Chill the Drills! Protect America's Arctic

The Gwich'in: A Way of Life

The Arctic is home to more than just rich scenery and stunning wildlife. For the indigenous Gwich'in and Inupiaq people, the region sustains a way of life.

Approximately 7,000 Gwich'in make their homes along the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers of the Arctic, scattered throughout 15 villages in northeast Alaska, and in the Yukon and Northwest Territories of Canada.

The word "Gwich'in" means "people of the caribou", and it refers to a people who have lived in the Arctic since long before political maps divided Alaska and Canada. Oral tradition suggests that the Gwich'in have occupied this area since time immemorial, or, according to conventional belief, for as long as 20,000 years.

The Gwich'in have subsisted off of the Porcupine Caribou Herd for thousands of years. Gwich'in villages are located along the migratory paths of the Porcupine Caribou Herd in the interior and arctic regions of Alaska and Northwest Canada.

Scientists have proven that existing North Slope oil development has already disturbed the migration patterns and habits of the caribou in some areas. If oil and gas exploration and development were to occur in the Arctic Refuge, where the Porcupine Caribou Herd makes its annual migration to calve each spring, the Gwich'in way of life would be radically disrupted.

The Inupiaq people, or "real people" of Alaska's Arctic coasts rely on subsistence hunting of moose, caribou, whales, walrus, seals, and ducks, as well as salmon and berries, for their food. Their traditional whaling practice dates back thousands of years and forms the center of their diet and culture.

But today, global warming jeopardizes this way of life. Thinning sea ice makes it difficult to hunt and travel, and erosion places coastal villages in danger of flooding. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, a group representing the Arctic's indigenous people, has made the case that climate change represents a threat to their human rights.