In Interior Alaska, near the Canadian border, a small Alaska Native community called Dot Lake Village sits just off the Alaska Highway. Cradled between the Alaska Range and the Tanana River, it is a tight-knit community whose roughly 180 tribal members live a traditional subsistence life every summer — fishing nearby rivers and lakes and harvesting food for the coming months. Elders who grew up speaking Athabascan and enjoying potlatches overflowing with salmon, berries and moose run culture camps to empower future generations.
This year, however, the community is preparing for the worst — the potentially harmful consequences of a nearby man camp.
The man camp is being constructed to house workers for the Manh Choh project, a new open-pit gold mine located roughly 10 miles from the town of Tok, part of the Trump administration’s agenda to prioritize resource development.
“When we first heard of the man camp, I just had this sinking gut feeling,” said Tracy Charles-Smith, president of the Dot Lake Village Council. “And I reflected long and hard about why I’m feeling this way, and I thought: Of all my friends from the nearby villages, of all my siblings and cousins of my generation, I’m the only one that hasn’t been raped. And that’s a harsh reality.”
Charles-Smith has lived through several waves of resource development in Alaska. She remembered the Fairbanks pipeline boom of the 1970s, which brought job opportunities to her family and others in the community. But it brought other, unwelcome things, too: In the late 1980s, for example, Charles-Smith’s sister worked on the cleanup crew for the Exxon Oil Spill. The area was filled with out-of-state workers who took up temporary residence in man camps. During her time working there, her sister said, she was abducted and taken to a landfill, where two men tried to assault her. She was almost murdered but managed to escape.
Today, Alaska stands on the cusp of another surge of resource development. Projects including the Pikka Oil Project and the Alaska LNG Project are still in the early stages but expected to move forward in the coming years. The LNG Pipeline alone will cost upward of about $46 billion, creating an 807-mile-long pipeline and providing around 10,000 jobs.
Many of the projects had been under discussion for years, and, in some cases, decades. But now they’re among the recently greenlit initiatives in Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, executive order, “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Energy Potential.” And Alaska Native communities are already rallying in response.
ALASKA IN THE 1970S was booming. When construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System began in 1974, about 70,000 workers, most of them male, flooded into the state, turning Fairbanks into a boomtown. The project brought employment opportunities and economic prosperity and helped launch Alaska’s modern oil industry — something many residents welcomed.
Some Alaskans embraced the chaotic boomtown atmosphere, despite reports of prostitution, cash-fueled bar scenes and parties along the construction corridor. In an article for the PBS series American Experience, former Fairbanks Police Officer J.B. Carnahan recalled it as “a circus every night,” fueled by an influx of workers and newcomers with thousands of dollars in cash.
Disorder naturally followed. Within a year, arrests in Fairbanks jumped by 95%, with sharp increases across nearly every major category, according to a 1976 environmental impact statement for the Alaska Natural Gas Transportation System, published by the Federal Power Commission. Sex offenses other than rape rose 90%, while rape increased by 40% and homicide by 50%. Other crimes surged as well: Robbery increased 123%, weapons possession rose by 97%, and prostitution and commercialized vice surged 700% — though some of the increase in arrests was attributed to causes other than the pipeline project, including stricter departmental policies.
Beyond the visible chaos, there were other impacts. Local newspapers from 1974 to 1976 carried a noticeable rise in headlines about girls and women who had disappeared. The stories of murdered and missing women, including Indigenous women, haunted locals.
“We know there was trafficking of women here,” Charles-Smith said. “We know that there were serial killers in the neighborhood (in the region).”
Some of the human-trafficking reports involved Bill Allen, who, in 1968, co-founded Veco Corporation, an oil field services company he oversaw as CEO for the next 40 years. Rumors of sexual assault and trafficking followed him closely. By 2004, the Anchorage Police Department and FBI had begun investigating Allen for multiple allegations of sexual abuse of underage girls. And in 2008, the Anchorage Police Department opened a case alleging that Allen had solicited sex with a minor under the age of 16. The cases exemplify the kind of resource development-related crimes Alaska Native communities are concerned about today.
“We know there was trafficking of women here. We know that there were serial killers in the neighborhood (in the region).”
In 2009, without giving a reason, the Federal Department of Justice suddenly halted the 2008 investigation. In 2016, the state of Alaska then tried — for a second time — to pursue charges against Allen for moving a minor across state lines for sex under the Mann Act, a federal law that criminalizes the transport of any individual with intent to engage in prostitution or in any sexual activity.
In 2014, Paula Roberds, a Yup’ik woman from the village Goodnews Bay who was later identified as the minor in the 2008 case, sued Allen, accusing him of sexual assault and sexual abuse of a minor over a two-year period.
