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Dispossessed, Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard

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Dispossessed, Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard

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Chefornak —> Yup'ik village
- rising seas
- thawing ground
- stronger storms (winds, waves, etc.)
relocation needed (schools, etc.)
- no support from federal agencies
environmental racism shown in the data
forced removal, again (just under the guise that US govt. isn't to blame)
cultural practices like whaling, subsistence fishing put at risk
“Our access to and use of the land is so tied up with identity … It’s who we are as a people.”

(article co-written by Diné/Navajo writer)

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Dispossessed, Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard (Published 2021)

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Many Native people were forced into the most undesirable areas of America, first by white settlers, then by the government. Now, parts of that marginal land are becoming uninhabitable.

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The Alutiiq / Sugpiaq people are one of eight Alaska Native peoples. They have inhabited the coastal environments of south-central Alaska for over 7,500 years. Their traditional homelands include Prince William Sound, the outer Kenai Peninsula, the Kodiak Archipelago, and the Alaska Peninsula. Here people lived in coastal communities and hunted sea mammals from skin-covered boats.

Alutiiq people share many cultural practices with the other coastal peoples, particularly the Unangan / Aleut of the Aleutian Chain and the Yup'ik of the Bering Sea coast. Anthropologists believe these cultural similarities reflect a distant but common ancestry.

At the time of European colonization, there were distinct regional groups of Alutiiq / Sugpiaq people, each speaking a slightly different dialect of the Alutiiq language.

Kinkut Alutiit? - Who are the Alutiiq?

In the historic era, Russian traders called all of the Native peoples of southwestern Alaska "Aleut"-despite regional differences in language, cultural practices, and history. In the modern era, this has caused confusion. People with distinct cultures are known by the same name. Today, Kodiak's Native people use a variety of self-designators. There is no one correct term. Many Elders prefer Aleut, a term they were taught as children. Today, others choose Alutiiq or Sugpiaq. What does each of these terms mean?

Sugpiaq - This is a traditional self-designator of the Native people of Prince William Sound, the outer Kenai Peninsula, the Kodiak Archipelago, and the Alaska Peninsula. It means "real person" and it is the way Native people described themselves prior to Western contact. This term is used by some today. Sugpiaq is a popular self-designator on the Kenai Peninsula and is gaining use on Kodiak.

Aleut - This word means "coastal dweller" and it is derived from a Siberian Native language. Russian traders introduced the term, using it to describe the Native people they encountered in the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, and the Kodiak Archipelago. Aleut is still frequently used to refer to the Native people of the Aleutian Islands, although the word Unangan-meaning "we the people" in the region's traditional language-is gaining popularity.

Alutiiq - "Alutiiq" is the way Sugpiaq people say Aleut. It is the Native way of pronouncing the Russian-introduced word "Aleut" in their own language. Alutiiq is a popular self-designator in Kodiak and reflects the region's complex Russian and Native history. People used this term occasionally in the Russian era. It gained popularity starting in the 1980s.

Alutiiq or Alutiit?

ALUTIIQ (singular)
Noun: to describe one person: I am an Alutiiq.
Noun: to describe the language: They are speaking Alutiiq.
Adjective: as a modifier: There are many Alutiiq artists.

ALUTIIT (plural)
Noun: to describe more than two: There are 40 Alutiit living in Karluk.
Noun: to describe the people or culture collectively: The ancestors of the Alutiit settled Kodiak Island.

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The Alutiiq / Sugpiaq people are one of eight Alaska Native peoples. They have inhabited the coastal environments of south-central Alaska for over 7,500 years. Their traditional homelands include Prince William Sound, the outer Kenai Peninsula, the Kodiak Archipelago, and the Alaska Peninsula. Here people lived in coastal communities and hunted sea mammals from skin-covered boats.

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ABSTRACT
Here I assess the effects of climate change and fluctuating resource abundance on prehistoric fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska using zooarchaeological remains, stable isotope analysis, and salmon abundance data. These lines of evidence are used in the context of foraging theory to test whether people accommodated climate change and resource fluctuation by transitioning from a riverine to a marine environment. Based on comparison of these datasets, there is real change in the fishing strategy through time, but this change cannot be explained by variations in local climate change or salmon abundance.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Donald Grayson, Christina Giovas, Michelle LeFebvre, Kristine Bovy, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments. This research is supported by the Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute and the National Science Foundation. Thanks also to Bruce Finney, Koniag, Inc., the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository, the University of Wisconsin Zoological Museum, the University of Washington Fish Collection, the National Ocean Sciences AMS facility, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Micropaleontology Mass Spec Facility, Chris Johnston of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Steve Wischniowski of the International Pacific Halibut Commission.

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Kodiak Island's Prehistoric Fisheries: Human Dietary Response to Climate Change and Resource Availability

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ABSTRACT Here I assess the effects of climate change and fluctuating resource abundance on prehistoric fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska using zooarchaeological remains, stable isotope analysis, and salmon abundance data. These lines of evidence are used in the context of foraging theory to test whether people accommodated climate change and resource fluctuation by transitioning from a riverine to a marine environment.

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Native American languages Native American art What's new on our site today!
As a com plement to our Alutiiq language information, here is our collection of indexed links about the Alutiiq tribe and their society.

Sponsored Links

Please note that Alutiiqs and other Native Alaskans are living people with a present and a future as well as a past. Alutiiq history is interesting and important, but the Alutiiq people are still here today, too, and we try to feature modern writers as well as traditional folklore, contemporary art as well as museum pieces, and issues and struggles of today as well as the tragedies of yesterday. Suggestions for new links are always welcome.
Our Alutiiq Websites
Alutiiq Language:
Information and language learning materials from the Alutiiq language.
Alutiiq Facts for Kids:
Questions and answers about Alutiiq culture.
Alutiiq Stories:
Collection of Alutiiq my ths and legends.

Alutiiq Tribal and Community Websites
Chugachmiut Tribal Consortium Bristol Bay Native Association:
Regional coalitions of Alaska Native peoples including the Alutiiq.
Chugach Heritage Foundation:
Alaska state nonprofit organization working to promote Aleut, Yup'ik, and Alutiiq Native culture.
Afognak Native Village:
Homepage of one of the Alutiiq villages of Alaska.
Chugach Government LLC Afognak Native Corporation Alutiiq International Solutions:
Chugach Alaska Corporation:
Homepages of tribal corporations serving the Alutiiq people.
Alutiiq Museum:
Native-run museum on Kodiak Island dedicated to Alutiiq history and archaeology.

Books for sale on the Alutiiq Tribe
Our organization earns a commission from any book bought through these links
Looking Both Ways: Heritage & Identity of the Alutiiq People:
Excellent book on Alutiiq history and culture.
Birth and Rebirth on an Alaskan Island: The Life of an Alutiiq Healer:
Biography of an Alutiiq woman.
Making History: Alutiiq/Sugpiaq Life on the Alaska Peninsula:
History of the Alutiiq people.
Kal'unek: From Karluk:
Interesting book about the archaeology of a prehistoric Alutiiq village site in Alaska.
Alutiiq Plant Lore: An Ethnobotany:
Book about the traditional use of plants in the Alutiiq tribe.
Native American Indian Book List:
Evolving list of books about Alutiiqs and Native Americans in general.

Maps of Alutiiq Lands
Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Alaska:
Map showing the locations of the Alutiiq and other Alaska Native tribes.
Alutiiq or Sugpiaq People of Alaska:
Map of the Alutiiq Native villages of the Kodiak Archipelago.

Alutiiq Lifestyle and Tradition
What Does It Mean To Be Alutiiq?:
Online museum exhibit about the history, art and culture of the Alutiiq people.
Native Heritage: Unangax and Alutiiq:
Information aboutAleut and Alutiiq traditional lifestyle.
Alutiiq Clothes The Alaska Native Gut Parka Alutiiq Hat:
Pictures and descriptions of traditional Alutiiq clothing styles.
Like A Face Native community reclaims history of Alutiiq masks:
Articles about the Alutiiq mask-carving tradition.
Tattooing and Piercing Among the Alaskan Aleut:
Article on the tattoo traditions of the Aleut and Alutiiq people, with pictures.
Kodiak Alutiiq Dancers: Gathering of Nations Festival:
Videos of Alutiiq dancers performing at Native Alaskan cultural events.
Alutiiq Cultural Objects:
Museum exhibit with photographs of Alutiiq clothing, carvings, and other artifacts.
Afognak Native Village Flag:
Alutiiq tribal flags.

Alutiiq History
Our History - Culiracirpet:
Articles about Alutiiq history in precolonial times, under Russian and American occupation, and today.
The Unangan, the Sugpiaq, and Russian Conquest:
History of the near-destruction of the Alutiiq people by Russian fur-traders.
Saint Peter the Aleut Is the St. Peter the Aleut story true? Martyr Peter the Aleut:
Websites about the Orthodox saint Peter the Aleut. (Despite his confusing name, he was actually an Alutiiq!)

Aleut Politics, Issues, and News
Colonization's Dark History:
Article about the struggle of the Alutiiq and other tribes to recover their ancestors' bodies from museums.
New Kodiak park dedicated to Alutiiq uprooted from their homeland:
Dedication of the Alutiiq Ancestors' Memorial on Kodiak Island to honor past generations of indigenous people.

Sponsored Links

Links, References, and Additional Information
Alutiiq People:
Encyclopedia articles on the Alutiiqs.
Los Alutiiq:
Information about the Alutiiq tribe in Spanish.
Alutiiq Nation:
Alutiiq links.

Go back to Native Languages of Alaska
Go back to the list of Indian tribes of North America
Go back to our Native American websites

Dreamcatchers Indian mountains Achaguas Lenape forest Indian tattoos

Would you like to help our organization preserve Alutiiq?

Native Languages of the Americas website © 1998-2021 Contacts and FAQ page

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Alutiiq Culture and History (Sugpiaq, Chugach)

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Native American languages Native American art What's new on our site today! As a complement to our Alutiiq language information, here is our collection of indexed links about the Alutiiq tribe and their society. Sponsored Links Please note that Alutiiqs and other Native Alaskans are living people with a present and a future as well as a past.

