Bernadette Demientieff is devoting her life to the protection of the Gwich’in, First Nation people who have lived for thousands of years by hunting in what is now called the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Because the climate crisis threatens that existence, Demientieff has been leaving her treasured family and pushing past her discomfort with the challenges of being a public voice for her larger family, the Gwich’in. She’s traveling thousands of miles each year to tell the world what’s happening there in the far north.
As the planet warms, long frozen lands thaw and water levels are rising. “It’s dangerous to hunt now; people are falling through the ice,” Demientieff tells committees, conferences, and legislators. "We have coastal communities literally eroding, thousands of dead fish in our lakes and rivers, and birds falling out of the sky.”
Climate catastrophes are being worsened by the actions of politicians: members of Alaska’s own Congressional delegation signed on to an authorization for commercial oil drilling in the Refuge. The people who live there were not consulted. The patterns of migratory caribou, the mainstay of the people's diets, are not a factor in the extraction plans.
Demientieff is taking the message of her Nation to those who cannot see what is happening there, insisting that we see and hear. "The Gwich'in cannot eat oil…. This is our homeland. How would you like it if I walked into your house and started doing whatever I wanted to do?”
It’s been a series of crashing disappointments until some recent success: The current administration suspended oil drilling leases in the Refuge. The Department of the Interior will decide if the suspension will be permanent.
Dementieff said in a statement to Congress, “The Coastal Plain is not just a piece of land with oil underneath. It is the heart of our people, our food, and our way of life. Our very survival depends on its protection.”
Legislators may call her homeland the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Gwich’in call it Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit. Translation: The place where life begins.