Last fall, I traveled more than 4,000 miles from my home in Alaska to meet with major banks and urge them to help protect the Arctic national wildlife refuge from destructive oil drilling and exploration. In all the years I’ve worked to defend this place, we’ve been focused on trying to make our voices heard by leaders in the White House or in Congress, and I never thought I’d be sitting in a conference room on the 43rd floor of Goldman Sachs’ global headquarters in downtown New York, talking about the Arctic refuge.

But times have changed. Since the day Republicans in Congress added a rider to the 2017 tax bill opening up the Arctic refuge’s coastal plain for drilling, we’ve known that we would have to move beyond our usual tactics, get creative and fight on every possible front to ensure that this place, which is sacred to my people and critical to our way of life, remains protected.

The Trump administration has made it clear that they’re willing to pull out all the stops to sell off the coastal plain to oil companies. They’ve rushed through the environmental review process, suppressed concerns from scientists, dismissed Indigenous voices and ignored the fact that the vast majority of Americans do not want to see the Arctic refuge spoiled by drilling.

We know we can’t count on Trump to do the right thing, so it’s more important than ever that we hold financial institutions accountable for their role in helping destroy this sacred place or keeping it intact. Drilling in a place as remote as the Arctic refuge isn’t cheap, and there’s still a chance we can stop it if we cut off the money that would fund it.

In May 2018, we were joined by more than 100 environmental and Indigenous rights groups and a group of institutional investors representing more than $2.5tn in assets in sending letters to oil companies and the banks that fund them urging them not to initiate or support any oil and gas development in the Arctic refuge. Since then, we’ve been taking every opportunity – from speaking out at their public shareholder meetings to sitting down with them one-on-one – to convince them to stand with us.

This week, we saw the result of this effort when Goldman Sachs released an updated energy policy that rules out financing for new oil drilling or exploration in the Arctic and specifically mentions the Arctic refuge.

The Arctic refuge is not just a piece of land with oil underneath. It’s the heart of our people

In doing so, Goldman Sachs joined a growing group of global banks that have ruled out funding for Arctic drilling. More and more, banks are recognizing that investing in a project that would threaten human rights and worsen the climate crisis is an expensive risk that’s not worth taking. The public is watching them more closely than ever before, and if they facilitate the destruction of our homelands, they’ll have the Gwich’in Nation and the millions of Americans who stand with us to answer to.

Now, all eyes are on Chase, Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. Goldman Sachs was the first major American bank to make this commitment, but we hope they will be joined by others.

This week’s news is proof that the tide is turning and we can win the fight to defend the coastal plain. At our last Gwich’in Gathering, our elders reminded us that we come from strong people, who survived some of the coldest, harshest winters. They protected this land for us, and we have the same responsibility to future generations.

The Arctic refuge is not just a piece of land with oil underneath. It’s the heart of our people; our food security, way of life and very survival depends on its protection. Giving up is not an option. So we will continue to be land protectors. We are not activists or environmentalists. We are mothers, fathers and grandparents who understand that we need clean water, healthy animals and healthy land to survive. We are not asking for any money, jobs or schools. We are simply saying that we need to protect these animals that have sustained us for thousands of years.

We will keep fighting in every hearing, every Senate office, every courtroom, to the United Nations, and every corporate boardroom. The Gwich’in Nation will stand up to anyone who seeks to destroy this place, and the fight is far from over.