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subsistence hunting of bowhead whales
SLI (St. Lawrence Island) Yup'ik people were some of those who engaged in this practice
cultural, ceremony, spiritual, subsistence, economic purposes
respect for the animals, choosing those who give themselves up to be killed for a sacrifice
husband and wife do this practice together —> the wife asks for and attracts whales (spiritual), the man kills them (physical)
after whaling, spiritual/ritual practices to express gratitude and regard
provide meat to people in need (elders, widows)
after 1848, "explorer" Thomas Roy entered Bering Strait, brought others in and decimated bowhead whale population
- economic, traditional cultural issues for the Yup'ik in this area in terms of the lacking population of whales
discovery of oil in Alaska —> US purchasing AK from Russia in 1867 —> ANSCA of 1971
- corporations
International Whaling Commision/IWC (1946)
- 1977, agreed to end exemption Alaskan Natives had to whaling rights
- ^ IWC had an issue with the "modern" whaling practices used, rather than small number of whales hunted
—> perpetuates idea of Indigenous people as in the past rather than contemporary peoples, undermines cultural authenticity

later… in 2018 IWC meeting, Alaskan Native rights to subsistence whaling were granted (with limits)

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written from perspective of Yup'ik elders
ancestral knowledge
Yup'ik/Yuuyaraq

writers from 2 Yup'ik communities
1 --> Alakanuk (Alarneq in Yup'ik)
- Ayunerak
- Al-strom
2 --> Village A (for tribal privacy reasons)
- Moses
- Charlie

observation that traditional life ways are changing, youth suffering as a result
emphasis on reintroducing and revitalizing Yup'ik language and culture
"...bridging historical cultural frames with contemporary contexts. It requires shifting the focus from reviving cultural activities to repairing and revitalizing the cultural systems that structure activity in the communities."

ancestral knowledge guides relationships, prevents harm within families, communities, individuals
"Ellam Yua" --> spirit of the universe
- he is everything, he is everywhere
- respect for everything He created; especially wood (used for boats, warmth, a bunch of other things)
- one would be sent to work on wood if they had a bad spirit
- acts of respect towards animals to thank them for providing food to the "real people"
--> e.g. holding the fish caught in a pan from the sea to the house lest they be dropped where things walk; giving water for seals to drink to quench their thirst once caught since they're water animals
"Yupiit" --> the real people of the land

subsistence requires reciprocal and respectful relationships between animals and humans
set of rules to show this regard so that food sources wouldn't deplete

Yup'ik dancing
Kivqiq --> giving and asking head of house
Ellriq -->
Agayuliyaraq --> asking for fish, animals, berries, etc.
^all done to ask favors from, and show gratitude towards, Ellam Yua
drum is a tool used in dance --> circular, depicts belief that life is a cycle
- center = womb in women // life returning back after death
"It is this renewal, continuous and carefully completed, that allows us to survive as a people."
all are a part of the community, even those who are no longer alive on this Earth

Qasgiq --> gathering where these things were shared, community comes together
Yuuyaraq -way of life
Alerquun - rules of life
Piciryaraq - truth of life
spiritual center of Yup'ik communities
family is the key to life

Yup'ik people used to not have one permanent settlement, but would move around on the land
shift of economy from being subsistence based to being more focused wage-labor
- families once had to work together as a community in order to survive
traditional values also linked with subsistence way of life, teachings of how to respect animals, plants, the creator, etc. in hunting and taking other things from nature
in this generation, parents are conflicted on how to raise their children
- should they teach them traditional ways?
- it is difficult because society and "success" in this society is largely based on living in and engaging with the capitalist, Western system governed by the US
Missionaries in Yup'ik communities
- taught English, now with the Yup'ik language become endangered/extinct in some communities
- it is imperative to know the Yup'ik language in order to be able to fully understand the culture since they are so intertwined and not everything can be explained in English

"Contact and contemporary processes have led the modern Yup’ik peoples away from something that has been developed, tried, and proven over many centuries...suffering in our communities today is related to this movement away from our traditional core values"
Less respect/authority for elders in the community from young people
moving away from cultural/traditional practices = "indifference and distance from our traditional values, roles and responsibilities, practice of spirituality and respect for the nature...disrespect of the animals and the environment ...wasteful of life."
"traditional values associated with education in the qasgiq and in the homes have been overtaken with the Western social values taught in the schools"
- hierarchies of knowledge, selective teachings
reviving culture through language, values, acts associated with these values, knowledge of elders

pressure to assimilate to "modern" western society is resulting in the loss of traditional character of communitities
- people are less often raising children w help of extended fam
- less knowledge passed to children about ancestry of fam and people in general
- having youth realise the kinship between Yup'ik community is very important in making them feel like they belong, have a strong sense of community to live interdependently w/ (key part of human experience is craving community)

"key for the modern Yup’ik is to ensure that our children succeed in the Western school system while at the same time teaching them traditional cultural values that have stood the test of time"
Potlach —> event to recognize those in the community who have died
^done as a community, establishes a greater sense of unity

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Am J Community Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2014 Sep 1.

Published in final edited form as:

Abstract

This paper provides an introduction to key aspects of Yup'ik Inuit culture and context from both historical and contemporary community member perspectives. Its purpose is to provide a framework for understanding the development and implementation of a prevention initiative centered on youth in two communities in Southwest Alaska as part of collaboration with the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the National Institutes of Health. This paper is written from the perspective of elders and local prevention workers from each of the two prevention communities. The co-authors discuss their culture and their community from their own perspectives, drawing from direct experience and from ancestral knowledge gained through learning and living the Yuuyaraq or the Yup'ik way of life. The authors of this paper identity key aspects of traditional Yup'ik culture that once contributed to the adaptability and survivability of their ancestors, particularly through times of hardship and social disruption. These key processes and practices represent dimensions of culture in a Yup'ik context that contribute to personal and collective growth, protection and wellbeing. Intervention development in Yup'ik communities requires bridging historical cultural frames with contemporary contexts and shifting focus from reviving cultural activities to repairing and revitalizing cultural systems that structure community.

Keywords: American Indian and Alaska Native, Culture, Community based participatory research, Community intervention, Suicide

Introduction

As prelude to the intervention story profiled in this special issue, we asked community co-researchers from two of our partnering Alaska Native communities to reflect on both long-standing cultural traditions and more current issues that informed the design and content of the interventions themselves.

The four co-authors are from two different Yup'ik communities both on located on the west coast of Alaska. One of the communities, Alakanuk, Alarneq, in the Yup'ik language, has collectively chosen to have their community prevention research efforts shared openly and resolved through tribal process to allow the name of their community to be used in publications. The other community has not yet initiated a parallel approval process to allow the use of the community name in publications and will therefore be referred to as "Village A." Both communities partnered with the University of Alaska Fairbanks to develop prevention projects for youth based on cultural-traditional rituals, practices and values. Both communities were motivated by the collective recognition that the traditional ways of life have changed and that young people are suffering as a result. Many of the children growing up today in these communities are struggling, and some are not making it through their most difficult times early in life. The authors of this paper argue that children no longer have the secure mooring once provided by their Indigenous culture. The work of helping these youth must happen through a revitalization and re-interpretation of the values, traditions and practices that once provided the guidance, instruction and reasons to live for the ancestors of contemporary youth struggling to acquire this same purpose today.

The authors of this paper are Yup'ik community members who are concerned for the future of their children and young people. The first author, Ayunerak, is an elder of the community of Alakanuk. Ayunerak comes to this work with a deep knowledge and experience in the health and healing fields; she was the first community health aide to work in the newly established health clinic in Alakanuk. Ayunerak served in this role for over 25 years, and continues to serve her community as a member of the board of directors of her regional Alaska Native health corporation. Ayunerak was one of the primary leaders in the development and implementation of the Elluam Tungiinun (Towards Wellness) youth prevention project in her community. The second author, Al-strom, is also from the community of Alakanuk and served as one of the local coordinators for the Elluam Tungiinun project. The third author, Moses, is a community member of Village A and served as the local coordinator for the Yupiucimta Asvairtuumallerkaa (Strengthening Our Identity as Yupik People) project. The fourth author, Charlie, is also an elder from the community of Village A. He worked with Moses to oversee the development and implementation of the Yupiucimta Asvairtuumallerkaa project.

This paper describes the Yup'ik way of life from tribal community member and elder perspectives. The co-authors discuss their culture and their community from their own perspectives; drawing from direct experience and from ancestral knowledge gained through learning and living the Yuuyaraq or the Yup'ik way of life. The authors point out that while no life is free of trouble, children in their own communities are growing up and experiencing stress and hardship unlike that occurring in the lives of children raised in the dominant society. It is against this backdrop that the intervention development work was undertaken in the communities to give children the strengths and skills they need to survive as Yup'ik people today. The authors present aspects of their community histories, indigenous knowledge and social customs that they identify as most important to the community intervention research described in this special issue.

The four co-authors worked in two teams with Ayunerak and Alstrom taking lead on introducing and describing aspects of Yup'ik community history, culture and context that are critical for understanding the current status, needs and strengths of the Yup'ik people. Moses and Charlie follow this with a discussion of social change in Yup'ik communities, highlighting some of the more disruptive impacts of social change for Yup'ik youth, families and communities.

The authors collectively indicate that intervention development in Yup'ik communities is based on identifying the underlying structure of cultural-traditional activities in order to determine the processes that make these activities protective and strengthening. These underlying protective factors or protective processes embedded within Yup'ik culture provide a basis for intervention development and implementation. Identifying what is protective within Yup'ik culture requires bridging historical cultural frames with contemporary contexts. It requires shifting the focus from reviving cultural activities to repairing and revitalizing the cultural systems that structure activity in the communities.

Our editorial goal of this paper is to strengthen the power of the words written by our co-researchers while also preserving diction and their way of describing their world. Our collective aim is to describe how indigenous knowledge and practice can simultaneously enhance and accelerate the progress of scientific knowledge and practice in intervention research. This foreword and the accompanying conclusion are meant only to provide the necessary framing to allow greater access and understanding across our target audience for the special issue.

Who We Are: History of a Yukon River Community

Paula Ayunerak and Deborah Alstrom

In the earliest days there were many intertribal wars between the Yup'ik (Inuit) groups on the lower regions of the Yukon River drainage and the Athabascan (American Indian) groups inhabiting the interior regions and borders of the Yukon River ( Fig. 1 , Community Map). Those Yup'ik groups at the borders of Athabascan territory eventually left to a safe place near Nelson Island on the western coast of the Bering Sea. Somewhere during the latter years of the 1500s to the early 1600s, the families who were originally from the Yukon River border regions began a return migration back home from the Nelson Island area west of Bethel and Southwest of the current village of Alakanuk. This migration followed the annual summer harvest of fish and berries.

The eldest man, who was also an ' Anallkuq' or Shaman/Holy Man, had decided to take a rest at Tin Can Point or Akmiut, where he ended up settling, feeling that he was too old to continue on the journey. He and his family became comfortable because the area had everything that they needed to survive and it was peaceful there. By that time, the wars between the Yupiit and Athabascans ( Enqillit) had long subsided. People still traveled to their summer, fall, spring and winter camps for their seasonal harvesting, but always returned to Akmiut.

The Yukon River was a very narrow river a few centuries ago. Many warriors and hunters would take the turn into Nalugciq slough thinking that it was either the Yukon River, Kwiqpak for Yup'ik speaking peoples, or the Kwiqpak slough, a tributary of the Yukon River. Different parts of the Nalugciq slough were established sites for hunting and camping purposes used by people in the days when families used to migrate from area to area following their food sources. The slough eventually started being called Nalugciq or Naluik after some time had passed. As time went on, the Nalugciq ultimately became Alarneq (Alakanuk).

