Alaska Native Government & Policy

Former North Slope Borough Mayor Edward Itta died Sunday in Utqiagvik, formerly known as Barrow. Family members said the cause was cancer. He was 71.

Itta was a powerful voice for North Slope communities. He was perhaps best known for first opposing, and then negotiating with Shell when the oil company wanted to drill in the Arctic Ocean. Above all, he insisted Inupiaq communities have a say in development in the region.

“After all the battles over the wilderness and the oil are done, we are the ones that have to live with the consequences,” he told an Arctic symposium in Seattle in January 2015. “We are the most directly impacted people. Decision makers, policy makers at all levels, need to understand that.”

As mayor, Itta became known for balancing the need for oil development and protecting subsistence.

He grew up as one of 11 children. In a phone interview Monday, his sister, Brenda Itta-Lee, recalled an older way of life, with little in the way of a cash economy, dependent on subsistence.

“Whaling, especially, was very important to Edward,” she said.

Itta-Lee said she and her siblings grew up with a foot in two worlds — traditional and modern, Inupiaq and English. Her brother became a whaling captain who negotiated with oil companies.

“He could speak just as powerfully in two languages,” Itta-Lee said. “We (had) a Western American schooling, where we were taught an American way of life. And Edward also mastered how to survive successfully in that setting. So he was very much admired for being bilingual and also bicultural.”

It was a crucial skill set when he became mayor of the North Slope Borough in 2005. Interest in the Arctic was on the rise, especially from oil companies. Shell developed big plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean.

But the company hadn’t consulted local communities, who worried about the impact on marine mammals, and especially on the whale migration.

Itta wasn’t having it. He insisted the Inupiat have a seat at the table, eventually suing the federal government to demand a more thorough environmental review.

Journalist Bob Reiss wrote about Itta’s long fight and eventual negotiation with Shell in his 2012 book “The Eskimo and The Oil Man.”

“It was too much, it was too fast, it was too soon, Edward said,” Reiss said Monday. “Here was this mayor that Shell had not even taken into account, who came up with the strategy of challenging them in court, and who brought the second largest oil company on Earth to its knees, in court. Just stopped them dead.”

Reiss said Itta agonized over his choices. North Slope communities depend on oil revenue to sustain their quality of life and public services, and on-shore oil production was in decline. Yet the ocean is central to both life and identity, and offshore drilling could threaten that.

“He said to me once, and this sort of epitomized everything, he said, ‘Well, what if it’s me?'” Reiss said. “And he meant more than, ‘What if it’s me?’ ‘What if it’s me, what if it’s my family?’ he said. ‘What if it’s me who stops the oil?’ Meaning, stops the money, stops the taxes, stops the building. ‘What if it’s me?’ But then a second later, he said, ‘Well, what if it’s me who allows the oil, and then something goes wrong, and then we lose the whales?'”

Reiss recalls sitting in on a meeting between Itta and Shell that encapsulated that struggle. Itta had come back from whaling camp to meet with oil industry executives.

“The whales only come twice a year,” Reiss said. “Edward was a whaling captain. He was responsible for the lives of his men. These are relatives, these are his best friends. Certainly the last thing that a whaling captain wants to do is leave the camp and go back to town. Which he did that day because — and this is the way the book starts, actually — Edward is on a snowmobile back to town, and a private jet is on the way up from Houston, with the top people at Shell. ”

The Shell executives wanted Itta to reassure people on the North Slope that drilling would be safe, Reiss said. Itta refused, saying Shell hadn’t done its homework, and hadn’t talked to the community.

“Well, I will say, Edward took their head off (that day),” Reiss said, laughing. “He really did! And it was great to watch as a journalist.”

The borough’s lawsuit helped force a more thorough environmental review, and over years of negotiations, Itta convinced Shell to build in measures to protect marine mammals, including a planned pause in work during the whale migration.

Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Andy Mack worked for Itta during those years, as the government affairs director for the North Slope Borough.

Asked how he liked working for Itta, Mack said, “Loved it. Loved every minute of it.”

“He’s a tremendously powerful example of a person who was really true to his principles, but practical,” Mack said. “He was also very committed to the people that he worked for.”

