Nathan Gordon: After a historic lease sale, the real work begins for Kaktovik

By NATHAN GORDON JR.

July 29, 2026 – In June, the Bureau of Land Management held the first lease sale on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s (ANWR) Coastal Plain, an important milestone that the elected leaders of Kaktovik have worked toward for decades. For us, this was more than a resource development lease sale—it represented a meaningful step forward for Indigenous self-determination and a stronger future for the Kaktovikmiut, the lone people who call ANWR home.

Kaktovik is the only community located within ANWR’s 19.2-million-acre expanse. We have stewarded our lands since time immemorial, and we are ubiquitous to ANWR and the decisions made about its future. We care for the region’s wildlife resources because they sustain our community and our Indigenous subsistence practices that form the bedrock of our Iñupiaq identity. But despite this clear and obvious connection to the area, Kaktovik has been treated as an obstacle rather than an important constituency.

To start, our community had already been forcibly relocated three times by the federal government, including the physical destruction of our village. ANWR was created in 1980 without consulting Kaktovik. The refuge was placed on top of our community, cutting us off from traditional hunting grounds and foreclosing much-needed economic development opportunities to secure Kaktovik’s future.

For years, we watched outside voices — individuals and groups not from within ANWR — dominate the policy conversation about our homelands. But we persisted in our shared effort to realize widely supported development opportunities on ANWR’s Coastal Plain. For us, this was and still is an existential issue.

The June 5 lease sale is an important moment in our historical arc. It is the result of sustained advocacy by Kaktovik’s elected leadership and by our partners across the North Slope to ensure our voices are heard in Washington. In congressional testimonies and visits to our nation’s capital, we made clear that the Kaktovikmiut exist and have a right to determine the future of our own homelands.

We also dispelled the myth that development opportunities on ANWR’s Coastal Plain threaten our subsistence way of life. This false dichotomy, pushed by those who have no connection to our lands or communities, pits economic growth against our Indigenous traditions. But we know that our traditions and responsible resource development can, and do, coexist, as they have for over 50 years.

Perhaps more important is the fact that development in coordination with the local people on our homelands strengthens our Indigenous traditions. More than 95% of the North Slope Borough’s tax revenue is derived from taxation of resource development infrastructure, not production, but infrastructure. Those revenues fund access to and the monitoring and management of our subsistence resources, thereby sustaining one of our most important Iñupiaq traditions.

Responsible development does not undermine our subsistence traditions. For Kaktovik and communities across the North Slope, it makes them possible.

The lease sale is a beginning, not an end. Three more sales are mandated by law in the years ahead. The work of ensuring that Kaktovik’s voice remains central to that process , and to every federal decision affecting our homelands, continues.

Our future should be shaped by the people who live here. That is what self-determination means. On June 5, Kaktovik’s vision of a future shaped by our own hands moved one step closer to becoming a reality.

Nathan Gordon Jr. is the mayor of the City of Kaktovik, Alaska.