Kaktovik, AK, population 256, is located off the coast of the Beaufort Sea within the ANWR.  The Inupiat are permitted by the government to take 3 whales and 15 musk oxen a year. Previously, these species, among many others such as walrus and seal, were an important part of their subsistent lifestyle. Uunaallik, whale meat, is a delicacy to the Inupiat which is cut into slices the size of french fries and partitioned to the families; the meat must last throughout the year, however, so it is primarily frozen and eaten as a treat.  Because the meat is not cooked and is stored for long periods of time, it is often rancid.  Today though, the Inupiat could not consider themselves subsistence dwellers due to the fact that they own land which was discovered to have oil potential. The oil companies now lease the land and pay each Inupiat family an annual stipend in return and 50% of the villagers work at Prudhoe Bay. This money has enabled the Inupiat to move above the poverty level and build standardized housing with heat, establish fire and police control, sanitation, schools and libraries. The favorite past time of the Inupiat children is to ride around in their ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) up and down the roads. Oil money has enabled families to supplement their diets with mail ordered foods that arrive daily at the new airport in town. While the Inupiat still perform their traditional whale hunts, whale and other local animals have become a supplement to their diet, not the mainstay.  Thus, the Inupiat standard of living has improved and is maintained by the money they receive from oil production, and consequently the Inupiat are pro-oil development. Without the oil money, they would go back to living without heat, running water, or any source of viable income. Now that they have had a taste of the comforts of modern life, who could blame them for not wanting to return to the traditional Eskimo lifestyle? The Inupiat believe that oil development will not interfere with the wildlife, and development and nature are not mutually exclusive. They also maintain that they depend on the health of the land, not only the money that it provides them, and have self-appointed themselves as "guardians of the land," promising to alert the public if oil development does indeed harm the refuge.

The Gwich'in live in the interior of the Arctic beneath the Brooks Range in towns such as Arctic Village, population 140. Like the Inupiat, they were once subsistence dwellers living off the land- the caribou, fish, duck, and other animals. But today, their diet is supplemented by foods flown in by bush planes. (An example of a potlatch meal: caribou stir fry, hamburgers on wonder bread with mayonnaise, duck, creamed corn, and jello. Clearly, the diet consists of both traditional and processed foods.) The village is located just below the Arctic Circle where dwarfed trees still grow, making the landscape less desolate than the rest of the refuge. The Gwich'in do not have running water or heat, although as of now they do have generators. Like the Inupiat, the kids like to ride around on their ATVs and have created "obstacle courses" of which the object is to get another person to fall off.  Unlike the Inupiat, the Gwich'in are adamantly anti-drilling. They believe that any sort of drilling would disrupt the caribou herds' birthing patterns and the herds would experience substantial declines. Considering their diet and culture are dependent on the caribou, they do not support taking this risk.

Local Incident: Musk-oxen do not usually wander as far south as Arctic Village; however, a decade or more ago one happened to wander into the village. The Gwich'in of Arctic Village had never seen a musk-oxen before, and as is their native culture and tradition they decided to utilize it as food.  With a home video camera they filmed the animal being cleaned and eaten. The incident was largely forgotten until a few years later when a group of the kids from the village robbed the local store. They broke in, looted, and destroyed most of the merchandise. The insurance company during the claims process demanded a video be sent to them documenting the damage, and coincidentally the same video that was used to document the musk-oxen incident was used to document the damage to the store. When the insurance company received the video, they were very surprised to see footage of the musk-oxen--an endangered species--at the end of their film. The insurance company notified the US government of their discovery of an unreported and unsanctioned slaughter of an endangered species and the Gwich'in had to pay a steep fine for their mistake.