George N. Ahmaogak, Jr., Mayor

The North Slope Borough is the farthest-north municipal government in the United States, and home to one of the largest Eskimo populations in the world.

Over 6,500 residents live in eight villages scattered across 89,000 square miles of land - all above the Arctic Circle - ranging from Point Hope near the international date line, to Kakatovik by the Canadian border, to Anakvuvik Pass, just above the Brook s Range.

The people of the Arctic have an ageless tradition of relying on the land and the sea to provide for themselves. Our whalers and hunters make maximum use of our few resources, always taking care not to harm the land so their grandchildren may in turn carr y on their culture.

In the 20th century, however, our ability to practice self-reliance came under increasing pressure as the outside world pressed in. Explorers, traders and settlers replaced our subsistence economy with a cash-based system, and expoited the whale, fur, and ivory resources of our land.

With the discovery of oil in our land in 1968, and the establishment of the North Slope Borough as a home rule borough in 1972, we regained the ability to monitor the use of our resources, and safeguard them for the use of all.

From modest beginnings, the North Slope Borough has developed into a modern municipal system responsible for more territory than any oter local government in the nation, and providing services never before available in the Arctic.

The Borough School District provides vocational and academic education for young and old alike. Borough health clinics provide modern medical services to residents of even the smallest villages. The Borough Municipal Services Department operates water, se wage, and electric utilities, plows roads and runways, maintains sanitary landfills and provides bus service. Other boroiugh units provide rescue, and other services.

These benefits of modern American civilization, common to the rest of the nation, have been built on the foundation of the North Slope oil industry.

Seventy-one percent of our annual revenues are generated by property taxes on oil field equipment and installations. Over 63 percent of our workforce is employed by the Borough, and much of the remaining workforce either works directly for the oil industr y, or indirectly by providing contractual services.

As Mayor, I can state unequivocally that the people of the North Slope Borough enthusiastically support the presence of the oil industry in our land. This support extends to exploration and development in the Coastal Plain of ANWR. North Slope oil has alr eady provided immense benefits to our people and to our country. We should continue our successful policy of prudently developing our natural resources.

The wisdom of our Elders teaches us the value of hunting where game is most plentiful. Likewise, it makes sense for our nation to seek oil in an area that even the U.S. Secretary of the Interior has identified as the country's best prospect for new petrol eum deposits.

Some Americans have voiced concerns that the Coastal Plain of ANWR is a pristine wilderness that should be closed off forever to human activity. But this is no unpopulated, untouched wilderness. It is our home. We have lived on the North Slope for thousan ds of years, and we will remain here.

Unlike most Americans, we do not have the option of working in our choice of several different industries. Well-meaning Americans crusading against the Coastal Plain development would deny us our only opportunity for jobs - jobs providing a comfortable st andard of living for the first time in our history.

Our people have an ageless respect and concern for our land. With centuries of persepective, we know that the oil will someday be gone. We share a determination to protect our land, and the traditional subsistnece lifestyle it supports, for the benefit of future generations.

We also have a clear-eyed understanding of the potential hazards of oil field operations. As a modern government we have exercised our regulatory powers to hold the oil industry to strict environmental protection and public health standards.

The results have been an unqualified success. Our fish and wildlife resources are flourishing, and the Central Arctic Caribou Herd, which we share with our Native neighbors to the south, has grown from 3,000 in 1972 to 23,000 today. Many residents with full-time jobs use their vacations to gather subsistence food not far from their worksites.

As Native people, we have always had to fight for self-detemination. Self-determination was at the heart of the land claims settlement, and is central to the issue of ANWR as well. As the people whose lives will be most impacted by oil development in ANWR , we believe our desires and the evidence of our own experience should prevail.

The past 20 years have enabled the North Slope Borough to help irts residents enjoy a life which, while common to our countrymaen, have long been denied to us. As Prudhoe Bay oil production declines, we fear this new life could disappear as fast as the Ar ctic summer, leaving residents on the North Slope once gain out in the cold.

We in the North Slope Borough see oil development in the Coastal Plain ofANWR as our only opportunity to continue building on the achievements of the past 20 years, and to keep pursuing the American dream of living and working in the land of our ancestors .