"A project in western Alaska is being fast-tracked in a process that has not yet included legally required consultations with Inupiaq communities."
"The Kigluaik Mountains stretch across the Seward Peninsula of western Alaska like a spine, their jagged ridges keeping a record of time. The Inupiaq have long read these ridges and valleys as a living story: Fire and fracture have marked the rock, and glaciers’ slow grind polished it. The talus slopes gleam in the low fall sun, meltwater from the snowfields spilling into streams that thread across the map of caribou trails on the tundra below.
Hidden beneath these remote valleys lies one of the world’s largest known graphite deposits. Over millions of years, carbon deep within the earth was subjected to immense heat and pressure, forming crystalline sheets black and soft as pencil lead. Canadian company Graphite One plans to mine the valuable material for batteries and strategic minerals — despite many residents’ objections, and so far, without the federally required tribal consultation with the nearby communities of Teller, Brevig Mission, and Mary’s Igloo.
The area slated for development drains into Imuruk Basin, an estuary fed by four rivers that create one of the continent’s most biodiverse ecosystems. This vital hunting and fishing area is essential to residents’ food security and the traditions that tie them to the land. As Lucy Oquilluk, president of Mary’s Igloo Traditional Council, told the federal government, sidelining her community denied it “the opportunity to have our voice heard on issues that directly impact our communities and ways of life.”"
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