What is up with this Alaskan town?

One of my ongoing hobbies is exploring google maps of planet Earth of all the destinations barely charted, deserted, and far away from civilization. After looking for a place for a job in Alaska (one of my ongoing dreams) I decided...if I am going to go to Alaska, it should be the coldest it can ever be...way North as far as possible to the North Pole and white bears.

And so I came to a place just near the Canadian west-most border Ivvavik National Park. Cold is not a word for it. think liquid nitrogen cold.

The city of Kaktovik by the Beaufort Sea.

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Here's a picture of the citizens of Kaktovik and their city's website:

http://www.kaktovik.com/

enter the main page and one of the main links there are "issues and perspective"

Now that is why I made this thread, because of what is written there.

Quoting:

The city has basically fallen into a trap where it does not associate itself nationalistically with USA nor wants its way of life to be changed because of the oil discovered in the region. I understand that...but isnt that a bit over the line...:shrug:...They proclaim officially that they are not with the government agendas. I am not sure what stroke a chord in me after reading about their issues, but I feel something is def. wrong here.

 

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I am not sure why I feel it either but I can understand why many people in alaska do not want other Americans heading up there temporarily to exploit their resources and then going back home and forgetting that Alaska even exists

What percentage of american schoolchildren do not realize that alaska is a state again?

 

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I would imagine most dont know that Alaska is American land.

 

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I've been to Kaktovik a couple times. They've really prospered from development of North Slope oil reserves, and from my experience up there, want further development, since they stand to make a lot of money off of their land being developed. Fuel is expensive, and they like to ride their snow machines and 4wheelers. Shotgun shells ain't cheap, either.

The attitude I find in most Native Alaskans living in villages is that they want the benefits of modern life- they want the money, the fuel, the guns- that come from white man and his development of natural resources. However, they don't want their game managed, they don't want to be told where they can go on their machines and what they can do. They want government hand outs but don't want to share any responsibility.

Kaktovik wants ANWR developed, for instance, because they get huge dollars. This may have adverse effects on the Porcupine caribou herd, which doesn't bother them, since it's worth the money, and they can shoot a whale if they like. The residents of, say Arctic Village, south of the Brooks Range, though, don't want to see ANWR developed, because any adverse effects on an already dwindling Porcupine herd will hurt them.

By the way, most FOREIGNERS and EUROPEANS I have met don't know Alaska is part of the US. Every American I've met has known it to be one of the 50 states. Saying I'm from Alaska when abroad is as safe as saying I'm from Canada- don't get that special treatment Americans get.

Alaska, thanks to former US senator Ted Stevens (now a convicted felon!), funneled billions of pork into Alaska.

 

again?
i thought alaska became a state in '57 or '58.

edit:
The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized territory on May 11, 1912 and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska

 

So you gett less spit in your burger?

Seriously most people know that alaska is a american state, my gues is that Europeans mentioned Canada because it has a more similar climate and that you do not wan't to be assosiated with the US otherwise you would have said you were american in stead of alaskan.

... BTW wasn't there a study stating that most brits didn't know that where the hadrianus wall lay and that a absurd percentage of american believed that Vietnam was a neiboring country

 

No, I just meant again as in remind me of the answer again. Nice piece of research though

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Maybe, but nearly one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12591413/

So I wouldn't be surprised at all

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They just want respect for their rights to the land. Nothing wrong with not wanting to be steamrolled by Shell.

 

....
Fail.

 

yeah but it seems to be more than that to me, it seems like they are actually feeling themselves to be separate from the rest of the country, nationalists of their own in essence.

 

They are, in a very real sense, separate, and also consider themselves separate. Most Alaskan villages are not connected to roads or rail, instead they have small airports that small planes frequent, at the mercy of unpredictable and dangerous weather. They live a lifestyle much closer to the natural world than the vast majority of westerners, and have only a few generations between being neolithic hunter gatherers and their more recent lifestyle. This means their cultural legacy is vastly different than yours; the values required to survive in the Alaskan wilderness were, and still are, vastly different than the ones for surviving in a post-industrial modernity.

 

No they don't
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska#Demographics

only 15.6% are native Alaskan and only 5.2% Speak at least one of the 22 native dialects.

And all but a few have very little intrest in it's natural wealth except on how to benefit from it

 

Because Shell's profit-sharing ethic with the natives is so unimpeachable? Their corporate motto is "Arbeit macht Frei", for crying out loud.

 

Only 15.6% of native Alaskans are native Alaskan?
I'm talking about villagers. Villages tend to be something like 90% native. See, there isn't a homogenous distribution of race in Alaska, much like if you want to find a poor black man, you go to the inner city, and if you want to find a middle class white person, you visit the suburbs.

Speaking a native language has very little with where your food comes from. I've been to villages; I have friends who are Alaskan native; I have family that's from the Village; even my mother lived in a village while she was in middle school. Not only are your wiki statistics irrelevant to the point I am making regarding Alaskan NATIVES, not Alaskans, but you also lack any actual experience with village life and those who live it.

Actually, much of the land that has mineral and oil wealth in it is owned by Native corporations, so Shell has to pay them to drill there. Native tribes with oil under there land are only too happy to have Shell poke holes and write them checks. Hey, shotgun shells & snow machines aren't cheap. The natives who aren't part of the corporation and will be adversely affected will care, but it's not some idiotic tree hugging pride. It's simple pragmatism. If they're not getting paid while Shell kills their bou, then they'll be upset. Otherwise, they're bought. Alaskan natives are probably some of the best represented, and most fairly treated, native groups in the world, with regards to formal recognition by government and subsequent dealings with big business. They're still regarded as toothless, ignorant, drunks who live in the woods under underpasses by most whites, and a fair number of natives. Native, in Anchorage, is almost synonymous with homeless.

 

I'm sorry one side of my parents used to be colonists in belgian congo and where defenitly not Congoleze nor where they there for the best intrests of the population or the country (Not that they did bad things, they made boats and ponton briges)

From that point I learned that if you can't communicate with the indigenous population and believe your helping them and take your little part of the home country with you then your always going to be a outsider.

 

People from Alaska are actually Russians.