Indian Country’s ANWR

How an Iñupiat Trump Official, Tara Sweeney, is challenging everything you know about Indigenous environmentalism

The 2017 fourth quarter issue of Uqalugaaŋich, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation newsletter, features a photo of Tara Sweeney and other ASRC executives celebrating with President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) at the White House following the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December 2017.

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It was late-February, 2001 when a doe-eyed Tara Sweeney, then 27-years-old, joined members of Congress and others to promote drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. President George W. Bush had been in office barely a month. Expanding the reserve for oil exploration had been one of his top campaign issues. A year earlier as Governor of Texas, Bush rallied to reduce America’s dependency on foreign oil. Sweeney, a fresh face in politics, grew up in the area that Bush had targeted for his proposed legislation — Alaska’s North Slope, home to Iñupiats, Gwichins, caribou, and some of the world’s most pristine, oil-rich lands yet to be tapped.

“Our people are very much in support of development of the Coastal Plain of ANWR and we support and applaud the efforts of Senator Murkowski,” said the young Sweeney. She was a budding lobbyist for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), the economic engine for her Iñupiat community.

The Murkowski lawmaker Sweeney referenced back then isn’t the one we know to hold office, today, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Rather, it was her…