The Biden administration’s approval this week of Alaska’s largest oil drilling project in decades promises to widen the divide between Indigenous people in the state, with some saying oil money cannot counter the damage caused by climate change, and others defending the project as economic essential.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions built over the years of debate over ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow Project.

Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope celebrated the project’s approval, citing new jobs and an influx of money for schools, other public services and infrastructure investments in isolated villages. Just a few decades ago, many villages didn’t have running water, says Doreen Leavitt, director of natural resources for the Arctic Slope’s Inupiat community. Housing shortages remain a problem, with generations often living together in the same house, she said.

We still have a long way to go. We don’t want to go backwards, Leavitt said.

She said 50 years of oil production on the petroleum-rich North Slope has shown that development can coexist with wildlife and the traditional subsistence way of life.

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But some Alaskans have disapproved of the decision to give the project a green light, and they are backed by environmental groups who are challenging the approval in federal court.

The bitterness was underlined in a letter written this month by three leaders of the Nuiqsut community, who described their remote village as ground zero for the industrialization of the Arctic. They addressed the letter to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Indian to lead a cabinet department.

The letter mentioned the threat climate change poses to caribou migrations and their ability to travel through once-frozen areas. Money from the ConocoPhillips project will not be enough to mitigate those threats, they said. The community is approximately 36 miles from the Willow Project.

They are payoffs for the loss of our health and culture, the Nuiqsut leaders wrote. No dollar can replace what we risk. … It’s a matter of survival.

But Asisaun Toovak, the mayor of Utqiagvik, the country’s northernmost community on the Arctic Ocean, said she jumped for joy when she heard the Biden administration had approved the Willow project. The majority of our community and the majority of people were excited, she said.

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Willow is in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, a vast area on the North Slope about the size of Maine. It would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil per day, which if used would result in at least 263 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years, according to a federal environmental study.

Sovereign Iupiat for a Living Arctic, the Sierra Club and other groups suing Tuesday said Interior Ministry officials ignored the fact that every ton of greenhouse gas emitted by the project would contribute to sea melting. ice, which would endanger polar bears and villages. A second lawsuit to block the project was filed Wednesday by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

It will take discussions among Alaska Natives to reconcile the issue.

We just keep trying to sit down together, break bread and meet as a region, said Leavitt, who serves as secretary of the tribal council representing eight North Slope villages. I will say that the majority of the voices we heard against Willow came from the Lower 48.

ConocoPhillips Alaska said the $8 billion project would create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 over the long term, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and other revenue to be split between the federal and state governments.

Willow has enjoyed widespread support among Alaska lawmakers. The state’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers this month to make their case for the project, and Indigenous lawmakers also met with Haaland to push for support.

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Haaland visited the North Slope last spring hours after State Representative Josiah Patkotak, a co-captain with his brother on their father’s whaling crew, harvested a 40-ton bowhead whale and dragged it for hours on the ice near Utqiagvik. He left the ice around 7 am to meet Haaland two hours later.

For him, the juxtaposition of activities underscored the dual lives of Native people on the North Slope and highlighted the choices communities make every day to survive.

That’s the road our leaders need to walk, said Patkotak, a political independent who supported Willow. We maintain our culture and our lifestyle and our livelihood, where we are one with the land and the animals, and for the next hour you may have to behave, you know, in a way that you’re playing the game of the western world.

Patkotak invited Haaland to view the whale they harvested, but when he couldn’t provide a street name, her security team wouldn’t allow it.

Well, it’s on the ice; there are no street names, he said.

Patkotak met with Haaland again this month in Washington, where he invited government officials to visit Utqiagvik because it was our duty to tell our story so we could find that balance of both worlds.

That’s a reality for us, he said.

Thiessen reported from Anchorage and Brown from Billings, Mont.