By Mollie Busby

On March 27, [2026], cutting firewood to heat my home became illegal. Not because of anything my husband, Sean, or I did, but because the state of Alaska claimed title to 1.4 million acres surrounding our village overnight, and our federal subsistence access vanished with it.

We live in Wiseman, 275 miles north of Fairbanks, above the Arctic Circle. Eleven people live here year-round. It has been over two months since the initial transfer. They know we can’t legally cut firewood, but they’ve done nothing—and winter is coming.

The state claimed title without creating a single firewood permit area, a legal access route, or a management plan that allows residents to harvest what they need to survive. Because of the timing, every Wiseman resident also missed the state’s moose draw deadline. Applications closed December 15, three months before any of us knew we’d need one.

Wiseman isn’t just a footnote on a land swap. It has been continuously inhabited for more than 120 years, long before Alaska became a state or Anchorage a city. In the 1930s, conservationist Bob Marshall lived here and wrote that this valley was “the happiest civilization of which I have knowledge.”

Thousands visit every year. Generations before us built a life here without government help. We never expected government incompetence to make that life impossible.

Alaska’s founders wrote this directly into our constitution: Forests and renewable resources must be managed as a public trust, never “subverted through the indifference or avarice of future generations.”

On March 27, indifference and avarice arrived on our doorstep.

This isn’t a bureaucratic mix-up. U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, Governor Mike Dunleavy, and U.S. Representative Nick Begich have worked toward this transfer for decades. Senator Murkowski authored the Alaska Land Transfer Acceleration Act in 2004. Senator Sullivan was pushing for this quarter as Department of Natural Resources Commissioner before he reached the Senate.

In their 38 years of combined federal service, Sullivan promised the land transfer would “facilitate opportunity for Alaskans.” And Murkowski called it an end to being “deprived of crucial opportunities.”

I am an Alaskan who is now deprived of the crucial opportunity of harvesting legal firewood on the land surrounding my village, while my representatives work to facilitate the opportunity for Canadian and Australian mining companies to run a 211-mile industrial haul road through the same landscape. They can bulldoze, but I can’t use my chainsaw to heat my home.

Representative Begich’s office added me to his newsletter instead of returning my calls. Governor Dunleavy vowed to put this corridor to work “for the benefit of all Alaskans,” then expressed genuine surprise at protesters when he, Begich, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum landed in Coldfoot to celebrate last month.

After decades of planning how to profit from this land, not one elected official stopped to ask about the families who actually live here.

Our Constitution is clear: State resources must be managed for the maximum benefit of its people. And natural resource law must apply equally to all Alaskans.

Wiseman deserved a seat at the table. We deserve to be more than an afterthought. Bob Marshall called this village the happiest civilization he had ever known. I wonder what he’d call politicians who block Alaskans from their woodlot.

This needs to be fixed—ideally when it’s not 50 below!

Originally published on Instagram @mollieofthenorth