Tribe Fears Caribou Could Be Victims of Hunt for Oil : Environment: Arctic Indians who rely on the herd see drilling as a threat to their rugged way of life.

Here at the foot of the Brooks Range, a week’s trek north of the Arctic Circle, slabs of caribou meat as big as your shoulder hang over a smoky campfire. Skinned and roasted caribou heads pile up for serving at dinner like so many lumpy footballs. Caribou antlers stand as festive sculptures. A band of 250 Gwich’in Indians move about in ceremonial caribou-hide clothing against the chill of impending autumn.

“Caribou,” the Gwich’in say, in a solemn explanation of the obvious, “is our life.”

From villages across the interior of Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory, leaders and elders of the Gwich’in (pronounced gwi CHIN) have assembled here in the Far North in an air of brooding crisis. It is only their second such tribal gathering in a century.

They come to ponder and affirm the value of life here in the wild and take measure of the great events occurring in a far-off desert, because the crisis for the Gwich’in, just like the confrontation in the Mideast, is about oil.

Their numbers are small and their task unimaginably big: to stand up to the oil companies, the Bush Administration, the state of Alaska and many of their fellow Indians against petroleum exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home of the caribou.

But they are not without hope. The Gwich’in and some of their white supporters believe that America, on the doorstep of a new century, might be in the mood to tread cautiously on a way of life that is all but gone and already impossible in most places. A life right up close to the land. A life in sync with the land.

The Gwich’in are the continent’s northernmost Indians--not to be confused with Eskimos, who live farther north.

For hundreds, probably thousands of years, they have been sustained by the Porcupine River caribou, which migrate to summer range along the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And, just where the oil companies want to drill wells to keep America’s North Slope oil flowing, right there are the calving grounds of the 180,000-head caribou herd.

The Gwich’in, perhaps 5,000 high-latitude Indians, clung to a subsistence life when other Alaska natives went corporate. They proudly see themselves as “the last frontier” of native culture, as people who want to continue living off the land and close to the land, more or less as they have for countless generations.

No, they say, to boom-and-bust oil company jobs. No to government payments and state welfare.

No, they say, to oil drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain to the north.

Never mind that the 100-mile-long strip of the refuge’s north coast offers what the government calculates to be a 1-in-5 chance of finding enough oil to keep Alaska’s pipeline flowing into the next century--better odds than at any other onshore location in North America.

Never mind the distant rumble of hostile armies digging in along oil fields of the Persian Gulf region. And never mind the oil industry’s evidence that drilling in the Arctic has not--and will not--disrupt the caribou.

“We’re the last frontier of Indian people. We still live like Indian people,” said Ernest Erick, a Gwich’in chief from the Alaskan village of Venetie. Aiming a fork at a dinner plate heaped with dark, lean meat, Erick added: “This caribou? This caribou is our oil.”

Yes, the Gwich’in acknowledge that the caribou so far have shown themselves tolerant of oil development in Arctic Alaska. This time, they say, the oil companies will have to drill in a confined and concentrated calving area, and that has not happened before.

The Indians don’t know what may result. And they don’t want to take the risk. Lawsuits filed on behalf of the Gwich’in hold that the benefits of drilling have been overestimated by the government and the potential costs downplayed.

A draft Interior Department report once predicted that drilling would result in “displacement” of the herd and could reduce it by 40%. That draft was later toned down. Environmental scientists said the changes were politically motivated, and they also filed suit against the Interior Department.

For now, however, the future rests with Congress, which established the 19-million-acre refuge but left unresolved the question of oil drilling on the 1.5-million-acre coastal plain. Virtually all of Alaska’s elected leaders are urging that Congress act swiftly to approve the drilling.

The Gwich’in have a disturbing view of their future if the thirst for domestic oil brings in the wells and the processing plants and roads and pipelines and buildings.

Maybe there would be construction jobs at the start, but then the work would be over, the caribou would be in decline, and there would be nothing to sustain the Gwich’in but welfare and the social decay they see in other tribes. And welfare will not take them far in the bush, where gasoline costs $5 a gallon and fresh food is caught on the hoof or not at all.

To the north is another native village, Kaktovik, home to about 210 Eskimos. Village leaders there have endorsed drilling, splitting the native community profoundly.