Above all, Reiss said, Itta had heart.

“Whether he was talking with an Inupiaq person, whether he was talking to a Yup’ik, whether he was talking with a Norwegian, or a senator, or an admiral, or an oil person, Edward could really feel your heart, and respond to it, as one human does to another. And I think that’s why he is as beloved as he is,” Reiss said. “Yeah, he was a leader. Yeah, he had brains. Yeah, he knew how to get through Washington. But when you were in a room with Edward, you were two people talking, and you were talking from the heart.”

Police used pepper spray and what they called nonlethal ammunition to remove Dakota Access Pipeline protesters from federal land Wednesday. Demonstrators say they were trying to occupy land just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation where construction of the controversial pipeline is scheduled.

This was the first significant clash between law enforcement and protesters since demonstrations turned violent last week and more than 100 people were arrested.

According to the Morton County, N.D., Sheriff’s Department, a group of people began building a wood pedestrian bridge across a creek north of the main protest camp early Wednesday morning. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns the land and had asked law enforcement to remove any protesters who try to reach it.

Officers in boats pulled the makeshift bridge apart and warned protesters they would be arrested if they continued to trespass. After a several-hour standoff with police, protesters dispersed and returned to their main camp.

During the standoff, a few protesters watched from across the nearby Cannonball River. They waded into the water — some chest-deep — to shout support for colleagues closer to officers.

“I decided to get into the river and just be a presence there,” says Stephanie Jasper of Tampa Bay, Fla. She watched as law enforcement pushed protesters back toward the main camp, and says she saw officers use pepper spray. She says it was a chaotic sight as a police helicopter hovered overhead.

Several protesters standing in the river held mirrors directed at law enforcement officers lined up on the other side and at police on the river in boats.

“Everybody was just sharing love to these officers and explaining why it is we’re here and questioning why they were,” says Jasper.

One law enforcement official had a very different view of the protest. “In my 27 years in law enforcement, I have never seen such an absolute disregard for the law or other people’s rights because of someone else’s ideology,” said Cass County, N.D., Sheriff Paul Laney.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe says the Dakota Access Pipeline construction route crosses land that is sacred to its members. And the tribe worries a pipeline spill could pollute local water. The tribe wants the federal government to stop work on the pipeline and conduct a full environmental impact study of the pipeline.

The Morton County Sheriff’s Department says one person was arrested for “conspiracy to commit obstruction of a government function.” In a press release, the agency says the protester was buying canoes and kayaks for others to cross the creek.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is examining possible alternate routes for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Protesters have been occupying land along the current pipeline route near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. A federal judge has ruled that work on the pipeline can go forward, but the Army Corps and two other agencies said work would not go forward in an area particularly sensitive to the tribe until a review was completed.

“We’re monitoring this closely and I think, as a general rule, my view is that there’s a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans,” President Obama said in an interview with the news organization Now This.

The president continued:

“I think right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline in a way. So we’re going to let it play out for several more weeks and determine whether or not this can be resolved in a way that I think is properly attentive to the traditions of the first Americans.”

In a response to the president’s statement, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux, Dave Archambault II, said, “We believe President Obama and his administration will do the right thing.”

Vicki Granado, spokesperson for the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners, said in a statement, “We are not aware that any consideration is being given to a reroute, and we remain confident we will receive our easement in a timely fashion.”

The easement refers to permission from the Army Corps to begin construction on the portion of the pipeline that would cross under the Missouri River.

It was not immediately clear what a rerouting plan might look like, or what might be involved in the Army Corps of Engineers considering such a plan.

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters are specifically trying to block that section of pipeline because it says the route interrupts sacred sites and burial places. Its members are also concerned that if the pipeline ruptures, an oil spill could pollute drinking water, as The Two-Way has reported.

In his statement, Archambault called on the Obama administration to stop all work on the pipeline until the Army Corps was finished “examining this issue.”

As demonstrations continue, so have clashes between protesters and law enforcement. Last week, police arrested more than 100 people as officers evicted demonstrators from land owned by the pipeline company. As we reported, some of the officers were in riot gear, some were armed, and they arrived with soldiers driving trucks and military Humvees. They also deployed helicopters and an airplane to monitor from above.

