Shivering Alaskans to Hugo Chavez: Keep your oil
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — In Alaska’s [tag]native villages[/tag], the punishing winter cold is already penetrating the walls of the lightly insulated plywood homes, many of the villagers are desperately poor, and heating-oil prices are among the highest in the nation.And yet a few of the small communities want to refuse free heating [tag]oil[/tag] from Venezuela, on the patriotic principle that no foreigner has the right to call their president “the devil.”
The heating oil is being offered by the [tag]petroleum[/tag] company controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, President Bush’s nemesis. While scores of [tag]Alaska[/tag]’s [tag]Eskimo[/tag] and Indian villages say they have no choice but to accept, others would rather suffer.
“As a citizen of this country, you can have your own opinion of our [tag]president[/tag] and our country. But I don’t want a foreigner coming in here and bashing us,” said Justine Gunderson, administrator for the tribal council in the [tag]Aleut[/tag] village of [tag]Nelson Lagoon[/tag]. “Even though we’re in economically dire straits, it was the right choice to make.”
Nelson Lagoon residents pay more than $5 a gallon for oil — or at least $300 a month per [tag]household[/tag] — to heat their homes along the wind-swept coast of the [tag]Bering Sea[/tag], where temperatures can dip to minus-15. About one-quarter of the 70 villagers are looking for work, in part because Alaska’s [tag]salmon[/tag] [tag]fishing[/tag] industry has been hit hard by competition from fish farms.
The donation to Alaska’s native villages has focused attention on the rampant [tag]poverty[/tag] and high fuel prices in a state that is otherwise awash in oil — and oil profits. In 2005, 86 percent of the Alaska’s general fund, or $2.8 billion, came from oil from the [tag]North Slope[/tag].
[tag]The Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association[/tag], a native [tag]nonprofit[/tag] organization that would have handled the heating oil donation on behalf of 291 households in Nelson Lagoon, Atka, St. Paul and St. George, rejected the offer because of the insults Chavez has hurled at Bush.
Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association
201 East 3rd Avenue
Anchorage, AK 99501
Phone: (907) 276-2700
Fax: (907) 279-4351
E-mail: apiai@apiai.org
CNN