This one hurt

I have covered many stories about the harms of resource extraction, but this is personal.

My recent collaboration with High Country News is live now, and the topic affected me more than usual. I have done my own research on the history of man camps used for oil pipeline construction in the past and the topic has always weighed heavy on me and is a large factor in my passion to fight these extraction projects. But this coverage hit home. Literally.

As I have been reconnecting with my family and culture and spending more time with my dad, I have also been connecting the dots of how my life has been directly impacted and shaped by the topics I have covered.

Not just the Indian Boarding School history, but also Oil. My father who I have shared about at length, worked as labor on the pipelines in Alaska in the 70s as a young man. This was a part of his life that he never went into detail with me as a child. I knew he worked as an electrician when I was a kid, but I never knew how he got those skills. He does not have fond memories from that time. He saw and heard horrific things, things that made him run from that industry and spend the next 40 years healing from and fighting to stop these harmful extractive projects.

My mom and I left Alaska in the 90’s for a few reasons, but among them was the fact that I was not safe in the village. Children were being harmed.

MMIP and the fight against fossil fuel extraction will forever be linked.

And it is imperative that you understand this dynamic in your climate action work.