The Federal Aviation Administration is restricting flights over the area until at least Nov. 5.

Last week, Archambault II called on the Department of Justice to investigate what he called the “overall militarization of law enforcement response” in a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Asked what he thought about the law enforcement response, Obama said Tuesday that it’s a “challenging situation.”

The president continued:

“I think that my general rule when I talk to governors and state and local officials, whenever they’re dealing with protests — including, for example, during the ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests — is there’s an obligation for protesters to be peaceful, and there’s an obligation for authorities to show restraint.

“I want to make sure that, as everybody is exercising their constitutional rights to be heard, that both sides are refraining from situations that might result in people being hurt.”

In an apparent effort to confuse police, more than a million people have tried to make it appear that they are protesting in North Dakota by “checking in” at the protest camp on Facebook. The Morton County Sheriff’s Department said in a Facebook post Monday afternoon that it “does not follow Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location.”

NPR’s Jeff Brady also reported Wednesday that authorities have charged a protester, Red Fawn Fallis, with attempted murder of a law enforcement officer after she allegedly fired a pistol three times as she was being arrested last week. According to an officer who witnessed the event, police did not return fire against the woman.

North Dakota Highway Patrol Capt. Bryan Niewind said he was nearby and was surprised no one was injured. “The only angle that gun could have been fired where there was no law enforcement is the angle it was fired. It wasn’t because she was trying to aim away from law enforcement,” he said.

If Fallis is found guilty, Jeff says, she faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

More than 1 million people have “checked in” on Facebook to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation page, in a show of support for the tribe that has been rallying against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Most of the “visitors” are not actually at the protest camp in North Dakota, where the tribe and its supporters are gathering to oppose the pipeline. The planned route crosses the Missouri River just upstream of the reservation, and the tribe says it could contaminate drinking water and harm sacred lands. Facebook allows people to check in to places even if they are not physically present.

A broadly circulated rumor on social media over the weekend suggested that local police were using Facebook check-ins to track activists protesting the pipeline.

Activists then called for supporters of the protest to check-in en masse, in a move designed to confuse police.

“Water Protectors are calling on EVERYONE to check-in at Standing Rock, ND to overwhelm and confuse them,” one widely shared post said, according to The Guardian.

It’s not clear who started the rumor, but the response was immediate. “The number of check-ins at the Standing Rock reservation page went from 140,000 to more than 870,000 by Monday afternoon,” the Guardian reports. Now, that number stands at more than 1.5 million.

However, the Morton County Sheriff’s Department said in a Facebook post Monday afternoon that it “does not follow Facebook check-ins for the protest camp or any location” and called the report “absolutely false.”

The demonstration of solidarity from these Facebook users comes days after “police and National Guard troops arrested more than 140 protesters near a construction site,” Inside Energy’s Amy Sisk reported on All Things Considered. On Friday, there were reports of police using pepper spray against protesters they removed from land owned by the pipeline company, as we reported.

Here’s more from our previous coverage:

“Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and their supporters have been protesting the pipeline since it was approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the summer. They are specifically trying to block the portion that is slated to run under the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.”

“Earlier this month, the Standing Rock Sioux lost a bid in federal court to halt construction, paving the way for work on the $3.8 billion pipeline to continue, as we’ve reported. Almost immediately afterward, three U.S. agencies ‘announced a halt to work in one area significant to the tribe.'”

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

In North Dakota, tension over the 1,200-mile Dakota Access oil pipeline is escalating. Police and National Guard troops arrested more than 140 protesters near a construction site Thursday.

The Standing Rock Sioux have sued to stop the pipeline from crossing under the Missouri River next to their reservation, claiming the project would destroy sacred sites and threaten the water supply.

What started months ago as a dispute between a tribe and the federal government has escalated into clashes between protesters and police.

Hundreds of law enforcement in riot gear formed a line Thursday across the prairie and moved in on an encampment of tents and teepees. The protest camp was set up over the weekend along the pipeline route on land owned by the Dakota Access pipeline company. Officers were backed up by dozens of police cars, armored vehicles and aircraft.