Our Cultural Ways: Moving Towards Wellness Through the Strength of Our Creator

Our ancestors were strong. They were strong in their bodies because of their hard work on the land, and strong in their spirit because of their beliefs and rituals. This strength came from our connection to this place where our ancestors settled and raised families. The things that once kept our people safe and well remain important for us today. The teachings, practices and knowledge of our ancestors prevented harmful things from happening within individuals, families and communities. Some aspects of our culture and traditional-spiritual life were particularly important to us for our survival, and these we sought to bring back up through our prevention research project Elluam Tungiinun (Toward Wellness) that took place in this contemporary time. We cannot go into too much detail in this paper, and instead will focus on a short list of core values, beliefs and practices that the Yup'ik people live by.

Ellam Yua: The spirit of the universe

Ellam Yua/Tangrumanrilnguum, Spirit of the Universe/Unseen One, gave us our Yuuyaraq: Way of Life; Alerquun: Rules of Life and Piciryaraq: Truth of Life through the Angallkuq or Shaman/Holy Man. Ellam Yua/Tangrumanrilnguum gave life to the Yupiit, or 'the real people of the land,' as well as to all the animals that live on the land and in the water. He was the creator who made everything. We did not say God but we said Ellam Yua, the spirit of the universe who is everywhere. Even if we think that we are alone we are not. He is aware of us, and He is watching us. In those days we had a very strong religion and respected everything that Ellam Yua created. For example, wood was highly respected: we made shelters, houses, heated our houses, and fashioned dog team sleds, kayaqs and other boats. Furniture, plates, bowls and ladles of all sizes were made of wood. Fish and mink traps of all sizes were also made of wood. Wood-working had healing power; if a man became deranged, he would be put to work on wood so that he could recover.

Ellam Yua provided the real people and the animals with food from the land and the water. Each person and animal has a spirit given to it. Both the Yupiit and the animals inhabit a sentient world infused with spirit. All living things have to be respected. The land gave Yupiit meat from animals and birds, while the water provided fish, seals and whales. Vegetables and fruit came from both the land and the sea or rivers. The rain, lakes and rivers all provided sources of drink both in the form of liquids and ice. Even though Ellam Yua gave to the real people the animals, they must still show proper respect to secure them as food. Fish were always brought into the house in a pan in case the fish was accidently dropped where people walked. This prevented disrespect of the fish. They poured water into the seal's mouth when brought to the house or village in order to quench its thirst because it was a water animal. This was a way to show great respect for the seal that had been killed for food.

Yuuyaraq: Rules to live a Yup'ik Way of life

There is a very close connection between the animal world and human world. We believe that humans and animals communicate through Ellam Yua, and that these relationships are governed by rules. For each different type of food, there are rules that men and women must follow to take care of it. If the rule is not followed for that particular animal, then that food source will either become scarce or disappear entirely, depending on the intensity of the violation. If the rules were followed carefully and the animal spirit was pleased for example, with the way that the weapons were handled after it was caught, or the way that it was cared for and eaten, then the food source would multiply and the hunter would be blessed with more to catch. Subsistence required good relationships between humans and animals and maintaining this relationship was the only way people survived long ago. Respect for the land as well as the sea ensure the seasonal provision of food given to us through Ellam Yua.

Yuraq: Marking our development as a people through Yup'ik dancing

Eskimo dancing has been going on for many decades. There are several ways to dance: Kivqiq is a dance of giving and asking for an item from the head of the household. Ellriq, is another type of dance done by an individual man or a woman. He or she will get ready for 5 years making clothes, blankets and other items made of cloth, skin or baskets as well as plates and ladles made from wood. For the Ellriq dance, one boy or girl will be dressed from head to toe with new clothes, including a parka, cap, mittens and mukluks. Agayuliyaraq is a dance that is a prayer asking for animals, fish, berries, wood or good weather at a certain time of year in the hunting or fishing cycle. Men would sometimes use masks of different animals that are described in the verses of the songs as part of the Agayuliyaraq dance. After the dance is over, the masks would be taken out to the tundra, away from trails, and left there. It is said that the masks would never be seen again, even if one went out the next day to find it. The Agayuliyaraq dance is the only type of dance still used today. People stopped performing the other types of dances after the missionaries came to the area and labeled them evil and superstitious. In all of these dances, Yupiit included their family members who had passed on as a way to honor them.

Before the missionaries, Eskimo dancing was performed as a kind of prayer asking Ellam Yua for blessings of different kinds. It was also done as an expression of thankfulness for the blessings given from Ellam Yua. The different leaders of the village would come together to teach their songs to the rest of the group of men or women. When the songs were learned, they then could teach the dance movements to the rest of the people in the community. The dance movements were basically sign language showing what happened in the story. Different masks were also made to show what kind of animal spirit was being honored because it gave its life to the person(s) who caught it; or they could show what was being requested to catch, for example, in preparation for a seal hunt.

We would dance with animal masks at the potlatch where the whole community came together and invited other communities to come for entertainment. The mask was used only once at a potlatch on one song, danced by the person it was made for. Taking masks to the tundra afterward signified that the prayer or thankfulness was sent to Ellam Yua. It was believed that the mask reappears to a purified or chosen person in the future.

The drum is the main tool we use to dance. The drum's circular design is made as a way of depicting the Yupiit belief that our lives go on in a cycle. The center of the drum is like the womb in women and represents life returning back after death, such as when people die and are reincarnated through the births of new babies; or when the animals used for food sources return back to the hunting areas depending on the way that the hunter and receiver treat it after it was caught. It is this renewal, continuous and carefully completed, that allows us to survive as a people.

We believe that we are all part of a community, those in bodily form and those who have left this earth. There is a belief that all our family who have passed on to the next world comes to a potlatch to watch and participate with their living family. There is another belief that if a person died before or during a potlatch time, it is a favorable time to go because he or she will not make the journey alone to Pamaalirugmuit. Pamaalirugmuit is a name of the wonderful and peaceful place that the people have a chance to go to after death (just like Heaven in the Bible). The newly deceased person is picked up by the spirits of their deceased ancestors and taken along with the other spirits to their new home. This is how we marked the transitions in our human life.

Qasgiq: Our rituals create a community

The qasgiq was a very important and sacred building in each different village. In the latter years after the missionaries arrived and built churches, the importance of the qasgiq was described to have the same intensity of significance as a church. It was a place that was highly respected. The men of all ages used it as their home and would sleep in it, eat in it, bathe in it and make the tools they needed to live. Women and children lived in separate sod houses surrounding the qasgiq.

The entire community used the qasgiq for ceremonial and entertainment purposes, like the Agayuliyaraq, or potlatch. The qasgiq brought men, women and children together to listen to the elders of the village talk about Yuuyaraq (Way of Life), Alerquun (Rules of Life) and Piciryaraq (Truth of Life). It was a place to teach Yup'ik morals and values and survival skills. Children raised in the Qasgiq were given daily talks on Yuuyaraq, Alerquun, Piciryaraq, and were instructed about the cycle of life and death. We believe that a living person can prepare for his journey to Pamaalirugmuit while he is still living. There are many things that a person can do to prepare for his/her afterlife journey, such as helping others and keeping a clean house and body. Children in the qasgiq were taught to live in a world where all of their actions will affect their future and their life, even after their bodies no longer live.

In the qasgiq way of life, each and every member of the community was needed and each needed the other for seasonal harvest and daily life activities. Families were the key to survival long ago. Parents began teaching their children from the earliest age possible, and it continued throughout their lives into adulthood. Parents taught by role modeling their behaviors and demonstrating through their own actions the ways to do things. When the children grow older, they remember what they saw and what they heard in the qasgiq. The qasgiq was the spiritual center of the Yup'ik communities. People abandoned the qasgiq when the epidemics came and the large pits that made the foundation of the qasgiq were needed for graves. Missionaries also encouraged the Yup'ik to build single-family homes, above ground using materials brought into the region. This changed the way of life of our people, when we moved away from our spiritual center.

How Our Ways Have Changed: Life Today in a Community on the Coast of the Bering Sea

Charles Moses and James Charlie, Sr

We will discuss in this section how our ways of life have changed, and the effects this has had on our families in the villages. It once was that families would move around on the land and there was no permanent settlement where all families would reside year-round continually in one place. Our village (Village A) was established as a community in 1964 and had just over 280 people. It has grown over the years and today has a population of about 600. Along with its growth, our village has experienced a cultural change as well. When it was first established, the economy was largely subsistence-based. This meant that families still had to work together in order to survive. Traditional values connected with our subsistence economy were still taught and practiced by everyone. Parents would spend much of their time teaching their children these subsistence ways.

Yup'ik culture has evolved through thousands of years and is continuing to do so to this day. Over the past few decades the economy of our village has become more focused on wage-labor. Living in our village today is like living in a different environment for many of the older residents who remember what it was like to live in tents and move around to camps on a seasonal round. As a result of these changes to community life and culture, the people have less certainty that the old ways will continue to provide for their families. Many new parents are unsure about methods of child rearing. Some are looking to our traditions for guidance; others are learning western ways of child-rearing as outside influences begin to overtake our Yup'ik language and teachings.

When the missionaries of the various religious denominations originally contacted the Yup'ik in Southwest Alaska, they first had to learn the language to begin their missionizing work. Those missionaries who eventually became fluent in the language may have themselves begun to realize the complexities of the culture, because the traditional Yup'ik language is the code to truly understanding the culture. The missionaries' presence had impacts on our communities that we could not have anticipated upon their arrival. The missionaries were welcomed into the communities, but looking back it is clear now that some of the policies the missionaries instituted had lasting effects on the Yup'ik people. For example, in some communities today, school-aged children can no longer speak their Yup'ik language, while in other communities, there is no longer any Eskimo dancing. Among the most disruptive outcome of contact and outside influence is the erosion of the core values; the loss of what made the traditional Yup'ik people a community.

The social framework within which our ancestors once lived came out of an adaptive process, consisting of trial and error and testing and retesting, over a span of thousands of years. Imagine creating a qayaq (kayak) without any prior experience or model to copy, and using only the tools provided by nature. You would start with an idea, but chances are that you will go through several failures before you finally succeed in creating one that can be used safely in any season or weather. It would take you many trials and redesigns to get it right and keep yourself safe on the water. This is how the Yup'ik society was created. Contact and contemporary processes have led the modern Yup'ik peoples away from something that has been developed, tried, and proven over many centuries; and much of the suffering in our communities today is related to this movement away from our traditional core values, subsistence strategies and families.

The authority of elders in a changing world is at question today. This should not be the case, but we find today it is. The elders were always those in the community that could speak the most from their own direct experience in the world. For all the wisdom they possess, an elder would remain humble. You will know you are in the presence of an elder should you receive advice qualified with something to the effect of, "When I was young, an elder told me..." elders will only speak about what they have heard or seen using their own senses.

Today we hear the young adults in our communities say that the old ways are no longer relevant. This has truth on the surface because it is true that we as Yup'ik are no longer completely dependent on a subsistence way of life. So we may feel, today, freer to ignore the concerns of our elders and embrace the changes without considering the time and process it took by our elders to get where we are today. The elders made it possible for the young people today to have more choices about what they want to do with their lives and who they want to be.

For example, modern transportation technology has done away with the qayaq and the dog team. Coupled with modern hunting and fishing equipment, like guns, motors and nylon nets, subsistence has become less time consuming and more easily accomplished. Because of this change, men and women no longer have to rely on working together to the same degree in very specific yet different complementary ways to bring about success and wellbeing of their families.

