Native Americans

Native American News Roundup September 3 – 9, 2023

Sea ice floats within Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska, undated handout photo from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

WASHINGTON — 

Here are some Native American-related news stories that made headlines this week:

Interior Department cancels Arctic oil and gas leases

The Biden-Harris administration announced this week that it will cancel oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) purchased by state developers on the last day of the Trump administration.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said Wednesday that the “lease sale itself was seriously flawed and based on a number of fundamental legal deficiencies.”

“With today’s action, no one will have rights to drill for oil in one of the most sensitive landscapes on Earth,” Haaland told reporters. “Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime, and we cannot ignore the disproportionate impacts being felt in the Arctic.”

The administration will also ban new leasing on more than 10 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, the largest undisturbed public land in the United States.

Forty-year fight

In 1980, Congress opened 1.5 million acres inside the refuge to oil and gas development. In 2017, Congress passed a tax reform bill authorizing the Interior Department to hold two lease sales by the end of 2024.

The state’s own economic development arm -- the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) – bought 10-year leases covering more than 174,000 hectares (430,000 acres) of land.

The land in question is estimated to hold more than 7 million barrels of oil and 198 billion cubic meters (7 billion cubic feet) of natural gas.

In June 2021, the Biden administration put a hold on all drilling, pending an environmental review. AIDEA sued Biden and several other administration officials.

“The lawsuit is in direct response to unlawful actions to obstruct and delay the development of valid oil and gas leases in the non-wilderness Coastal Plain (Section 1002 Area) of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR),” AIDEA said in a press release at the time.

Last month, a federal judge dismissed the suit.

Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy was quick to react to Haaland’s announcement this week.

“The leases AIDEA hold in ANWR were legally issued in a sale mandated by Congress. It’s clear that President [Joe] Biden needs a refresher on the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine. Federal agencies don’t get to rewrite laws, and that is exactly what the Department of the Interior is trying to do here,” he said.

AIDAI said it will continue to “aggressively defend” its lease rights.

Read more:

Cherokee Chief condemns Oklahoma governor's pick for tribal liaison

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a member of the Cherokee Nation, has added a Native American tribal liaison to his leadership team. His choice is John Wesley “Wes” Nofire, a retired boxer, former member of the Cherokee Nation tribal council and harsh critic of principal chief Chuck Hoskin Jr.

In a statement released Tuesday, Stitt’s office described Nofire as “outspoken about the challenges the Supreme Court’s McGirt decision has created when it comes to administering justice fairly for every Oklahoman, native and non-native alike.”

In McGirt v. Oklahoma, U.S. Supreme Court justices reviewed the case of a Native American accused of the rape of a 4-year-old Native child on the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. An Oklahoma court sentenced him to two 500-year sentences and life without parole.

More than 20 years later, his lawyers appealed, arguing that because Congress had never formally disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the crime took place on tribal land. They cited the Major Crimes Act, an 1885 law that says when serious crimes are committed by or against a tribal member on tribal or reservation land, only the federal government, not the state, has the right to prosecute.

The Supreme Court agreed.

Though the ruling applies only to criminal jurisdiction, many in Oklahoma worry it could expand to other areas of law enforcement and beyond into environmental and energy arenas.

Hoskin took to Facebook to condemn Nofire, whose political views are said to align with Stitt’s.

“It’s difficult to overstate the active threat that Governor Stitt’s new Native American Liaison, Wes Nofire, poses to tribal sovereignty,” he wrote. “He is on the record opposing tribal sovereignty and peddles dangerous and unhinged conspiracy theories.”

In an interview with Oklahoma’s KOKO-TV, Nofire sent a message to Hoskin and other critics:

"Give me a little bit more time and allow me to be that olive branch. It grows. That’s one thing that they do is when we reach out the hand of opportunity to reach back and let’s work on these things, and I think we have a lot of opportunity there," Nofire said.