The Gwich’in are left isolated and fuming. Eskimos live off the sea, not caribou, so what do they care? Eskimos have formed corporations with the money they obtained in settlement of native land claims and have joined in partnerships for oil exploration. Eskimos, the Gwich’in protest, have become hooked on oil and money.

During their weeklong tribal gathering, with the time divided roughly into 40% for speeches, 40% for dancing and 20% for sleeping and eating, the Gwich’in struggle. What now?

A few talk ominously about loading their hunting rifles, not to shoot caribou but to defend the animals against the oilmen.

“When it comes time for a showdown on the coastal plain of the Arctic refuge, the Gwich’in people will stand alone. It’s time for us to say this is ours and we will defend it once and for all,” said Jonathan Solomon, a prominent leader from Ft. Yukon. He speaks to a tribal meeting, mostly in his native Athabaskan language, and half a dozen men rise to say they will stand with him and fight.

Others downplay the potential for violence and, attuned to the language of popular causes, proclaim this a “human rights struggle.”

Still others believe that the only way the Gwich’in can win is by appealing to the goodwill and sense of right of the white culture from which they seek to remain apart. After all, what can you say about America and its oft-stated regard for freedom if some of the freest people in the land fear for their way of life?

“I feel a richness and satisfaction just knowing that they exist,” said Anne Caufield, a Fairbanks teacher who once taught the children of Arctic Village.

More down to earth, the Gwich’in have taken aim at today’s rising environmental sensibilities and closed ranks with conservation groups who share the determination to block drilling.

“This life? . . . Well,” begins Lincoln Tritt, a soft-spoken native of Arctic Village, “we want to save it, not necessarily because it’s ours, but because it makes more sense. It does not disrupt the natural order of things. We are part of the ongoing process of the planet. When we run out of planet, then what?”

Some people who have looked on the Gwich’in believe this lesson holds an appeal that reaches far beyond the tundra.

“In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Zen and Eastern thought captured people’s imagination as they looked for meaning to their lives. I think the ‘90s are going to be an era where Native American culture is prized,” said George Matz, a white Alaskan who is fascinated with the Gwich’in. “They have a way of living in harmony with the land. They relate to the land. The culture we’re from has lost that, and we’re trying to get it back.”

Or, as Randall Tetlichi, a Gwich’in from Old Crow, Canada, put it: “Over the years, we have borrowed a lot from the white man to survive. Now, it’s time they borrow from us.”

One of the favorite stories told at the gathering, perhaps apocryphal, is about a white man who starved out here in the Arctic with $30,000 in his bank account. Money, the Gwich’in are pleased to remind you, will get you only so far.

As the men speak, the daily life of Arctic Village rolls along to the curious rhythms of two distinct cultures.

There are plenty of signs of contemporary society: All-terrain vehicles dash up and down the dirt streets, a solar-powered community meat locker sits proudly in the center of town. A tiny store rents movies for VCRs, and, even as the aurora borealis lights the sky above, the glow of television sets flickers in virtually every house below. Baseball caps and blue jeans are standard attire, and for this occasion the Gwich’in are selling novelty T-shirts.

But the Gwich’in never seem far from the breathtaking and harsh landscape that surrounds them. There are only a couple of paying jobs in the village, so the cash economy is secondary to survival.

Many of the older villagers have faced starvation in their lives and have lost friends or relatives who starved when the caribou could not be found in the dead of winter. Rather than fear it, however, they seem to relish the urgency of this primitive struggle.

Every day this summer, Steve Tritt has been riding up the east fork of the Chandalar River in a skiff to check his fishing net. He points out details of the terrain as a taxi driver might guide a stranger in a city: Here is where nets will get you pike and whitefish for your dogs. Up a few miles, in a creek, is where you can catch spring grayling in fish traps made of willow branches. Still farther is a good place to shoot a moose. Look, there is a cave. Out there, an hour away, is the northern tree line.

“It’s something, isn’t it?” he said, the autumn wind already cold enough to turn his nose red and wet. “It’s paradise. I enjoy it every day.”

The Gwich’in finish their gathering resolved to tell their story to anyone who will listen, and then brace for the decisions to come in far-off Washington.

“For us there is no choice, “ said Kay Wallace, who represents the tribe and its region in the Alaska Legislature. “Our decision was made the day we were born.”

Times researcher Doug Conner contributed to this story.