I can’t believe I’m about to write the words that I’m about to write.
Alaska Department of Environmental Commissioner Jason Brune this week sent a BDSM-themed letter to leadership at the Environmental Protection Agency complaining, among many things, that the federal government has made Alaska “the sub to EPA’s Dom.”
Filled with references to puppets, servants, whips, handcuffs and safewords, the letter is a furious response to what Brune frames as a grave slight by the Biden administration over recent work on water protections in and around tribal reservations.
“After over two years of interaction with the Biden EPA, however, EPA’s worldview is clear: EPA gets to play Congress, crafting rules of national applicability and leaving the details to be filled in later,” which is a normal enough way to start this kind of letter before it veers off. It continues, “And the Great State of Alaska? We’re a puppet, a servant, subordinate to EPA. Alaska exists to do EPA’s bidding on EPA’s terms, per EPA’s rules—uninformed by Alaska’s input, experience or policy preferences.”
And then Brune just committed to talking BDSM with the EPA (emphasis original):
“EPA engages with Alaska belatedly or not at all and speaks in the language of threats, mandates, whips and handcuffs—State protections be damned!”
In short? we’re the sub to EPA’s Dom.
Wildly inappropriate.”
The Midnight Sun was provided screenshots of the letter. We’ve reached out to the Department of Environmental Conservation for comment and to get a better copy of it. Because of the technical language and the source, we believe it’s authentic.
The letter is fuming mad about a new proposed regulation that would extend water protections for tribal reservations—of which there is only one in Alaska—to cover tribal lands set aside into trust. A relatively new practice in Alaska, tribes can transfer the title of lands to the federal government for the benefit of the tribe. It’s been a practice that the Dunleavy administration has been adamantly opposed to, reiterating the position in a BDSM-free news release earlier this year that likens land into trust as reservations and argues Alaska Natives’ claims to the land were extinguished with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971.
In the letter, Brune then says it’ll be up to the state of Alaska to deny water protections to Alaska Natives around tribal lands that have been put into trust.
“EPA has now forced Alaska to play bad cop: we must be the ones to inform our Alaska Native residents that no, actually, EPA’s attempt to save tribal waters from Big Bad States does not apply here,” Brune wrote. “Putting us in this position disrespects us, disregards Congress, and signals an alarming lack of awareness and transparency from EPA.”
Then he wraps up with another flurry of BDSM references.
“EPA has perverted the role of partnership into something almost too inappropriate to say out loud,” Brune wrote. “Our only safeword? Sadly: ‘court.’ Now that Sackett has been issued, EPA’s masochistic streak should be satiated. … Going forward, we hope to cultivate a relationship that might one day be described in more wholesome terms.”
The letter
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.