The result of these changes is indifference and distance from our traditional values, roles and responsibilities, practice of spirituality and respect for the nature of the hunt as well as the game itself. Our disrespect of the animals and the environment where we pursue our food has led to our becoming wasteful of life.

Other changes have also impacted our culture. For example, children today are no longer being strengthened mentally and physically with the necessary chores of emptying the honey-bucket (toilet), packing water, chopping wood, feeding the dogs, or any work associated with contributing to the survival of a family in a totally collective subsistence way of life. In fact, most children in Southwest Alaska, especially those in communities with water and sewage systems, don't really have regular or daily chores anymore. Instead, children in the rural communities spend their weekdays in school and their evenings and weekends watching TV or playing video games. The traditional values associated with education in the qasgiq and in the homes have been overtaken with the Western social values taught in the schools. It remains a vital practice to teach the children the Yup'ik values that allowed for generations of successful living on this land.

It is not just the Yup'ik communities that are experiencing these changes and the problems associated with these changed and changing conditions. All the indigenous communities are going through the same transitional stages in varying ways and degrees. The Yup'ik are fortunate to have elders in most, if not all, of the villages that still recall the traditional ways, and speak their language fluently. These communities are in a good place to revive their language and many of the customs and the associated values, relying on the strength of these elders. This is not a call to elders only, it also starts with reviving values associated with traditional child-rearing techniques. Every village has parents and grandparents who continue to practice some of the traditional ways of raising a family at home, and it is their children (and the influences of these children on others) who will keep these communities going as strong Yup'ik communities in the twentieth century.

Revitalizing Culture and Context

Through Kinship, Charlie Moses and James Charlie, Sr

Our communities are still beautiful communities in many ways because of the people, but many are beginning to lose their traditional character and spirit because of the pressures to change and assimilate to a more modern way of life. The structure of our families is changing the most rapidly and with the most consequences for our youth. Many young parents no longer experience the benefit of raising their children with the help of their extended family members. Many young people grow up today without knowledge of who their family is and where they come from. As part of the Yupiucimta Asvairtuumallerkaa (Strengthening our identity as Yupik People) Program, we endeavored to create a manual on applying traditional child-rearing techniques in the 21st century (reference to online appendix). Young parents can review and apply these teachings as they raise their own children.

Our families create our communities and we cannot have a strong community without a strong knowledge of our connection to each other through kinship. In our intervention program we also developed a Yup'ik kinship terms activity to remind each us of how we are connected to the others in our community. Kinship is part of raising a child, and children feel lost today because they do not feel connected or like they are part of a culture or community. The key for the modern Yup'ik is to ensure that our children succeed in the Western school system while at the same time teaching them traditional cultural values that have stood the test of time. In an effort to identify and highlight some of these time-honored strengths and traditional values that have served the Yup'ik and other Alaska Native people so well over these many thousands of years, Dr. Gerald Mohatt and his staff from the Center for Alaska Native Health Research (CANHR) interviewed over 100 Alaska Native individuals who each shared his/her own life story as it related to alcohol, so that others might benefit from their experiences ( Mohatt et al. 2004). Through these life stories we were able to identify some of the strategies that people are actually using to prevent and/or recover from alcohol abuse. Some of these are personal, individual strengths or decisions that people made; others are strengths, values, supports, and successful ways of behaving in today's world that were developed in the family; and yet others are strengths, values, supports and successful ways of behaving that come from the community.

It is this model of increasing protection and strengths through the revitalization of traditional practices and ways of life that guides our work with children in our community. We have realized through this work that the proven ways of our ancestors still impact our people today. We need to continue these ways to continue as communities. We need to continue to recognize the natural ways to prevent and/or recover from the modern ills like alcohol abuse, and revive the identity of Native individuals as well as communities, thereby enabling them to "evolve" into the twentieth century Yupiit.

Through Ritual and Paula Ayunerak

The desire to belong to a community is a key characteristic of being human. For Yup'ik (the real people) there are different levels of community; kin relations, school community, working community, village community, male and female community, elder community and others. Community is created by the customs, practices and values held by its members. Yup'ik live their lives through their communities, and the rituals that make their communities are important even today. The Curuuqaq or Potlatch is one example of a ritual event that creates community for Yup'ik peoples. The potlatch is not done in any part of the year except in the winter after Christmas. When potlatch season comes around, it brings together a wider community of different people. One of the purposes for the potlatch is to memorialize our recently deceased kin. This may take place the year following after the death or longer depending on when the family has prepared for the give away of goods and food in honor of the deceased. The potlatch brings people together from all spiritual backgrounds to observe this rite of passage for the deceased and families of the deceased. This ritual has been going on for generations and has evolved from a smaller scale family rite to community-wide ceremonial involving several families, and large displays of giving and sharing.

Other rituals that once were used for prevention or for ceremonial purpose, such as smudging, can be continued like the Potlatch in our communities today. Long ago, there were different ways of smudging. People used the Labrador tea ( ayuk) to cleanse their houses, and would go into each room in the house, light the tea and allow the smoke to circulate. This circulating of the smoke combined with prayer is what we call smudging. For men, the Labrador tea was used for purifying their own bodies and the bodies of others, and for purifying their tools/weapons before going out hunting. They also used to go home and purify themselves and their gear if they had an unlucky hunting expedition the first time that they went out. A woman used it to purify her body after a menstrual cycle so that she would not contaminate her husband or her husband's hunting equipment. Smudging was once part of a family's ritual observance, and it was a custom that identified us as Yup'ik hunters or caretakers. Smudging today is carried on by mainly a few elders and happens in private contexts in the community. We chose to revive the practice of smudging as part of our intervention work with the children in our community. We would burn Labrador team to open each of our intervention activities. We would explain how the circulating smoke, combined with our prayers would clean out our minds and bodies and allow us to do good work and fill up on the knowledge we were receiving that day. At first there were a few people who disagreed with the revival of a traditional practice used by our ancestors. Over time, those people that once disagreed came to see that the ritual had good uses and opened people up to learning things about who they are and where they come from. The ritual reminded people that they all belonged to the same community, joined together by the circle of smoke and prayer.

Other rituals also used to have the power to change things and bring people together as a community. Many of these we have forgotten or lost over time, but some we still remember. For example, the act of laughing at, making fun of or openly talking about a spirit considered to be evil or bad for the people has been practiced since the flu epidemic occurring at the beginning of the twentieth century. Along with humans and animals, many other things around us are deemed to have a spirit. There are spirits of sickness, injury and bad luck or misfortune. Spirits can become either weak or strong depending on the fears or strengths of the humans. In the early 1980s, the spirit of suicide came to our village and it became so strong in our community that many lives were lost to it.

One of the elders helping to create our prevention program came up with a ritual on how to deal with that particular spirit of suicide. This elder had been in many meetings with other elders that helped him remember hearing about a way to deal with a particularly strong and bothersome spirit. He brought this idea out during one of our work group meetings and it caused one of our younger people to think about the way of the musk ox. The way of the musk ox involves protection of the young members of the group by the older members encircling around them. We added this to the ritual of ridding the spirit of suicide and decided to try conducting this activity as a community-wide ceremonial.

We gathered together as many people in the community as we could and had the elder give instructions about the ritual. We first came together with all the adults holding hands encircling all the youth who had come to the activity just as the musk ox do with their young to protect them. Then the elder asked for us to pray as hard as we could for help that day to have the spirit of suicide leave and never come back. After praying, he asked for the whole group to stomp the floor as hard as we could four times together. We followed the stomping with the act of smoothing out the floor with our feet. Then the elder instructed the group to laugh hysterically at the spirit. All through the steps that were followed, the adults held their hands together surrounding the youth and children. The final part of the ritual involved the elder making throwing movements with his arms four times toward the west, to cast the spirit in a place of no return or luck.

After our community performed this ritual we felt a difference among each other and in our homes and lives. We all felt lighter and happier. We smiled at each other more easily and things got better for our young people. The ritual brought us together and together we were stronger.

This set of articles describes how we created a research project with the University of Alaska Fairbanks as part of our community response to the deaths that were happening among our young people. It is informed by what we have described, including the focus on strengthening our elders, utilizing the concept of qasgiq, the sacred learning space, revitalizing traditional parenting, and recreating rituals. This is our home, the place that we love. This is our way of life, how we look at the world. We have an ancient knowledge that is as important today as it was for all of our past generations. Alarneq, our ancestral home, remains today a place that can nurture and grow healthy youth and protect them from alcohol abuse and suicide.

Editorial Conclusion

Stacy M. Rasmus

The authors of this paper identify key aspects of traditional Yup'ik culture that once contributed to the adaptability and survivability of their ancestors, particularly through times of hardship and social disruption. These key processes and practices represent dimensions of culture in an indigenous Yup'ik context with enduring capabilities to contribute to personal and collective growth, and to protection and wellbeing.

Traditional-cultural practices such as Qasgiq (Men's House), Yuraq (Potlatch) and Yuuyaraq (subsistence way of life) are examples of historically important contexts into which intervention was introduced. In the qasgiq, boys were taught how to make the tools they would need to make a living and survive out on the land. The qasgiq was a place where people would go to get advice and seek healing. Yuraq and yuuyaraq were important dimensions of the qasgiq. Yup'ik culture and Yup'ik life functioned through the qasgiq.

Hawe et al. (2009) argue for a "systems-approach" to intervention research that starts with careful and detailed study and understanding of the context in which intervention will take place. This study of culture and context will reveal the system of important formal and informal "activity settings" (p. 267) and the social networks that connect people to these activities. The intervention is understood as a critical event in time in this system.

The authors of the current article have provided readers with a nuanced descriptive account of selected primary activity settings in which intervention takes place in Yup'ik communities. For example, the authors describe how the qasgiq functions as a key activity setting and a social network within a Yup'ik system, providing us with an appreciation of the ways in which intervention occurred naturally and effectively. Rapid social change brought about disruptions within these aboriginal Yup'ik systems. Missionaries actively worked to shut down the qasgiq in many Yup'ik communities. In its place were constructed single-family houses that were often of poorer quality in that they were less adaptively suited to the environmental context than the traditional Yup'ik semi-subterranean multi-family dwellings. This event dramatically altered the system that provided the structure for the activity settings, and project efforts involved revitalization of the qasgiq as an important activity setting and network for intervention in Yup'ik communities. In the communities described in the paper, the yuraq and the yuuyaraq are still practiced today and function as activity settings for intervention. However, these settings occur within a very different ecological system that continues to change rapidly over time.

Collectively, the authors of this paper assert that a primary function of intervention with Yup'ik youth and families must involve repair or revitalization of the indigenous system that once provided for action in their communities. The authors give examples of how they participated in the re-creation of key Yup'ik activity settings and social networks as part of the community intervention described in the special issue. In one community, this occurred through the revitalization of a traditional Yup'ik kinship setting in order to increase connectedness between family members and strengthen family-level resources. The other community revitalized qasgiq, using a traditional ritual setting. In both communities, the goal was systems-level change occurring through the re-creation and re-interpretation of vital settings within local traditional culture and practice, in order to offer new possibilities for the survival, growth and wellbeing of Yup'ik youth today.