IN 2017, RESEARCH conducted by Loyola University New Orleans looked at trafficking rates in 10 of the cities where the problem was considered most serious. Anchorage ranked highest among the selection of U.S. and Canadian cities that have a Covenant House location, surpassing more-populated places like Los Angeles and New Orleans.
The unique dynamics of a resource boom create conditions ideal for human trafficking. In Alaska, many development projects hire workers using a two-week-on, two-week-off schedule, with most coming from other parts of the state or the Lower 48. Today, roughly 40.5% of oil and gas workers and 44.2% of miners are non-residents, according to a 2026 report released by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Many of them stay in man camps provided by the development companies.
Victoria Sweet, a human-trafficking researcher, identified three characteristics common to high-trafficking areas: large numbers of transient men coming in, rural or remote locations with little law enforcement and vulnerable populations. These were found most often near resource development and near Indigenous communities — places like Alaska.
“While extractive industry development projects are not created to victimize women, violence against women has been the by-product of numerous development projects,” Sweet wrote in a study focused on human trafficking in the Arctic. Most workers stay out of trouble, but the increase in male populations has historically been linked to an increase of violence, including human trafficking.
Sweet goes on to note that the likelihood of violent crime increases when people come in with no allegiance or connection to the community — even if they were law-abiding citizens back home. Their very anonymity can embolden them; with so many men coming and going, individual crimes and offenders become harder to trace. Not all man camps are a threat to nearby communities; many of the camps on Alaska’s North Slope are strictly regulated and constructed miles away from local communities. Some can only be accessed via bush plane. Other camps have thorough security, with only authorized workers permitted on the premises; everyone who comes and goes from the site is closely tracked. Such measures could potentially lower trafficking risks, an industry expert says.
But other man camps are established near roadways that connect to Alaska Native villages, leaving those communities on edge.
THE MAHN CHOH MINE began operating in late 2023. During the permitting process earlier that year, Alaska Native advocates started preparing local communities for the coming influx of workers, most of whom would reside in man camps.
When Charles-Smith first learned about the mine, she began reaching out to tribal leaders near similar camps in neighboring Canada and the Lower 48 and contacting sexual assault prevention coalitions and organization. She read studies that focused on man camps and violence against Native communities.
“There were horrific stories coming out … of Canada in relationship to mining man camps in proximity to tribes,” she said.
The village got to work immediately, establishing a Native-led sexual assault response team that could provide onsite medical care and connect survivors to services. Community members received training on how to recognize and respond to human trafficking, and the village created a dedicated hotline for victims.
“It’s the first Native-led sexual assault team in the state,” said Alan Faulkner, chief operating officer for Dot Lake Village. “We’ve got our number ready for anybody that is a victim — they can call, and we can respond and get them access to services.”
The training has already had tangible results. Last summer, the village received a report that two teenage girls were being trafficked near Manh Choh man camp, said Faulkner. Community members alerted village leaders who then alerted law enforcement, which quickly intervened.
“We have tried to make our tribal members aware of the dangers — to keep our staff updated and to know what the signs and symptoms are,” Faulkner said.
The people in charge of the mine carried out their own preparations. According to a statement provided to HCN on behalf of Kinross Alaska, the company took measures to ensure community concerns were heard.
“Since the early planning stages of the Manh Choh Mine, and as is standard practice at all projects and operations, Kinross met with and listened to nearby villages and communities to better understand their perspectives about potential social impacts associated with large industrial developments. This included increased alcohol-related crime, pressure on local law enforcement resources, and the social impacts that can accompany a predominantly male workforce operating near rural communities,” the company’s statement read.
According to the statement, the company made the man camp alcohol- and drug-free. Only authorized personnel were allowed onsite, and procedures were established for tracking personnel. The company also supported events that raise awareness of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women.
Faulkner said, however, that to his knowledge, neither the mine itself nor Kinross had reached out to Dot Lake or to Charles-Smith or to him for consultation.
Dot Lake Village decided to take matters into its own hands owing to the community’s rural location, which left residents vulnerable to outsiders.
Law enforcement is limited in remote areas, with many villages forced to rely on a single regional state trooper. That leads to long response times — especially in villages located off the road system, where bad weather can delay bush plane travel for days. And the overlapping jurisdictions can create more confusion.
“It’s easy to hide. It’s easy to get away with stuff up here, just because of how vast our land is,” said Gwen Adams, founder of the nonprofit Priceless, which works to help sex-trafficking survivors.
In recent years, though, Adams said, law enforcement has demonstrated greater understanding about trafficking.
Tracy Charles-Smith hopes that community-wide initiatives can prevent further trafficking cases and that the initiatives taken by her village will inspire others.
“We’re in a position to help tribes do everything that we are, because, you know, we’re not going to sit there,” Charles-Smith said. “We want to empower other tribes, and we have the capability to.”
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This article appeared in the July 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Bracing for man camps.”
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