Arctic Alaska Wilderness Week in the Upper Valley & UVM

February 15 – 22, 2015

Co-Sponsored by:  Upper Valley Sierra Club,

University of Vermont’s Canadian Studies Program, Environmental Program, History Department and Center for Cultural Pluralism

Friday, February 20^th

University of Vermont

Burlington, VT

Benedict Auditorium (235 Marsh Life Science building) UVM

https://www.uvm.edu/admissions/undergraduate/why/location/?Page=online_tour/onlinetour.php&cat=academic_admin&building=marsh&SM=online_toursubmenu.html

5:30 pm
“Oil, Caribou and Traditional Native Life”

Free and Open to the Public

Meet David Solomon, a Gwich’in Athabaskan native from Fort Yukon, Alaska. Learn about village life above the Arctic Circle and his people’s history and struggles to protect “The Sacred Place Where Life Begins” – the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – from oil drilling.

The Gwich’in are the northernmost Indian Nation living in fifteen small villages scattered across a vast area extending from northeast Alaska in the U.S. to the northern Yukon and Northwest Territories in Canada.

The word “Gwich’in” means “people of the land,” and it refers to a people who have lived in the region since before the U.S. and Canada existed.  Today, the Gwich’in homelands span both countries.  Oral tradition indicates the Gwich’in have occupied this area since time immemorial, or, according to conventional belief, as long as 20,000 years.

For information on the entire week’s schedule, see this site about earlier events taking place in the Hanover, NH area:   https://www.alaskawild.org/get-involved/events/