Acknowledgments

We also need to acknowledge the work of the elders and community planning group members in each of the communities. Special thanks go to Kim Hopper for his review and reflections on this work. This research was funded by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, the National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Center for Research Resources (R21 AA016098-01, RO1AA11446; R21AA016098; R24 MD001626; P20RR061430).

Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10464-014-9652-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

References

Hawe P, Shiell A, Riley T. Theorising interventions as events in systems. American Journal of Community Psychology. 2009;43:267-276. doi: 10.1007/s10464-009-9229-9. [[PubMed] [CrossRef] Google Scholar]

Mohatt GV, Hazel KL, Allen J, Stachelrodt M, Hensel C, Fath R. Unheard Alaska: Culturally anchored participatory action research on sobriety with Alaska Natives. American Journal of Community Psychology. 2004;33:263-273. doi: 10.1023/B:AJCP.0000027011.12346.70. [[PubMed] [CrossRef] Google Scholar]

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Yup'ik Culture and Context in Southwest Alaska: Community Member Perspectives of Tradition, Social Change, and Prevention

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This paper provides an introduction to key aspects of Yup'ik Inuit culture and context from both historical and contemporary community member perspectives. Its purpose is to provide a framework for understanding the development and implementation ...

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Grandmother's Fight to end Environmental Violence in the Artic

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Grandmother's Fight to end Environmental Violence in the Artic

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from St. Lawrence Island
acknowledgment to "the creator"
^lots of acknowledgments, to land, people, spiritual entities
ACAT —> alaska community action on toxics
- lots of community based outreach
Northeast Cape —> military base
- displacement of Alaskan Native people
- toxic chemicals —> new or rare illnesses; cancers, miscarriages, etc.
700 active/abandoned military sites in Alaska
- radioactive waste, etc.
- close proximity to homes, hunting/food gathering areas to Alaskan Natives
229 tribes
572 in nation
Alaska isn't "untouched"
artic —> hemispheric sink
one of most hihgly contaminated population bc disproportionate exposure to toxic chemicals
- goes on to children; chemicals in blood, breast milk, etc.
- exacerbated problems bc global warming
- arctic warming 3x faster than most of the world
melting ice, glaciers, permafrost —> release of chemicals, greenhouse gasses that had been sequestered
arctic ocean has the most microplastics of all oceans on Earth
pesticides/other chemicals applied in far regions of the world, through ocean and air currents, they reach the arctic in a very short time

St. Lawrence Island (Sivuqaq which means "rung out")
creation story: the creator reached his hand into the Bering Sea, picked up soil and rung out what is now the island
32 villages and 10-20k people prior to Western contact
since 500 bc (time immemorial)
about same size as Puerto Rico (3m ppl)
ties to Siberia
walrus used to make boats
respect for lands, water
taking only what they need, no waste

Indigenous knowledge is basis of ACAT's community based research
using acquired knowledge
- migration patterns of wildlife
- weather patterns, etc.
recognition of this form of knowledge as on par with Western scientific knowledge
funded by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

"We are not just research subjects, we need to be involved in all research if it consists of any biomonitoring or  sampling on our lands or waters—we are our own experts." - Vi Waghiyi
PCBs in blood associated with cancers, miscarriages, etc.
Sivunga residents displaced
4.5-9x higher levels of PCBs in blood than avg. American in lower 48
- military sites
- global transport of chemicals —> global transport
2002
(22 min on video is good image for PCB levels comparison)

White Alice Sites —> prior to satellites used as early warning systems
on Sivuqaq
required power transformers
lubricant required for transformer
- used PCBs, pesticides, heavy metals, solvents
- abandoned hella barrels
signed an agreement in 1952 w/ military, but they never held up their side of agreement
- didn't uphold condition of water, land, air
- left chemicals open
northeast cape used to be abundant w/ fish, but the fish haven't returned since this intervention
food insecurity (seals, fish, walrus)

32:30 —> types of sampling done
health assessments aren't accurate and don't work well for small communities like this one (measured per 1k ppl)
still being discredited based on observations from indigenous people
don't use their data in results

90% of households only eat traditional foods, regardless is a large part of life
"our oceans are our farm"
PCBs build up in fat and blubber of animals, main food with healthy fats/brain food
- 102.83 ppb (parts per billion) of PCBs in Bowhead Whale meat
- 582.68 ppb in Polar Bear fat
- 161.02 ppb in Bearded Seal Skin
much lower for land-based animals
^^these are cultural foods, it's disrespectful to tell people to NOT eat these things
- some people feel the benefits outweigh the risks
(40:40 for this list)

Health concerns:
- cancers
- thyroid disease
- diabetes
- heart disease
- low birth weight babies
- miscarrigaes
- premature births
- (other reproductive issues)
- development/learning disabilities
2x more birth defects than lower 48
"it's not a matter of if we get cancer, it's a matter of when"
her grandmother had 12 children, only 4 survived
over 100 words for ice, many are now in disuse

multi-generational effects:
displacement bc of military camps, and then more bc of chemicals
diseases very prevalent in contemporary generations
community-based research institute
emphasis on organizing with youth, women, elders
- reproductive, human rights activism/work

Stockholm Convention —> only UN legally binding treaty to ban toxic chemicals globally
- emphasis on protection of elders, children, women

"the chemicals present in our bodies are passed onto our Indigenous children and harm their ability to learn our languages, songs, stories, and knowledge."
She is a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council
(1:03:24 —> published papers from St. Lawrence Island community of Yup'ik peoples)

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UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center

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Viola Waghiyi on "A Yupik grandmother’s fight to end environmental violence in the Arctic" (Keynote)

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language is fading due to contact
English is more prominent in work force, implemented into schools, media, etc. so youth don't have as much exposure to Yup'ik language
less emphasis on the importance
language tied with culture

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Faith, Food, and Family in a Yupik Whaling Community

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For more than fifteen hundred years Yupik and proto-Yupik Eskimo peoples have lived at the site of the Alaskan village of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. Their history is a record of family and kin, and of the interrelationship between those who live in Gambell and the spiritual world on which they…

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The AEWC's Weapons Improvement Program (WIP) is critical to improving the reliability and safety of the harvest and increasing the efficiency of the harvest by landing a higher percentage of struck whales.

The WIP Committee has developed a training program for whaling captains and crews on the proper and safe use of weapons utilized for the harvest. This spring, Arnold Brower, Jr. and Billy Adams conducted village training in Utqiagvik, Wainwright, Point Hope, and Nuiqsut.​

Alaskan whaling villages are among the most remote communities in the world. Not connected by the road system, they are reliant on the subsistence hunt of the bowhead whale for their survival.

To safeguard the bowhead whale and its habitat, to defend the Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling Rights of our members, and to preserve the cultural and traditional values of our communities.

Stay up-to-date on the latest AEWC news, presentations, and activities pertaining to our mission.

To preserve and enhance the marine resource of the bowhead whale, including its habitat.

To protect Eskimo subsistence whaling.

To protect and enhance Eskimo culture, traditions, and activities associated with bowhead whales and bowhead whaling.

To undertake research and educational activities related to bowhead whales.

The members of Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission are the registered whaling captains and their crew members of the eleven whaling communities of the Arctic Alaska coast: Gambell, Savoonga, Wales, Little Diomede, Kivalina, Point Hope, Point Lay, Wainwright, Barrow, Nuiqsut, and Kaktovik.

Whaling has been a part of the Alaska Eskimo culture since time immemorial.

Weapons Improvement Program: Village Training

The harvest of the bowhead is shared throughout each community and celebrated each year through a Nalukataq celebration. Dates for the 2021 Nalukataq celebrations will be listed on the media page.

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Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission - Aboriginal Subsistence Hunt

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The AEWC's Weapons Improvement Program (WIP) is critical to improving the reliability and safety of the harvest and increasing the efficiency of the harvest by landing a higher percentage of struck whales. The WIP Committee has developed a training program for whaling captains and crews on the proper and safe use of weapons utilized for the harvest.

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observations (in Quinhagak, AK)
much less snow
- changing hibernation patterns of bears (affects whole food change, predation)
- fewer harvestable berries
high prices of fuel in rural AK —> better for the environment
Sockeye Salmon thriving
- good for economy, fishing industry
lower water levels
- ecosystem impacts

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Alaska: Yupik Changes - Tribes & Climate Change

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Environmental Contamination of Yu'pik People

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Environmental Contamination of Yu'pik People

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blood sample from 130 adults on St. Lawrence Island (towns of Gambell and Savoonga):
avg PCB concentration of 4.6 ppb compared to 0.9-1.5 ppb in the avg American adult from the lower 48
- due to abandoned military sites obvi
- also, atmospheric travel of these chemicals from more southern regions of the planet (bioaccumulation)
—> fat soluable compounds, so accumulated in the blubber of many marine animals that Yup'ik traditionally hunt and eat (whales and walrus are some)
Northeast Cape (former military site) is one of the most contaminated areas
- is also an important seasonal hunting and camping site
PCB level 4.8 ppb in people who went to this camp, compared to 3.7 ppb in Savoonga residents who did not have camps at the NEC
military waste significantly adds to contamination, but atmospheric travelling of persistent chemicals was main factor

contamination in traditional foods:
(1) rendered oils (194 ppb in walrus oil, 421 ppb in ringed seal oil and 354 ppt in bowhead whale oil) and (2) blubber (34 ppb in walrus blubber, 116 ppb in bearded seal blubber, and 317 ppb in bowhead blubber)
- levels much lower in the actual meat of marine animals, and less still in land animals' meat
- so while these PCBs cause a ton of adverse health effects (cancer, thyroid disease, diabetes, etc.) this is also where omega-3 fatty acids (good fats) are, which are supposed to reverse these effects
- it's a give and a take, some people weigh the benefits more than the negatives (including traditional/cultural ties to these foods)

environmental racism!!!

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Environmental contamination of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska

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Persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic chemicals that originate primarily from industrial areas in temperate climates are ubiquitous in the Arctic. The people of St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, have never directly benefited from the industries that made and profited from use of these chemicals. This…

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Climate Change Threatens Cultural Practices

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Climate Change Threatens Cultural Practices

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Yup'ik people have dozens of words for different types of snow/ice
- some are becoming obsolete b/c of global warming
dependency on ice stretches for culture, identity, livelihoods
- now much is water, or weak ice
food insecurity ^ as a result
walrus hunting and compromised populations
lots of relocation needed
the US has very limited plans to deal with issues of climate change, no policies in place
issue between staying in place that is literally degrading bc of climate change/saving children/grandchildren or having to leave ancestral and spiritual homelands

(article from 2016, written by a white man)

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The extreme warmth of 2016 has changed so much for the people of the Arctic that even their language is becoming unmoored from the conditions in which they now live.

The Yupik, an indigenous people of western Alaska, have dozens of words for the vagaries of sea ice, which is not surprising given the crucial role it plays in subsistence hunting and transportation. But researchers have noted that some of these words, such as "tagneghneq" (thick, dark, weathered ice), are becoming obsolete.

