"Most of the public debate on whether to open the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil development has focussed on the changes such development may bring to the quality of the environment. In most people's minds, however, that environment consists of vast stretches of tundra and thousands of migrating caribou. Man is there also. One-hundred eighty-six Inupiat Eskimo live in Kaktovik, and 243 Athabascan Indians live in the villages of Arctic Village and Venetie .... While small in number, these people depend heavily on wildlife resources such as the caribou. In Kaktovik, for example, caribou contribute between 10 and 25 percent of the total (including purchased) meat and fish eaten (Pederson, 1990). Residents of Arctic Village, located in the southern foothills of the Brooks Range, annually harvest upwards of five caribou per capita. Why should we be interested in the fate of fewer than 500 people? In part because the U.S. government serves as a trustee for the interests of Native Americans; in part because these residents of the Arctic represent a small but significant part of the 200,000 northern natives peoples worldwide - many of whom have experienced remote resource developments; and finally, in part because Arctic residents are also instruments of change. We need to ask if resource developments have set in motion changes in human behavior which have had their own environmental consequences. As America faces the question of whether to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the scientific community has an opportunity to bring the experience with a decade of resource development to bear on the question of how resource development, environmental quality and man are related. Previously published analyses of the experience of the Alaska North Slope Inupiat Eskimo with the massive Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk oil field developments have concluded that for the most part the experience has been positive ..... This conclusion stands in marked contrast to the generally grim experiences of indigenous peoples with mining developments worldwide .... The North Slope experience would thus seem to offer an excellent comparative case. Before embarking on such a comparison, however, I first revisit the question of whether the North Slope story has indeed been as positive as generally portrayed. In the decade since the first studies were made, do the Inupiat still constitute a majority of the region's population? Are they continuing their subsistence lifestyle? Have Inupiat residents experienced real improvements in education, income, and housing? Have they experienced higher levels of social disruption? Have the Inupiat placed excessive pressures on wildlife resource populations? These are some of the questions it seems appropriate to ask before attempting to account for a successful experience with mining activity"--Leaf 1.