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ELIM, Alaska—Roughly 120 miles south of the Arctic Circle, this Inupiaq village stands between mountains and the slate-gray waters of Norton Bay. Children yelp and skip through the streets, and residents race down open roads on ATVs. Elim is known as a checkpoint during the Iditarod, not a destination for tourists and cruise ships.

Recently, however, the village has become noteworthy for something beneath the surface: Just 30 miles up the Tubutulik River lies Alaska’s largest known uranium deposit at a 22,400-acre property called the Boulder Creek site. For the people of Elim, that geological wealth is not a promise but a threat to their way of life. The deposit sits near the Tubutulik’s headwaters, where locals harvest fish, forage for berries, and hunt for moose, as they have done for centuries.

ELIM, Alaska—Roughly 120 miles south of the Arctic Circle, this Inupiaq village stands between mountains and the slate-gray waters of Norton Bay. Children yelp and skip through the streets, and residents race down open roads on ATVs. Elim is known as a checkpoint during the Iditarod, not a destination for tourists and cruise ships.

Recently, however, the village has become noteworthy for something beneath the surface: Just 30 miles up the Tubutulik River lies Alaska’s largest known uranium deposit at a 22,400-acre property called the Boulder Creek site. For the people of Elim, that geological wealth is not a promise but a threat to their way of life. The deposit sits near the Tubutulik’s headwaters, where locals harvest fish, forage for berries, and hunt for moose, as they have done for centuries.

Uranium, prized for its use in commercial nuclear reactors, naval submarines, and other defense applications, is one of many resources in Alaska that draw interest from the public and private sectors. It has taken on heightened importance in recent years as demand for low-carbon nuclear energy has spiked. Though the United States was once a leading uranium producer, today it supplies only a small share of its own needs and relies heavily on imports. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which underscored vulnerabilities in the global nuclear fuel supply chain, both the Biden and Trump administrations have moved to bolster domestic uranium mining and enrichment capacity. Just last November, uranium was reinstated on the U.S. government’s official list of critical minerals.

But far from Washington, those national priorities are raising alarms in the communities closest to where new mining activity could occur. Even exploratory drilling, Elim residents warn, could contaminate the wildlife that sustains the village. “If they did away with subsistence, we’d starve,” said Emily Murray, vice president of the Norton Bay Watershed Council.

Amid President Donald Trump’s aggressive push to shore up the U.S. critical mineral supply—backed by new executive orders, overturned environmental protections, and a fast-tracked federal permitting regime—Elim has become a test case for just how far Washington is willing to go, and how much Native communities stand to lose.

Murray has been fighting this battle against encroaching mining operations for the better part of two decades. It started in the summer of 2005, when Canadian mining company Triex Minerals began exploration for uranium drilling at Boulder Creek.

Alarmed by the potential risks, villagers organized protests, letters, and campaigns aimed at state officials. This effort included a........

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