iñupiat subsistence needs. “People have to work harder and go further to reach caribou,” she said.

Simmonds acknowledges there is support within Arctic communities for more oil development and the jobs and benefits it brings. But she said that oil giants like ConocoPhillips and its well-funded supporters drown out dissent. Simmonds said corporate interests deserved a say in the community but do not represent a consensus of “average people”.

“It’s not surprising,” Simmonds said of the state funding for the VAI. “But it is hurtful,” she said, “that Voice discredits the opinions of other Iñupiaq people.”

Enei Begaye, executive director of Native Movement, also opposes the new drilling projects. Native Movement is a statewide collective of more than 20 organizations working on social, environmental and climate issues through an Indigenous lens. It also seeks a transition away from extraction. Begaye points to Native communities investing in mariculture, sustainable tourism and other pursuits informed by Indigenous knowledge and science.

“We can make a living without cannibalizing our lands,” she said.

Begaye also cites the arrival in Alaska of billions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. In the Arctic, the laws fund broadband hookups, renewables, port and airport upgrades, and more that can build economic opportunity and resilience to the climate crisis. Governor Dunleavy and Alaska’s bipartisan delegation also doggedly pursue funds from the two laws, while still arguing that new oil development is essential for providing funding for the same improvements.

Peter Winsor, interim director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, said that his group had specifically opposed Arctic refuge drilling since 1988. The committee represents Gwich’in Nation villages in the US and Canada. “The Gwich’in have never been reliant on any oil and gas development,” said Winsor.

Winsor said Arctic refuge oil development can compound climate crisis stressors already affecting polar bears, migratory waterfowl and the caribou central to Gwich’in culture and nutrition. Stressors include increasing rain-on-snow events, which form icy crust that prevent caribou from grazing.

Winsor is also not surprised that state funding supports the VAI. But he added that oil companies, banks and insurance companies already shy away from Arctic refuge drilling due to economic trends, thawing permafrost and public pressure.

Winsor, who operates a small guiding company in the Arctic refuge, sees growing interest in an Arctic economy based on sustainable activities and non-extractive industries.

Even as the VAI claims consensus, its emails to the governor’s office show awareness of other views. In one email, the VAI describes spending $4.6m pushing for Arctic refuge drilling and countering arguments from Sovereign Iñupiat for a Livable Arctic, Native Movement and the Gwich’in Steering Committee. The VAI reports doing “extensive research” on the groups and sending paid staff to their community meetings.

As a 501(c)4 organization, the VAI can legally accept funding from the state and lobby on political issues.

In an email, VAI president Harcharek said the group uses the state funding to “educate audiences in both Alaska and the Lower 48 about our unique Iñupiaq culture and the many unique challenges faced by our region”. Harcharek said the challenges include the right to “self-determination”. In public statements and press releases, Harcharek often cites self-determination as central to the group’s support for new Arctic oil development.

He added that the VAI engages in education about Iñupiat life and culture and hosts resources on its website related to climate change adaptation, food security and other topics.

When asked about VAI communication with Governor Dunleavy’s office, Harcharek said that the group’s “current leadership” had had very little direct engagement with the governor. And regarding its claims of consensus, he said the VAI focuses on its 21 member organizations, who along with their communities and constituents “overwhelmingly” support the group’s efforts to “advance Iñupiaq self-determination”.

Harcharek said that the VAI was active in discussions of other economic issues in the Arctic, including protecting subsistence activities. And while acknowledging that climate change poses “very real threats to the North Slope”, he said it should not be an excuse to “deny our self-determination and right to shape our shared destiny in our ancestral homelands”.

Experts say deep and rapid cuts to fossil fuels are needed to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

“I’m not out to attack [the] Voice [of the Arctic Iñupiat],” said Simmonds. “My problem is that they project this consensus and act like it’s objective. But they’re corporation-funded and represent the members of the community who have gained the most from oil.”

Cover photo: An exploratory drilling camp at the proposed site of the Willow oil project on Alaska's North Slope in 2019. Photograph: ConocoPhillips via AP