After thousands of years of use, words are vanishing as quickly as the ice they describe due to climate change. The native inhabitants are also in peril - there are 31 Alaskan towns and cities at imminent risk from the melting ice and coastal erosion. Many will have to relocate or somehow adapt.

"In December, we normally have waters covered in ice but right now we have open water out there," said Vera Metcalf, director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission, which represents 19 native communities stretching along Alaska's western coast. "We are so dependent upon sea ice conditions. It's our life, our culture."

Arctic sea ice extent slumped to a record low in November, winnowed away by the warming air, warming seas and unhelpful wind patterns. The region's 2016 temperature has been 3.5C warmer than a century ago. In some locations the divergence from the long-term average has been an eye-watering 20C.

On 21 November, the decline on the long-term average of sea ice extent for that day was 888,000 sq miles (2.3m sq km) - an area 10 times larger than the UK, but smaller than the long-term average. "Almost every year now we look at the record of sea ice and say 'wow', but this year it was like 'three times wow'," said Tad Pfeffer, a geophysicist at the University of Colorado. "This year has been a big exaggeration on the trends we've already been seeing."

These numbers have resonance for people who require dependable rhythms in the environment in order to survive. In remote Alaskan communities, the stores sell goods priced to reflect their journey - $20 for a pizza, $15 for a gallon of milk. If you can't butcher a 1,000lb walrus because there is no sea ice to support both of you, then you might well be left hungry.

"The window of opportunity for hunting continues to shrink," Metcalf said. "The communities are worried about this because food insecurity is something we are now having to tackle every single day."

Metcalf grew up on St Lawrence island, a far-flung piece of the US that sits just 36 miles from Russia in the Bering Sea. The island is thought to be one of the last exposed fragments of a land bridge that connected North America to Asia during the last ice age.

In 2013, the island's two main communities managed to catch just a third of the walruses they normally do. Last year, Gambell, the largest settlement, snared just 36 - down from the 600 it could expect just a few years ago.

Sea ice is further out from land than it once was and is becoming treacherously thin for hunters to traverse. Walruses, which require sea ice for resting and giving birth, often have to resort to heaving themselves on to crowded strips of land. These grand tusked beasts can trample each other to death in such conditions.

"It's not like the walrus populations are changing, it's that the climate is changing the conditions," Metcalf said. "We are trying to plan better but we can't go out every day and hunt. We can try to adapt and hunt caribou or moose but it's not easy. It comes at a cost to us."

Walrus catch graph

The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and there are "early signs" that this temperature increase is speeding up, according to Jeremy Mathis, director of the Arctic program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mathis moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2007 and even in that time he has seen startling changes - the -40C winters he endured in the first few years have almost completely disappeared.

"For people who live in the Arctic, there is no debate over whether their environment is changing," he said. "We are seeing a destabilization of the environment in the Arctic. The ice is melting earlier and earlier and coming back later and later in the year. For people here that means a clear impact upon food security and their way of life."

Frost locked deep in the soils is melting, causing buildings to subside. Communities are seeing their coastlines erode and are increasingly exposed to lashing storms without the protective barrier of sea ice.

Several Alaskan towns and villages are wrestling over whether to fight these changes or retreat to relative safety. Two coastal villages, Shishmaref and Kivalina, have voted to relocate while a third, Newtok, has taken the first tentative steps to do so.

The warmth of 2016 - almost certain to be a global record - has added to the sense of haste. The regrowth of sea ice as Alaska enters winter has been so painfully slow that many communities will be left without a buffer to storms next year. Should a large storm hit, it could prove disastrous.

Such a calamity would at least free up money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). The cost of relocating a village of just a few hundred people is around $200m - a bill that neither the federal nor Alaskan government is keen to pick up. Some people in remote communities note, darkly, that a ruinous storm would at least be followed by federal dollars that would allow them to fortify or move.

"These communities need to be moved as soon as possible before a large storm hits," said Victoria Herrmann, managing director of the Arctic Institute. "There hasn't been much guidance as to whether they can move or who will pay for it. There are around 230 villages affected by sea level rise and they will all need a plan over the next few years as sea ice continues to retreat."

It takes a certain stoic hardiness to live in a place of such frigid cold. But Herrmann said that even those who have had to adapt to changes in the past have found the unravelling of 2016 "very scary". She added: "What we are seeing is incredible. It's quite frightening in terms of what it means for the future."

A solution doesn't appear imminent. The US has no national sea level rise plan, no system to deal with displaced people. Even as the country's first climate change refugees emerge from within its own borders, the issue is very much on the sidelines. The incoming president isn't sure what the fuss is about, vacillating between calling climate change a "hoax" concocted by the Chinese or simply claiming that "nobody really knows" if it exists.

While the politics plays out, wrenching decisions will have to be made.

"Having to move elsewhere is unimaginable," said Metcalf. "As an elder told me the other day, we are not going anywhere. We've been here for centuries. But we may have to consider it, for the sake of our children and grandchildren."

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Alaska indigenous people see culture slipping away as sea ice vanishes

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In a year almost certain to be history's hottest, drastic environmental changes are taking a toll on food supply and even language in Arctic communities

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Collaborative on Health and the Environment - Yu'pik Contamination

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Collaborative on Health and the Environment - Yu'pik Contamination

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Collaborative on Health and the Environment

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CHE Cafe: Environmental Health & Justice in the Arctic

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case study of Newtok:
Yup'ik people here move seasonally to hunt seals
the school built by the US govt. (BIA), other permanent infrastructure (power plant, water treatment plant) are unsuitable for semi-nomadic life
"To be permanent and stationary requires a community to stand its ground against the will of nature"
- it used to be difficult, now, with climate change, it is impossible
requires negotiations with bureaucrats of the US govt. who are resistant to changing anything…
history of relations between Newtok and the US govt. in terms of land ownership, funding to build new town, etc.
“If we were living [their] lifestyle,” Bernice shouts, “we wouldn’t be living in this situation.”
Indigenous worldview—reciprocity, living according to the natural laws of nature

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HAKAI MAGAZINE: Government regulations forced the Yup'ik to give up their seminomadic existence. Now, as the land around them vanishes, they're puzzling through the problem of moving.

The people of Newtok were once seminomadic. It was only in the 1970s, when sod structures gave way to a modern village with houses, an airstrip and a clinic, that they became stationary.Madeline Ostrander

On a Sunday morning in late September, Tom John, a wiry fisherman with a deep, placid gaze, ushers me onto his boat, moored on a riverbank in Newtok village, in southwest Alaska. His wife, Bernice, a sturdy-shouldered woman with a voice as bright as a sparrow's, and their nine-year-old grandson clamber in after me. Our footsteps clang against the aluminum hull. Bernice gestures for me to take shelter from the damp wind in a makeshift cabin built out of wood and a tarp. I nestle in beside coats, buckets, a mug, a cracker box, a camp lantern, an empty coffee jar. "We sleep in the boat when we travel out to the wilderness," Tom explains. Virtually no roads cross this vast region known as the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta - or the "Y-K Delta" in Alaskan shorthand - an area roughly the size of the Mississippi River floodplain. People get around by boat - winding through the creeks and rivers that stripe the spongy tundra - by ATV, or by snowmobile. A handful of airlines operate flights to the Y-K Delta villages on propeller planes about as hefty as oversized mayflies; I arrived on one yesterday, after waiting two days for dense fog to lift at a rural airport.

Today we will float just a few kilometers upstream to check Tom's fish traps. He shoves a long pole into the mud and nudges the boat into the gray-blue water. Bernice chirps instructions at her grandson in Yup'ik, the native, and still the first, language spoken in this region. In slow, clipped English, Tom says, "When we get to the old village site, I'll show you where these people came from." He yanks the starter rope until the motor splutters and then roars like a jackhammer.

By "these people," Tom means the Yup'ik founders of Newtok. The Yup'ik represent one of Alaska's 11 distinct native cultural groups and have lived along the Bering Sea for perhaps 2,000 years. Until a few decades ago, they maintained a nimble, seminomadic lifestyle, migrating between seasonal camps. Beginning each April, they were on the move, camping at the coast to hunt seals and then journeying up the rivers in search of fish. Around freeze-up, they settled back into winter homes made of sod and driftwood.

Yup'ik people started to camp at Newtok in the late 1940s, after having problems with flooding at their previous winter village. They picked the site with a different priority in mind than usual: It was the farthest point upriver that a barge could reach. The federal government had mandated that all native children must receive formal education, even if it meant packing them off to boarding schools hundreds of kilometers away from family. With access to supplies from commercial ships, the community could have a school and keep its children close. By the early 1960s, Newtok's first school - built by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) - was up and running. The village grew around it; today, it's a collection of ramshackle cottages and modular office buildings, knit together by broken and slippery wooden boardwalks, and permanent infrastructure no longer suitable for nomadic life, including a power plant and a water treatment facility. By the 1970s, the people had become stationary, too.

Even in the early days at Newtok, its residents could see that the tundra was warming and thawing, and that the river was eating the land around them. In the past few years, they have become famous, heralded by the international press as "America's first climate refugees" (along with residents of two other Alaskan villages and a tiny Louisianian island community). Newtok is one of the first places in the United States that could be erased by the impacts of climate change. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that erosion will ravage much of the village within the next decade.

For 20 years, the residents of Newtok have struggled to find a way to move the entire community to safer ground. Newtok perches precariously in a space where two cultures collide. The old tradition of moving with land and seasons has faltered under the weight of permanent architecture and infrastructure forced upon the Yup'ik by modern society. To be permanent and stationary requires a community to stand its ground against the will of nature. But that's always been a difficult prospect in a place ruled by tumultuous cycles of storms and ice. Now a warming climate is making it impossible.

For the people of Newtok, relocating means turning back to traditions while still bowing to the demands of modern life. It requires raising millions of dollars; navigating complicated bureaucratic processes; and negotiating with everyone from the regional school district to the Alaska State Legislature and the U.S. Congress. And even after all of these hurdles are passed, the bad-tempered tundra weather can foil the best-laid plans, stranding boats and grounding planes, flooding, howling and raging.

That makes the move a grand experiment and the people here less like refugees and more like pioneers trying to chart a new path across the thawing landscape. To be a nomad is to move when the earth changes. Few people know how to do this skillfully. But the Yup'ik can remember.

Tom steers the boat along the Kealivik (or Kayalivik) River, a tributary of a larger, more powerful river called the Ninglick. Tawny grasses and shrubby, yellow-leaved willows stretch from the banks to the horizon as far as the eye can see. In the distance behind us, Nelson Island appears in a shroud of low clouds, its rocky ridgeline faint and blue in the haze.

The water is glassy, and the river is bloated from swallowing both rain and tundra soil. Bernice points at a muddy bank ripped open by the river. "See where it's eroded?" she shouts above the din. "It only stops when we're frozen."

