GEORGE TAGAROOK, Mayor of Kaktovik, Alaska

KARL E. FRANCIS, Advisor to the City of Kaktovik

Voices of the Kaktovikmiut: An Inupiat Village Speaks Its Mind on Oil and Gas Development Within Its Native Homelands

Flooded by camera crews from around the world, all arriving with their strange and biased stories already written and looking only for sound bites to flesh out those stories, the people of Kaktovik, Alaska, last year found ourselves portrayed by the media in terms that seemed to us both ridiculous and insulting. City Councilman Herman Aishanna suggested we make our own video, to say what the people here really think about proposed oil and gas development within the aboriginal homelands of the Kaktovikmiut, the Arctic drainage of what outsiders have proclaimed to be the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is a brief report on that effort to give realistic voice to the people at the center of an international controversy but seldom heard except in distorted and alien terms.