One of the most surprising books I read for college was The Firecracker Boys by Dan O'Neill. It details Project Chariot, the 1958 plan initiated by Edward Teller to detonate multiple nuclear bombs on Alaska's North Slope. The plan was to create a year-round open harbor to be used by tankers for extracting oil (it is always about oil, isn't it?). The plan was hailed by the state of Alaska which saw enormous earning potential from the oil and the University of AK which received $100,000 for research assisting Chariot. The federal government was also, obviously, onboard with the plan. The reason it did not happen, and what O'Neill details so impressively, is because of the combined efforts of a group of Alaska Natives in the villages nearest the proposed detonation sites, a small environmental group who was concerned about the impact of radiation in lichen across the slope which would then be eaten by caribou and move up the food chain from there, and two UAF scientists who put their careers on the line - and lost their university jobs - to tell the true risks of Chariot.

Right now you need to pause and wrap your head around this. The US government was going to purposely detonate six nuclear bombs on US soil solely to make transportation of oil easier. Teller swore that he could contain the bomb blasts to the smallest footprint imaginable and further, the Atomic Energy Commission and others claimed that radioactive contamination of the region would be minimal. Documents reveal that they lied about all of this, and they thought because the only ones to be affected were Alaskan Natives, their lies would not matter.

The people of of the small Inupiat village of Point Hope fought back. They organized and wrote letters and when the Alaska Conservation Society (all of 200 members) joined in, they reached out to environmentalists across the country who began to take notice. (You can read much more about everyone's efforts between 1958 and 1962 here.) When the UAF scientists asked the ACS to help put together a 30 page document refuting Chariot's claims, everyone pitched in and through its publication the country began to realize the dangers that nuclear detonation presented to Alaska. Chariot was stopped. (It should be noted however that the project has never been formally canceled.)

The grassroots efforts from fighting Project Chariot had multiple long term impacts. Primarily it is considered the first major act of the environmentalist movement. It brought together groups who spent the decades since coordinating multiple actions against private and public interests across the US and around the world who endangered the environment. For Alaskan history, the larger impact was the formation of the Native Rights Movement. It was in the battle against Chariot that Alaska Natives realized they could have a voice in decisions affecting their land and way of life. The culmination of this movement's work was the early 1970s Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in which aboriginal land claims in AK were settled and the way was cleared for development of North Slope oil fields.

The Firecracker Boys has stayed with me for more than a decade partly because I have never talked to anyone, other than Alaskans, who had any idea that the US government had ever even considered such a wild idea. It is not a part of history up there that has gone away - a few years ago when William Wood, the president of UAF during Chariot, died and the state wanted to rename the Fairbanks airport in his honor, there was a huge surge of protest, primarily because he had fired and subsequently sought to destroy the careers of the two scientists who publicized Chariot's risks and the bad science that was being used to support it. (One of those scientists actually moved to Canada to find work where he had a distinguished career.) The renaming plan was scrapped in the face of Wood's very dirty laundry.

As to why I'm thinking so much about the book today, well, one thing that has really bothered me recently is Governor Sarah Palin's stump speeches (and her convention speech) and the disparaging way she mentions community organizers. This is a dig at Sen. Obama who worked as an organizer for three years when he first graduated from college (and before he went to Harvard Law School). Palin's repeated comment:

"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities."

The irony that someone from Alaska would say this is beyond my comprehension. In just this one instance, it was community organizing that prevented the detonation of six nuclear bombs in AK, started the environmental movement and initiated the organization of the Alaska Natives. Segregation was common in AK prior to this period - from stores with "No Natives Allowed" signs to the famous instance at the Nome movie house where Natives had to sit on one side and non Natives would sit on the other. (This was broken during WWII when a Native teen and her military boyfriend refused to be split up.) During Project Chariot, community organizers brought together a wide coalition of religious leaders, Native leaders, environmentalists and academics and together they fought the federal government and prevented an environmental catastrophe and long term human tragedy.

As an Alaskan, Governor Palin should know better; such snark really has no place in our state's history.