Water, ice and soil form this landscape - part swamp and part permafrost. The community started reporting erosion problems to officials in the 1970s. In the early 1980s, the Alaska legislature gave Newtok money to hire engineering consultants to study the problem. The engineers noted that relatively warm temperatures were melting the bits of ice that bind the soil together, making it possible for the Ninglick River to tear apart the ground. Climate change will likely stir more intense waves and storm surges here. As the unfrozen season lengthens, the land is weaker, the river stronger and more destructive. Between 1954 and 2003, the Ninglick ate about nine American football fields' worth of the land separating the village from the water.

When it became clear that the swollen river's appetite couldn't be sated, Newtok leaders began planning in 1994 to relocate. A site about 15km (9 miles) south of Newtok called Mertarvik, meaning "place to get water" in Yup'ik, on the volcanic bluffs of Nelson Island, looked like one of the best options. More than 35 times the size of Manhattan, Nelson Island is home to about 1,200 people in four communities with long-standing cultural and familial ties to Newtok. The people of Newtok camped all summer on Nelson Island at a place called Nilikluguk, until a landslide buried it in the 1960s. The villagers still hunt on the island and stop at Mertarvik to gather water from a spring. But moving there permanently is more complicated. Y-K villages exist as islands of private land within publicly owned territory - the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, designated in 1980, encompasses most of the delta. Any exchange of land from the refuge requires federal government approval. In 2003, after years of negotiations, Congress finally authorized the transfer of Mertarvik land to the people of Newtok.

Even after they got the land, the Newtok residents still needed to raise vast sums of money and run the gauntlet of perplexing legal requirements. They banged on the doors of government bureaucrats, pleading for help. But government agencies lacked authority over or experience with moving an entire community threatened by climate change. Still, by 2006, they had assembled a committee of public servants and nonprofit organizations called the Newtok Planning Group. That same year, the federal government gave the villagers enough money to build just three of the 80 houses they would need at the new village. A year passed before the community found a barge company willing to drop housing materials in the wilderness - at a site with no landing or other commercial infrastructure - and another year to construct the homes, though they have yet to be moved into final position and remain unoccupied.

The U.S. Department of Defense led summer training exercises at Mertarvik from 2009 to 2013, both to set the new village's foundations and to teach troops how to create a base in the wilderness. Military personnel erected storage buildings, carved out a quarry, built a barge landing and laid down an access road.

In 2012, the community built three additional government-funded homes at Mertarvik. A handful of community members volunteered to move there first. They live with no running water or electricity, sometimes returning seasonally to Newtok so they are not isolated during the harshest weather. The villagers call them "the pioneers." This phase of the community's transition to Mertarvik is the "upagluteng," a word that harks back to the practice of moving with the seasons. The community requires more than $60 million for the extra houses and associated infrastructure needed to relocate the rest of its 400 or so members - and that figure doesn't include other essentials, such as a school or an airport.

In the boat, we head north, away from Nelson Island and toward the place the people of Newtok came from - the flood-prone winter village they left behind only one or two generations ago. It bears the same name as the river: Old Kayalivik. We arrive in about 20 minutes, and Tom slows the motor, which cuts out and begins to beep. "The grassy area," he says, gesturing for me to look beyond the bank to our left.

Eager to reach his fish traps, Tom doesn't let us go ashore. But across the flatlands, I can see a few tilted wooden crosses and fences marking old graves - the influence of missionaries. The land rolls up around them into a set of knolls. These are the remnants of sod houses, since reclaimed by grass. They are so crumbled and overgrown that they are barely visible from here.

The Yup'ik built winter villages centered around a sod structure called a qasgiq. Bernice explains that Old Kayalivik would have had such a building - a round, multifunctional space that served as a town hall, a ceremonial hall, a residence for men and a place for learning. The qasgiq was a space for holistic activities that maintained the community's physical and spiritual well-being.

Bernice tells me her parents and grandparents lived in this village. "I never got to experience it myself," she adds. Tom jerks the starter rope, and the motor rattles into action again. "If we were living [their] lifestyle," Bernice shouts, "we wouldn't be living in this situation."

Today, more than 20,000 people, most of them Yup'ik, inhabit the Y-K region in several dozen villages that often look like a cross between a military outpost and a fishing camp. Families live crowded in spartan, boxy, wood-framed houses - usually government-issued - some without running water or flush toilets. The early villages were often smaller, more scattered and more numerous than today's. Their culture and economy revolved around hunting and fishing.

The Yup'ik still depend on food that they can hunt, fish and gather from the tundra. When we arrive at the family's fish traps, about 15 minutes after leaving Old Kayalivik, the Johns' son-in-law has already gathered several Alaskan blackfish, now wriggling in a white plastic bucket. The men empty two more traps, while Bernice stoops in the grass to gather cranberries.

On our way back to Newtok, drizzle dampens our clothes. We dock on the riverbank, and Tom hauls up the bucket of fish, leading the way through the maze of muddy boardwalks to the family's house. Tom built the humble, one-room dwelling 20 years ago with scrap wood left behind by the BIA. Now, the couple shares it with their children and grandchildren; About a dozen people cram in, with mattresses, a washing machine, a television set and a pile of suitcases. Laundry dangles from the ceiling above a cracked linoleum floor. Tom settles onto the mattress nearest to the television set to watch football, while Bernice eats bologna and fry bread with mustard.

The longer the move takes, the worse conditions become in Newtok. It's hard to get anyone to invest in new infrastructure for a community that is about to leave. So there are no working sewer lines, and Tom and Bernice's family, like every household in the village, uses a "honey bucket." They dump the waste, usually by hand, into the river. In a storm, it sometimes washes back into the village. During my visit, the water treatment plant for the village is malfunctioning.

The slow attrition of Newtok fuels tensions in the village. By 2012, growing impatience with the pace of the move led community members to challenge the leadership of the Newtok Traditional Council, which had governed the village for 15 years. After the council refused to cede control and hold elections, the villagers organized a second council. Bernice is one of seven members of the new Newtok Village Council, and Tom works as its administrator. The BIA and other state and federal agencies have recognized it as the official governing body, but the ongoing dispute between the two councils has driven a wedge in the community. The real loss is further delay in the relocation process. When I try to contact members of the first council, they refuse to speak to me.

Modern life, with its reliance on money and bureaucracy, is divisive. Traditionally, the qasgiq gave people a center they could return to at the end of each season's journey, explains Billy Charles, a member of the Yup'ik and a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Modern villages were organized around offices, schools and infrastructure - not a qasgiq - and the old sod structures fell into disuse and decay. "Its loss separated the community, and there was no more collaboration," Charles says.

For decades, the Yup'ik have faced the forces of change: the Christian missionaries who condemned and dismantled the Yup'ik communal lifestyle; the U.S. government, which imposed different styles of organization; and policy, especially the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of the 1970s, which made native people shareholders in corporations that hold claim to land and natural resources. Now many native villages are run by a muddled set of municipal institutions, corporations and traditional and tribal councils, with overlapping authorities. Communities facing climate change have to find ways to stitch themselves back together, even as the landscape is falling apart.

Across Alaska, warming temperatures are destroying permafrost. Winters are shorter, sea ice less reliable. Storms batter the Y-K Delta frequently and flood the coastline and rivers. In years to come, as the sea level rises, that flooding will worsen. The federal government reported in 2003 that at least 184 of Alaska's 213 native villages suffer flooding and erosion, which is getting worse year by year. A more recent report indicates that 31 villages face dire threats, and 12 are considering relocation.

"The world is changing following its people," says a Yup'ik adage.

When Mary John, Tom's mother, was younger, she heard that people would cause the climate to change. I find the 79-year-old, white-haired woman bundled up in a green recliner, watching the twanging 1980 biopic "Coal Miner's Daughter." On the broken linoleum floor of her house, by the wood stove, sit bottles of yellow liquid - partly rendered seal oil, with a pungent aroma that reminds me of cheese, sweat and old socks. Mary explains most things in Yup'ik, loosely translated by local teenager Scott Charlie and Tom's brother, Teddy.

She speaks with a creaky voice, like the soughing of old trees, and repeats the phrase "long, long time ago," one of the few she knows in English. Charlie passes me a plate of white rice and chewy moose meat and explains that Mary had heard that the snow would cease falling because people had stopped following nature's laws.

There's nothing romantic in Mary's depiction of the old communities: The people "were poor. They were hungry. They had nothing." They made coats from bird skins and boots from sealskins, ate from wooden bowls, and slept on grass mattresses.

No one I spoke to in Newtok dreams of a return to a sod-house life, and today, it would be difficult to impossible for anyone to flee the modern economy even if they wanted to. When they move this time, they will take the trappings of contemporary life with them.

As the community waits to relocate, the threat of sudden catastrophe looms. In 2005, a tempest converted the village temporarily into an island, and the next big deluge could easily engulf Newtok. The village lies 80km (50 miles) by boat from any place that could provide the "barest shelter" for its residents in an emergency, notes a report by the Army Corps of Engineers.

In 2008, the community hired a Fairbanks-based green-building research institute called the Cold Climate Housing Research Center (CCHRC) to design an evacuation center for Mertarvik. A young Alaskan architect named Aaron Cooke managed the project. Blue-eyed, bearded and tattooed with a set of bands up one arm (one for each year of his life, like tree rings), Cooke dreamed of creating a set of design principles and an aesthetic customized to the rugged North. He felt that the architecture of the lower 48 had failed places like Newtok: The types of housing and heavy infrastructure that work in southerly latitudes are ill-suited to native Alaska culture and the demands of a place dominated by extreme weather.

The evacuation center that CCHRC and the community planned out would hold the entire village for at least a week in an emergency. After the community moved, it would become a gathering space, a qasgiq of sorts. Newtok residents asked for steam baths, an ample kitchen, food storage, an arts and crafts shop and a hall for feasts and dancing. The state of Alaska gave Newtok more than $6 million to build it and took charge of the construction. But a year after work began, the old Newtok Traditional Council canceled its contract with the state and insisted the council itself would oversee the process. Construction stalled, and the state has since questioned whether the council mishandled the project's finances. The foundation still stands at Mertarvik, unfinished.

In 2011, the community and the Newtok Planning Group outlined a formal vision for Mertarvik. The plan is full of hopes, both simple and ambitious. It ultimately envisions a greenhouse, a big school, a new store and windmills that spin out clean energy when the wind rushes. In these dreams, modern life and tradition become seamless and sustainable; and people adjust, even as the earth thaws, hanging on to the things that matter most: family, home, community and culture.

Last year, the Newtok Village Council asked CCHRC and Cooke to oversee a second project, an eco-house that would combine the mobility of the past with the technology of the present. The council was inspired by an eco-house CCHRC had built in the village of Atmautluak, 129km (80 miles) east of Newtok, so energy-efficient that it burned less than a third as much heating oil as the region's average home. The community asked the federal government for money to build more than 60 homes of a similar design.

CCHRC's approach is to draw up designs and then teach locals how to build the homes themselves. The organization has worked with local foremen and crews in about a dozen remote communities across Alaska to build houses tailored to harsh environments. A rural housing authority called Tagiugmiullu Nunamiullu is doing similar work with communities on Alaska's north coast.

"I can't wait to see what the houses are really like," one woman in Newtok village tells me. "I hope it'll be a lot better than this housing that we have."

