Signs of subsistence: Caribou jawbones and fuel containers decorate Robert Thompson's porch in Kaktovik. PHOTO By MICHAEL PENN

A polar bear skull, a whale shoulder blade, caribou jaws and musk-oxen hides are intermingled with tools and traps.

"It's a good life because we have fresh food all the time," said Marie Rexford, a Kaktovik artist and mother of six.

In Arctic Village, antlers are everywhere. Some even were mounted on the roof of the community washeteria in a ceremony to celebrate installment of solar panels.

During a special gathering in Arctic Village in June, hundreds of people shared the subsistence harvest, including moose, duck, caribou and salmon. Village Chief Evon Peter said it's a sacrifice to take time off to discuss political issues.

"I'd prefer to be up in these mountains, hiking around," he said.

Small, remote communities such as these, known in Alaska as "the bush," are struggling to balance traditional hunting and gathering activities with the encroachment of technology and mainstream American values. Duality is everywhere: Young Gwich'in Athabascan Indians perform a "caribou dance" in traditional garb, with tennis shoes and jeans sticking out underneath. Diesel-generated electricity powers TVs, VCRs and computers in houses that lack running water. Whereas hunting once was done by dogsled, villagers today ride snowmobiles and carry rifles.

Tool for survival: Kaktovik whaling captain Charlie Brower displays the harpoon he uses when his village goes after its quota of three bowhead whales in the fall. Kaktovik is next to the Beaufort Sea and within the northern boundaries of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. PHOTO By MICHAEL PENN

Villagers now import about 50 percent of the food they consume, but subsistence, as a concept, remains intact, Dinero said. "It's not just about food. It's about a way of life."

As the bush struggles with how much capitalism it should accommodate, tensions have grown between urban and rural areas of the state. The battleground is often subsistence. And it's a political minefield.

Subsistence refers to the ongoing harvesting of game and fish for personal or community use, an integral part of traditional Native culture and spirituality in rural Alaska.

Federal law has established a rural subsistence priority on federal lands and navigable waters in times of shortage, conflicting with the state constitution's guarantee that citizens have equal access to state resources. With the state Legislature unwilling to put a constitutional amendment before voters that would echo the federal law, the federal government has stepped in to enforce the rural priority.

Alaska's push for statehood in the 1950s largely was motivated by a desire for local control of fish and game management. The intervention by the federal government, which favors one "class" of people over another, has trampled on state sovereignty, says state Sen. Robin Taylor, a Republican from Southeast Alaska. "No other state in the nation faces this."

Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles is caught in a political vice: Native groups are demanding that he drop a court case concerning federal fisheries management, while Taylor and others are discussing impeachment if he does.

In this climate, it's no surprise that the environmental debate about the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has focused on whether oil exploration will change the migratory path of the Porcupine caribou herd or increase herd mortality, thereby reducing a staple of the subsistence diet for Natives living near ANWR.

However the subsistence court case ultimately is resolved, that issue will live on.

Feeding a village: Townspeople and visitors to the Gwich'in Gathering 2001 in Arctic Village make their way through the food line during the final eveningšs feast of caribou, moose, king salmon and duck. PHOTO By MICHAEL PENN

No road leads to either Arctic Village, located just south of the refuge boundary, or Kaktovik, an island community off the arctic coast 150 miles to the north. As a result, air travel is critical and expensive. A round trip to Fairbanks from Arctic Village costs $290; from Kaktovik, more than twice that.

The cost of everything jumps as a result of the air fare. In Kaktovik, wilderness guide Thompson says he has paid $14 for a gallon of milk.

Settled in the 20th century by people who were historically nomadic, both Kaktovik and Arctic Village lack conventional economies. In Arctic Village, there are two grocery stores but no other regular businesses.

The military's Distant Early Warning radar site was once a key employer in Kaktovik, but the system now is automated. Native corporations and the North Slope Borough provide some work, most recently with a borough water and sewer project that for most residents will mean their first flush toilets. Tourism is just beginning to develop: Korean-born ex-postmaster Harris Yang has opened a bed-and-breakfast. But residents still think the economy needs a boost.