Surveillance helicopters circled above a makeshift roadblock of beat-up cars, tires and wooden pallets. Protesters lit it on fire, trying to keep police out.

But police pushed protesters back, trying to get them to move further down the highway.

“We won’t have it anymore. This is our stand. We’ll stand. And we’ll stop this pipeline,” says Robert Eder, a resident of Cannon Ball, N.D., the first town downstream from the pipeline’s proposed river crossing. He’s joined by hundreds of Native Americans from tribes across the country and by activists camped nearby since August.

The project is slated to carry crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields to Illinois. Pipeline supporters and state officials have given assurances it’s safer than transporting crude by the trains that carry it across the very same river every day.

Protesters knew when they moved to private land owned by pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners last weekend that it would provoke a confrontation. And that came Thursday, with law enforcement barking orders over a speaker. Highway Patrol Lt. Tom Iverson says he was hoping not arrest anyone.

“If we could have come out here today and not made any arrests that would have been great,” Iverson says. “But they forced us into arresting them.”

Demonstrators remain adamant that the pipeline not cross under the water. And they unite in prayers, as well as with chants of “Black Snake Killaz.” That’s how some describe their purpose here: to kill the pipeline they have dubbed the black snake.

Jeff Chavis of South Carolina’s Pee Dee Tribe says they won’t back down until they stop the pipeline.

“They get their pipes. They get their machines. They get their people and they leave,” Chavis says. “There’s no negotiation.”

On Thursday, the Republican governors of Iowa and the Dakotas urged the Army Corps of Engineers to issue the easement for construction to continue. This river crossing has been on hold since the federal government decided to review the permit. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has argued in court that the Corps failed to adequately consult them.

If construction is approved, the tribe says it will do everything it can to block it.

Copyright 2016 Prairie Public Broadcasting. To see more, visit Prairie Public Broadcasting.

The Army National Guard has announced the start of a three-year pilot program that gives waivers to Alaska Natives who might try to join the guard, but face barriers to qualification. Some of these potential recruits have the very skills the military is looking for.

Not only is the National Guard making it easier for Alaska Natives to join up, it’s seeking them out. And that’s because of soldiers like Spc. David Smart.

“My grandfather would take me out to the Bay, and we would go set a net for whitefish,” Smart said.

Smart, 28, who grew up in Hooper Bay, is a third generation serviceman. His grandfather inspired him to join the military.

“Going through the house, came across his discharge papers and his medals,” he said.

Smart said that he’s lucky to have this job.

“Pretty hard to get a job in the village, because there’s only so many places to work,” said Smart.

Smart is one of a relatively small number of Alaska Natives to get into the guard recently, but that might change. The new program, among other things, relaxes requirements for the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a general knowledge test that the guard admits favors people for whom English is their first language.

The guard is going to make it easier to join, and what it wants in return is something many Alaska Natives already possess.

“Somebody that grows up in rural Alaska lives the weather, they don’t watch it on the weather channel,” said Bob Doehl from the state’s Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

Doehl said that not only do Alaska Natives make better soldiers in the Arctic, practicing subsistence makes them better soldiers in general.

“Studies found that those from rural locations, who are active outdoors, are better able to spot patterns and changes in patterns,” said Doehl.

Doehl said this increased awareness can make the difference between life or death. He asks why the military would spend years training people when it’s already taken care of, which is something that Spc. David Smart agrees with.

“Give somebody fish, you feed them a day. Teach em’ how to fish, you feed em’ for life,” Smart said.

Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, traveling with Doehl to Bethel to spread the news about the recruitment thrust, said that in the face of a troubling fiscal situation, he still supports increased enlistment.

“It comes at a difficult time because the state does not have financial resources to significantly support such an effort,” Mallott said.

Mallott said he remembers when the military was a major leadership avenue for Western Alaska, and he wants to get back to that place.

“As a young man, having grown up in Southeast Alaska and traveled the state, the National Guard was once a major presence in rural Alaska, and it was a point of inspiration,” Mallott said.

Mallott echoes a thought frequently heard in many of the state’s rural locations, and throughout much of Indian Country in the Lower 48.  Now the effort is underway to rebuild that force.