Grandmothers Growing Goodness Launches New TV, Digital Ad Campaign Thanking Biden For Strengthening Protections for America’s Arctic

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 1, 2024

(Nuiqsut, Alaska) – Today, Grandmothers Growing Goodness launched a new TV and digital ad campaign thanking the Biden administration for announcing unprecedented safeguards to strengthen protections for lands and Alaska Native communities in Alaska’s Western Arctic. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) announced new protections for 13 million acres of America’s Western Arctic, taking a historic step forward to protect and sustain Native Communities, sacred lands, and wildlife in the Western Arctic from oil and gas development. These lands are home to Indigenous communities who live a subsistence lifestyle in harmony with one of America’s largest caribou herds.

A 30 second television spot, featuring the Founder of Grandmothers Growing Goodness, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, will be broadcast on MSNBC and CNN during the week of May 6th. The TV ad will also be accompanied by programmatic digital ads across Washington DC, which launched today.

“We depend upon our lands and waters to feed our families, so it’s important to protect these areas for us, our health and safety, and the importance of our traditions and cultures. President Biden has taken action on making improvements to the regulations that will make a difference, and it will be an improvement to our communities,” Rosemary states in the video. 

President Biden is the first President in history to take action to protect America’s Western Arctic and limit the threats to one of our country's last and most expansive and thriving, biologically-diverse landscapes. By establishing standards for protecting designated Special Areas, which are particularly important for wildlife habitat and subsistence activities, these unprecedented safeguards would help enable our native communities to continue the hunting, gathering and long-standing cultural traditions we depend on. The protections prioritize and incorporate Indigenous Knowledge in the management of the area, along with genuine co-stewardship with our people who have developed deep relationships with the lands since time immemorial.

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Grandmothers Growing Goodness is an Inupiat group dedicated to elevating the understanding and protection of Inupiat culture and people in the face of rampant oil and gas development and climate change. Its core purpose is to help support equity for communities facing significant environmental justice threats and to strengthen equity for the Inupiat.