Arctic Village and Kaktovik residents took different approaches to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which gave the state's aboriginal people nearly $1 billion and 44 million acres of land. By ending legal claims about land ownership, ANCSA (commonly known as "ank-sa") cleared the way for construction of the 800-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.

The North Slope Inupiats, which some call Eskimos, were reluctant to go for the deal because they already were laying claim to the Prudhoe Bay area, site of the largest oil discovery in North America.

"Out of the goodness of their heart," the Inupiats "gave up a lot for the entire population of Native people of Alaska," said Karl Francis, a mayoral aide in Kaktovik who is not a Native.

Even so, they are considered comparably well-off, with subsidized housing and heating fuel.

In Arctic Village, where there is no tax base, the tribal government elected not to participate in the cash and federal land selections offered under ANCSA, instead taking title to its traditional lands. As a result, Arctic Village didn't get a nest egg to start profit-making activities through a village corporation.

Today, there is little talk of local economic development in Arctic Village. And Venetie Second Chief Gideon James is bitter about the Legislature's allocation of state tax dollars, saying the Arctic Village school should have been replaced by now. "I'm ashamed to be in the state of Alaska," he shouts at a reporter.

Leaders of Kaktovik and Arctic Village say there's little interaction between them; there are no regularly scheduled flights between the villages. Their paths sometimes cross in Washington, D.C., but there have been no negotiations on the ANWR issue.

Moose uses: Ruth Nikolai of Arctic Village cuts the hide, tendons and bone marrow from moose legs. The trimmings were added to the dinner soup during the Gwich'in Gathering 2001 in Arctic Village. The hide will be used for winter footwear called mukluks. PHOTO By MICHAEL PENN

There are four caribou herds in arctic Alaska, of which the Porcupine is the second largest. It had 129,000 animals as of 1998, a decline from 178,000 in the modern peak year of 1989. Population variations in caribou aren't fully understood, said Matthew Cronin, an Anchorage geneticist.

Fran Mauer, a federal wildlife biologist, said he thinks there would be some effect of oil drilling on the Porcupine herd. "There's probably some degree of mitigation that can be achieved," he added. Part of the political debate concerns whether ANWR's coastal plain contains the "core calving ground" of the Porcupine herd. For two years in a row, the herd has calved entirely in Canada.

But that's unprecedented in the past 30 years, Mauer said. Deep snow slowed the herd so that it didn't reach Alaska by the calving, which almost always begins during the first week of June, regardless of location.

But the herd continued on to the coastal plain after the calving, which it always has done, said Steve Arthur, state caribou biologist.

Arthur defines the core calving area as the Jago River south of Kaktovik. The greatest concentration of calving has taken place on the Alaska side of the border in recent history, except in 1987, 2000 and 2001.

In Arctic Village and other Gwich'in communities in Alaska and Canada, caribou generally are harvested in the fall. The annual harvest has been estimated at 3,000 to 5,000 animals, or 2-3 percent of the herd. A 1995 Canadian survey found that an average household in Old Crow, Yukon Territory, consumed caribou almost 250 times a year.

"We are the natural scientists and biologists of that herd," said Faith Gemmill, a Fairbanks-based staff member for the Gwich'in Steering Committee, an Athabascan political advocacy group. "We've lived with that herd for thousands of years. ... Congress should respect our knowledge about this herd and trust our wisdom on this issue. ... They're not going to give birth in an oil field."

The Gwich'ins, both in Canada and Alaska, are accused of hypocrisy. They looked for oil on the Venetie reservation in Alaska in the 1970s. And in Canada, they stand to benefit from oil and gas exploration in the Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories.

But Gemmill said Gwich'ins never opposed all fossil fuel production. As for the Venetie exploration, she said, that was south of Arctic Village "in an area that the caribou don't migrate through."