The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is in the northeast corner of Alaska, past the Arctic Circle and beyond Alaska’s Brooks Range mountains.

The Refuge is critical to the survival of Alaska Native communities. For centuries the Gwich’in and Iñupiaq people have relied on the bounty of the Arctic for their livelihood. The Gwich’in refer to the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain as the “Sacred Place Where Life Begins” because the Porcupine Caribou Herd returns each year to the coastal plain to give birth to their calves, traveling hundreds of miles to do so. For the caribou, and for other Arctic wildlife, there is no alternative to this vital and sensitive habitat that they have depended on for millennia.The protection of the coastal plain is a matter of survival and food security for the Gwich’in people, whose way of life is tied inextricably to the health of the caribou.

The wonder of the Refuge has not stopped decades-long attempts to open this special place to oil and gas drilling. In 2017, this work began a new phase as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act officially opened the coastal plain to drilling and the Trump administration rushed to hold a lease sale there. Since then, Sierra Club has been part of a movement Native Alaskans, environmental organizations, and other justice-minded groups to prevent drilling in the Refuge.

The fight to defend the Refuge is more than just environmentalists versus Big Oil. This is the work to stand in solidarity with Native Alaskans like the Gwich’in and Iñupiat. This is about human rights and cultural traditions to remain able to thrive in a way of life without development that benefits very few at the expense of many.