Return to Ekeunick’s Time: Defending Waters and Tradition in the Arctic

Few books published to date comprehensively analyzes how at statehood Alaska served as a leader in creating and enforcing environmental policy and how these early policies, together with the emerging activism of Alaska Native communities, played a part in the birth of the nationwide environmental movement. The book also addresses how the powerful extraction industry subsequently shaped the management of water and subsistence resources (as championed in particular by the Trump administration conservative and state politicians). After a campaign led by industrial interests and the republican party to discredit the environmental movement, today Democratic and tribal leaders and everyday citizen are working to limit the impacts of extraction interests. At the same time Alaska Tribes are boosting the role of traditional knowledge, rights of the river, and tribal self-determination movements in protecting water and subsistence resources.