ABSTRACT
In August 2006, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne, went to Fairbanks, Alaska, to listen to the people talk about their views on energy development in the Arctic. Fairbanks was one of the several stops on a nationwide “Listening Session” tour by the Secretary. After hearing overwhelming opposition to the proposed expansion of oil and gas development in the Alaskan Arctic from the people gathered in a large auditorium, the Secretary told the audience (I am paraphrasing from memory): “I have listened to your concerns, but I must follow the President’s mandate to open up the Arctic land and water to oil and gas development.” The conservationists felt hoodwinked that day. To remember the farcical nature of the event, I made a photograph, After the Listening Session. The picture is a group portrait of nine individuals, all of whom have been engaged in protecting signicant biocultural areas in the Alaskan Arctic from industrial exploitation. Historically, environmentalists and Indigenous peoples were not traditional allies, as I will soon explain, nor were the Gwich’in and the Iñupiat peoples of Arctic North America. The photograph After the Listening Session, however, holds all of them together. The picture opens a doorway into what I call-long environmentalism.1
