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The Biden administration has given the greenlight to the Willow project, one of the largest oil and gas developments in Alaska in years, estimated to produce 180,000 barrels of oil a day at its peak.
Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA reports.
The project has been scaled down from ConocoPhillips’ original proposal and continues to face intense opposition from environmental groups.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) gave credit to Alaska Native groups for helping to push the project over the finish line.
“Alaska Native people, those who live and work and raise their families up in, in the area. The strong support from, from unions.”
U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola (Yup’ik/D-AK), the lone Democrat in Alaska’s congressional delegation, says it was a bipartisan effort and an example of what can be done when Alaskans unite for a common cause.
“I’d like to thank the president and his administration for really listening to the voices of Alaskans, when it mattered the most. And I’d also like to thank my Democratic colleagues, who really helped to push for meetings with the White House and who listened to the voices of Alaskan Native leaders, who told them about how unique Alaska is and how important this project is for our future.”
Not all Alaska Natives were happy with the decision.
In Nuiqsut, the community closest to the Willow project, there’s been division over the project.
Eunice Brower, who works for the tribe, believes oil and gas development in the region has already caused air pollution and health problems like asthma.
“They’re not taking that into consideration, as to how much they’re impacting the health of the people that live there.”
Brower says there are also worries that oil and gas production will introduce toxins into the environment, which can lead to higher cancer rates.
Willow will bring miles of new roads and pipelines, as well as 200 oil wells that will forever change the landscape.
Environmental groups have called Willow a “climate bomb” that will potentially release tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and accelerate climate change.
Disclosure: ConocoPhillips is an underwriter of KNBA
A Guatemalan forensic anthropologist who’s worked to exhume and identify the remains of thousands of Maya killed during his country’s bloody civil war is offering to help Indigenous communities in Canada, as investigations are underway of unmarked graves at former Indian residential schools.
Maria Martin has more.
“Guatemala is recovering from a 36-year-long armed conflict…what we have as a result is 200 thousand civilian victims.”
Forensic anthropologist Freddy Peccerelli says Guatemala’s still in the process of dealing with the impact of a war that ended some 25 years ago, and whose victims were largely Indigenous Maya, many whom have yet to be identified.
“The missing, the ones we are still looking for today…we call them the desaparecidos.”
Peccerelli has spent more than two decades helping Maya families identify the remains of thousands of bodies of the so-called “disappeared” using DNA tests. He’s offered that expertise to Canada’s First Nations so they can develop their own forensic capacity.
Peccerelli says that in both countries what the families of those buried in unmarked graves and cemeteries want is the truth.
“Now the families they want information, they want to know what happened, they want the bodies of their loved ones, but most of all they want you to know that their loved ones did nothing wrong.”
Peccerelli heads up the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala.
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