Word: gwich
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...million-acre section of the coastal plain that the oil industry insists has the greatest potential of any land in the U.S. Only two native villages abut this vast park: Arctic Village, on the southern border in the foothills of the Brooks Range, which is home to 100 Gwich'in members of the Athapaskan Indian group; and Kaktovik, on Barter Island, far to the north at the edge of the Beaufort Sea, where 200 Eskimos live. These two villages, divided about the wisdom of oil exploration, are microcosms of two positions in the battle for the future of Alaska...
When they abandoned their nomadic ways in the early part of this century, the Gwich'in Indians settled on an ancient hunting site in the foothills of the Brooks Range, smack in the middle of the annual migratory path of the Porcupine caribou herd. Prompted by fears that proposed oil development on the coastal plain would interfere with caribou migration and calving, the Gwich'in nation last June convened its first gathering in many generations, and passed a tribal resolution calling upon the Government to prohibit oil exploration or development in the refuge. Says Abel Tritt, a Gwich'in elder...