US Army Corps meets with Native Village of Solomon
The Native Village of Solomon hosted a delegation from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at its office in Nome on Friday evening for a government-to-government consultation.
The tribe had requested the meeting in response to the Corps’ reconsideration of a controversial project to mine in Safety Sound and Bonanza Channel that has been proposed by a Nevada-based company called IPOP.
“We just wanted to make sure that we understood what this process was and for them to hear who we were, as the closest impacted Native community to the location of the mining application,” said Deilah Johnson, the tribe’s environmental coordinator.
The meeting had been initially scheduled for November but had to be postponed when flights into Nome were cancelled due to weather. Another cancellation was looking probable as the region was under blizzard conditions for much of the last week, but both Alaska Airlines flights from Anchorage made it to Nome on Friday.
After the closed-door meeting, the Nugget observed brief public remarks from both parties.
“I feel the passion and the love for your land,” said Brigadier General Kirk Gibbs, commander of the Pacific Ocean Division. “Thank you so much for sharing your culture with us. That means a lot. We take our federal trust responsibilities so seriously. This has been very helpful.”
In 2022, the Corps’ Alaska District had denied IPOP a permit to suction dredge gold near Solomon. IPOP’s project would have impacted 192.5 acres of vegetated shallows and mudflats in a fragile estuary environment. The district determined that the project did not present the least environmentally damaging alternative, would impact subsistence opportunities and did not include substantive information or coherent plans.
But last year, the Corps’ Pacific Ocean Division vacated this denial after IPOP appealed the decision.
Gibbs wrote in a memo about that decision that “the appearance of bias” was concerning. IPOP had alleged that the Alaska District had shown bias against them in support of Alaska Native entities. The Pacific Ocean Division is now reviewing the permit application but did not reopen public comments as part of the process. Susan Y. Lee, a spokesperson for the division, said that there was still no public timeline to share about the next stages of the review.
“We happen to be the tribe in the affected area, so we feel responsible,” said Native Village of Solomon President Kirsten Timbers. “We have a responsibility to have this consultation not only for us, but for the other hundreds of people that utilize this land, and in our culture that’s just something that is valued and shared among all of our Native people.”
Kawerak Staff Attorney Sigvanna (Meghan) Tapqaq was also present and told the Corps members about the meaning of the word Inupiaq, which literally translates to “real people.”
“The way that I view us being real is by being out on the land, having that relationship to the animals, the environment, eating the food that comes from it,” Tapqaq said. “And in return for the gift that it gives us, we have a responsibility, a reciprocal obligation to be good stewards of it. Even though I’m not a tribal citizen of Solomon, I benefit hugely from the advocacy that they’re doing and from being on those lands and being able to participate in subsistence activities that help make me a real person.”