12 October 2009

Inuit and Oil

The Inuit have lived in the Arctic Circle for thousands of years adapting to the extremes posed by the harsh environment. These people have subsisted on the wildlife rich seasons while relying heavily on marine life to provide food year round. Recently the Arctic Circle has become quite popular due to the large estimates of oil and natural gas. There is a large shift taking place in the Inuit culture and it may lead them towards an unsustainable future. Moran states, “Like any nonrenewable resource, the oil will cease to flow eventually, and the sustainability of current patterns of energy use and renewable resource use will be challenged by the kind of economy and ecology that emerge” (Moran 2008, 149). Shifts to westernized ideology will cause short term economic boom and the transformation of a culture. Fossil fuel driven economies are short lived and may cause the destruction of natural renewable resources in which the natives are and may become even more dependent upon.

The arctic cultures have changed in the last decade to depend on money and rely less on subsistence. New western governance has helped to push western ideas on the Inuit transforming all elements of the culture. An article by Leo-Paul Dana, Aldene Meis-Mason and Robert B. Anderson present how the Inuvialuit people feel about oil and gas activities on their land. In conclusion, the “selected” interviewees talked about the economic potentials for oil and gas and that the environmental impacts were minor with proper mitigation (as expected from an economic journal). The future is quite unknown for the arctic natives. Fossil fuel based economies will change the nature of indigenous cultures with short lived profits and loss of game habitat. Can the benefits outweigh the overall costs?

Reference
Dana, Leo-Paul, Aldene Meis-Mason and Robert B. Anderson. Oil and gas and the Inuvialuit people of the Western Arctic. Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy Vol. 2 No. 2, 2008 pp. 151-167. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

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