Mapping the Environment: Contested Physical and Cultural Terrain in the “Far North”

Of all the groups negatively impacted by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, in many ways Alaska Natives were the most devastated. The oil spill.. shook the ... cultural foundations of Native life. Alaska Native subsistence culture is based on an intimate relationship with the environment. Not only does the environment have sacred qualities for Alaska Natives, but their survival depends on the well-being of the ecosystem and the maintenance of cultural norms of subsistence (Gill and Picou, 1997: 168), While Alaska's seven indigenous cultural groups are culturally distinct, its 85,000 Native residents do share a common reverence for the land and sea. Indeed, they see themselves as an integral part of nature. As the quote suggests, Alaska Natives also share cultural norms of subsistence. Since statehood in 1959, subsistence has been at the heart of a cultural divide with Alaska Natives on one side and non-Natives and the State on the other. This ongoing dispute has drawn in the federal government as the trustee for Native subsistence practices. David Case, the foremost expert on Alaska Native laws, maintains that "Actions and events which interfere with subsistence inevitably cut across the whole cloth of Native culture. Understandably, Natives perceive threats to subsistence as threats to their cultural survival..." (1984: 276). Federal legislation in the 1980s generally defined subsistence as encompassing three conceptual elements: (a) continued economic or physical reliance, (b) cultural or social value, and (c) custom or tradition (Case, 1984: 275). In dealing with subsistence issues, the State of Alaska has vacillated between recognizing Native cultural values and invoking values of individualism and common use. In 1989, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the rural subsistence preference discriminated against urban residents. This decision led to a federal takeover of hunting and fishing regulations on federal lands in Alaska (60 percent of the state) in order to protect Native subsistence rights (McBeath and Morehouse, 1994: 113). The subsistence issue and its rural/urban and Native/non-Native split is replicated on most development issues in Alaska, including those on federal lands. Consequently, when the supertanker Exxon Valdez ripped its hull open on Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989, and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil in the pristine waters of Prince William Sound, it became a potent symbol of these disparate ideological interests. The interests at stake included those of multinational oil companies, of a heavily oil-dependent Alaskan state government, of a federal government with military and energy interests in oil, of an American public in love with gas-guzzling automobiles, of environmentalists from conservationists to preservationists, and of culturally distinct Alaska Native groups. Given the centrality of land in these ideological differences, it is useful to think of the "Far North" as sites or places of sharp conflict between those desiring to extract valuable natural resources, those desiring to protect threatened species and land, and those striving to maintain the vitality and integrity of unique human cultures (see Young, 1992, 5). In their analysis of public opinion and media discourses, Gamson and Modigliani suggest that on any policy issue it is appropriate to think of multiple discourses interacting in complex ways (1989: 2-3). As they see it, journalists manage this complexity by producing internally structured packages with up to five framing devices that make sense of events and suggest what is at issue (1989: 2-3). Their framing devices include metaphors, exemplars from the past, catchphrases, depictions, and visual images (1989: 3). while all of these framing devices are of course pertinent to the journalistic packaging of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I have dealt with most of them in previous research' and will here largely restrict my analysis to a particular form of visual imagery. …