Interdisciplinary Studies 400-B: ST: How an Alaska Native Community Protected its Land, Salmon Fishery, and Culture from the Dirty Side of Clean Energy

The world's electrification transformation is energizing a dynamic global paradox: what matters more, the land, water, people, plants, and cultures above, or the minerals below? The competing goals of speedy renewable energy development versus protection of the landscape are particular heightened on Indigenous lands where, in the United States, the history of energy development and First Nations is marked by exploitation with tragic examples such as the Osage murders of the 1920s, lung cancer among Navajo uranium mine workers, or the construction of dams that obliterated myriad ancestral fishing grounds and viewsheds of significant cultural and historic Indigenous significance. These tensions have been emphatically observed at the proposed development site at the Pebble Mine Project in Alaska - a subject of intense controversy for years between its vast undeveloped reserves of copper, gold, and molybdenum, and its potential environmental impacts on Bristol Bay, one of the world's most productive salmon fisheries - and a case emblematic of a new, global dependence on rare metals, the global race for access to them, and the paradox of clean energy's environmental impact. Using the Pebble Mine project and its ramifications for the global rare earths debate to illuminate the complexities inherent in the pursuit of sustainability, this course will investigate the complex interplay between critical battery mineral extraction, fisheries sustainability, Indigenous rights, and environmental preservation, and look at how an Alaska Native community in Bristol Bay protected its land, salmon fishery, and culture from a ruinous mining project. Graded Credit/No Credit. Distribution area: none.