In Arctic Alaska, the Warming Climate Threatens an Ancient Culture

Humans who live in cities or other developed areas may feel insulated from nature, but when the web of life begins to unravel, human cultures unravel too. The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, representing about 150,000 Inuits from Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Russia, holds that such risks to people in Arctic regions make warming a human rights issue. Others see the Arctic as an urgent warning of problems to come for more populated areas.

Sir Crispin Tickell, a pioneering climate change scholar and director of the Policy Foresight Programme in the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford University, recently returned from Svalbard, where he assessed the impact of climate change. "Patterns of warming are evident throughout the Arctic Circle," he said in an interview. "Most interesting, and perhaps most sinister, is melting of the Himalayan glaciers, with enormous effects on the river systems of China and India."

In Shishmaref and other Alaskan villages, people are on the front line of a global struggle. They are proudly self-reliant—that is the Alaskan way—but after thousands of years of living in tune with nature, nature seems to be turning on them and they are trying, uncertainly, to adapt.

Shishmaref teacher Ken Stenek

Ken Stenek, a Shishmaref science teacher who lives in the community with his wife and their four children, says that many adults are fearful for the future. Some are having nightmares related to the warming weather, he said. Many children share that fear. They wonder what life will be like if the village moves, and what will happen to the graves of deceased family members buried in the village cemetery.

"As a parent," Stenek said, "I often wonder what's going to happen. Are my kids going to have the same opportunities...to hunt seal and walrus like their cousins and uncles have been able to do? Are they going to have the same access to berries and greens that we've had access to in the past? I believe it's vitally important for them to know that part of their culture."

For now, Stenek and his colleagues teach the science of climate change even to students in kindergarten. The school has a sophisticated weather station, and classes study conditions on their island and how life is changing.

"I don't believe there's an age that they're too young to study climate change," Stenek said. "These kids are our future. They're our future leaders. And as this community prepares to relocate, these kids are the ones that are going to be a major part of that."

Village leaders are pursuing complex plans to move Shishmaref across the lagoon to the mainland. But neither federal nor state officials have offered to pay costs that the villagers cannot afford on their own. It may be many years, and many storms, before the move happens.

That leaves Mayor Tocktoo, Tony Weyiouanna and others feeling not only that they're fighting nature, but fighting isolation, too. They wonder whether most Americans, living so far away, understand how profoundly the climate is changing and the threats that poses to villages like Shishmaref.

Edward W. Lempinen

6 December 2006