The homes are destined for Mertarvik, but the community wanted the first house built in Newtok and moved later so everyone could share in the hopeful experience of learning about it and putting it together. Cooke was supposed to meet me in the village, where I would watch him lead construction. The design featured lightweight wooden trusses that would allow the house to be assembled quickly before freeze-up, thick energy-efficient insulation, an in-house water treatment system and a self-contained sanitation system to separate and desiccate human waste, which could then be burned as fuel. The house would sit on a metal frame, an adjustable foundation resembling a giant double-bladed ice skate, which could be dragged across the frozen tundra or shipped by boat to Mertarvik when the community was ready. But less than two weeks before my trip, Cooke reported that weather and transportation had thwarted his plan. When I arrived, there was nothing at the house site but the building pad - a set of heavy-duty plastic mats laid across the mud and grass beside the school. Weeks after the barge carrying the supplies for the house left Seattle, it caught fire, delaying the shipment. Then storms blocked the vessel's route through the Y-K Delta. The barge sailed past Newtok to Nome, roughly 470km (290 miles) north along the coast.

In the face of such setbacks, the community pushes forward with relentless optimism. More than a month after my visit, the barge returns. Frightened by the prospect of navigating the silt-choked route along Newtok's eroded shoreline, the boat operators drop the materials for the house at Mertarvik instead of Newtok. In January, the federal government turns down Newtok's plea for money for new houses. The planning group then receives some funding under a federal disaster program to move a dozen houses that are in good enough condition to make the journey to Nelson Island, though this will only allow the community to stage another incremental migration. Cooke plans to return imminently, now that the ice has dissipated, to build the eco-house in Mertarvik and clean up the evacuation center's foundation, so the community can contract builders to finish it. He seems unfazed. "To work in rural Alaska, you have to have thick skin and loose ideas of what deadlines are," he says.

It would be easy to see all of these mishaps as evidence of either an impossible conundrum or an outrageous fiasco. You could dismiss Newtok as an irredeemable place, a community and culture too outmoded to manage the demands of the 21st century. Perhaps because they have always lived at the extreme edge of the world, at the icy and squalling brink of impossibility, the people of Newtok seem relatively undaunted. Though they have already weathered cultural change so rapid it would give most others a kind of existential whiplash, they have held a tenacious grasp on their language and most of their cultural traditions. Yet society asks them to adapt again and again: to technological, economic and legal demands that are a mismatch with the fury and volatility of the Alaskan wilderness, and to an ever-angrier atmosphere, churned up by a polluting, global economy that the Yup'ik had almost no role in creating.

It's not clear whether our modern imaginations and technologies can enlarge enough to tackle a problem as big as climate change. From this standpoint, I wonder if the people of Newtok have an edge on the rest of us. As the world changes into something unrecognizable, this place of seals and moose, of gray rivers full of squirming fish, and of wide, frozen plains covered with geese and swans seems to ask the mind to expand, to adjust to the things you cannot force, to figure out against all odds how to find your way home.
This article was originally published in Hakai magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems. This article originally appeared under the headline Evicted by Climate Change. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

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HAKAI MAGAZINE: Government regulations forced the Yup'ik to give up their seminomadic existence. Now, as the land around them vanishes, they're puzzling through the problem of moving. On a Sunday morning in late September, Tom John, a wiry fisherman with a deep, placid gaze, ushers me onto his boat, moored on a riverbank in Newtok village, in southwest Alaska.

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$2.9M NIH grant funds study of toxic pollutants’ effects on Indigenous community in Alaska

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Researcher Amina Salamova was awarded the grant to explore the prevalence of toxic chemicals near two former defense sites in Alaska.

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Despite decades of cleanup, a former Cold War-era military station on St. Lawrence Island continues to pollute fish, and researchers say the indigenous Yupik people near the site are likely being harmed as well.

According to a new study, fish near the Northeast Cape Air Force Station - located on St. Lawrence Island, which is in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia - remain highly contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which were dumped and left behind in water and soil after the station closed in 1972.

The findings are the latest point of contention between federal officials and the community.

There are approximately 600 abandoned defense sites in Alaska that operated from World War II to the Cold War-Northeast Cape is one of the more infamous due to its extensive pollution.

However, in 2014 the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers determined that the cleanup was sufficient.

"We think they left prematurely," said Pamela Miller, a co-author of the new study and the executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics.

Miller and other researchers who tested the fish say the findings should prompt a re-thinking that all is well near Northeast Cape.

"The fish in the river are still contaminated with PCBs-coming from the defense site not the atmosphere-and the widespread health disruption in the fish is consistent with health problems that people report on the island," said Frank von Hippel, a professor and researcher at Northern Arizona University and lead author of the study published in the journal Environmental Pollution.

PCBs are highly toxic-linked to cancers, hormone disruption, developmental and immune system problems, low birth weights, brain impairment and thyroid impacts. The new study suggests that the Yupik-and other indigenous people-are living with a toxic war legacy through no fault of their own.

"Given that thousands of such Cold War remnants exist throughout the Arctic in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia and often in close proximity to indigenous villages, such health disruption may be widespread and contribute to the health disparities experienced by Arctic Indigenous Peoples," the author wrote.

Von Hippel and colleagues found that two fish species-Alaska blackfish and ninespine stickleback-living both upstream and downstream of the Northeast Cape Air Force Station in the Suqitughneq River remain highly contaminated with PCBs that came from the station.

While the fish aren't species commonly eaten on the island, Hippel and colleagues found evidence in the fish of altered DNA methylation and gene expression, as well as hypothyroid conditions-all of which is concerning for local residents as "endocrine disruption and altered gene expression in Suqitughneq River fish indicate potential health risks for [St. Lawrence Island] residents associated with Northeast Cape," the authors wrote.

Many on the island complain of families ravaged by cancers and other illnesses. Researchers can't specifically pin the health woes on widespread contamination but the tainted fish are just the latest bad news for the 1,800 square mile St. Lawrence Island, where roughly 1,500 people live.

"For many of us on the island, it's not a matter of if you'll get cancer but when," said Vi Waghiyi, a Yupik grandmother who was born in Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island.

Savoonga residents who lived, worked or camped at Northeast Cape are now displaced due to the military contamination and high rates of cancer in their families. Waghiyi's father worked at Northeast Cape and her family lived there every summer for five years.

Both of her parents had cancer-her dad died of cancer and her mother died due to complications from it.

Mixed signals

Credit: John Postlethwait

Waghiyi, who battled cancer herself along with her brother in 2015, said about 70 to 80 percent of the homes on the island eat only traditional food-such as bowhead whale, walrus and seals.

The Yupik people, however, have come to learn that such creatures - which have sustained their people for many generations - are now loaded with PCBs.

Fears of the pollution spread, especially after researchers reported that PCB levels in the blood of St. Lawrence Island Yupik people are about six to ten times higher than people in other U.S. states. Those families who used to live, work and camp in the Cape area have higher levels of PCBs than residents elsewhere on the island.

While PCBs are persistent chemicals that linger in the environment, the new study results are somewhat surprising as there has been extensive cleanup near the station.

The 4,800-acre station was used by the Air Force from the early 1950s to the early 1970s for radar coverage to prevent bomber attacks, according to the U.S. Army.

Between 1985 and 2014, around $120 million was spent on site cleanup including removing old storage containers and contaminated soil. In 2014 the Army Corps, which spearheaded cleanup, pulled out.

In an emailed response John Budnik, an Army Corps spokesman, said the Corps continues to monitor groundwater every five years and conduct "periodic reviews" to ensure the health of people and the environment are still being protected.

He said in 2016, due to community concerns, the Corps did additional sampling of the sediment and surface water in the Suqitughneq River. "The sampling results showed that PCBs were not detected in the Suqitughneq River sediment," he said.

The people of St. Lawrence have been receiving mixed signals on the safety of Northeast Cape. In July of this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services came out with a health report for people near Northeast Cape.

The agency found that eating Northeast Cape fish in the summer months, eating greens and berries year round, "accidentally ingesting soil for half the year" or drinking Suqitughneq River surface water year-round are all not expected to harm people's health.

"Tribal members should continue to eat fish and marine mammals from traditional seasonal fishing grounds at Northeast Cape and other fishing and hunting areas because of the health and cultural benefits," the report added.

The tribe was unequivocal in its denouncement of the report. "We do not accept the ... health consultations because they are so poorly done, scientifically unacceptable, and because the agency has disrespected and left out our knowledge," wrote Delbert Pungowiyi, tribal president of the Native Village of Savoonga, and Eddie Ungott, tribal president of the Native Village of Gambell, in a letter to the feds.

Miller called the report "irresponsible, almost criminal."

"You can walk in the river and see oil plumes," she added. "The fish have never recovered."

Von Hippel shared his findings with the federal agency when they were drafting the health consultation report and he said they wouldn't use it because people don't eat the fish that von Hippel and colleagues tested.

"We studied a low trophic level fish, any fish people are eating are going to have higher concentrations than these have," von Hippel said.

The Department of Health and Human Services would not comment on von Hippel's findings.

"Environmental violence"

Credit Samarys Seguinot Medina, ACAT

Von Hippel said the problem of federal neglect is much broader than just this one report, adding that the Army Corps and other agencies should take into account the biological impacts on species such as fish into consideration when deciding whether or not to continue cleanup, instead of relying solely of the chemical levels in dirt and water.

Budnik said the Corps' next scheduled groundwater monitoring effort will be in 2018 and the department will invite a member of the local tribal government or a community representative to observe.

It's not easy to clean up chemicals such as PCBs. Sometimes digging them up to clean can in itself spur worse pollution.

However, Miller and others are pushing for renewed federal cleanup efforts such as identifying potential ongoing PCB sources and possibly advanced technology using microbes to more quickly degrade the chemicals where they sit.

But for now, the site remains neglected.

"The damage has been detrimental to not only our lands and waters but to our health and well-being," Waghiyi said. "We are being contaminated without our consent. It's environmental violence."

Related Articles Around the Web

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Cold War-era military site continues to pollute fish and Yupik people

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Despite decades of cleanup, a former Cold War-era military station on St. Lawrence Island continues to pollute fish, and researchers say the indigenous Yupik people near the site are likely being harmed as well. According to a new study, fish near the Northeast Cape Air Force Station - located on St.

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Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971
- divided the state into 12 regions
- based on common heritage and shared interests of the indigenous peoples within areas
1998 —> US govt. federally recognized 200 Alaskan Native tribes

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Alaska is a vast state with a relatively low population. Alaska covers over 400 million acres, which is more than two times the area of Texas. Meanwhile, the population of the state hovers around only 700,000 residents. There are nearly 200 communities across the state, which vary in population from less than 20 to roughly 300,000. The majority of Alaska communities are accessible only by boat or plane. Alaska Native people make up around 15 percent of the population of Alaska.

Like any other state, Alaska has levels of government and land ownership: federal, state, municipal, and city. The passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971 added an additional layer of land ownership across Alaska. Additionally, in 1998 the federal government officially recognized over 200 Indian tribes in Alaska (entirely separate entities from Alaska Native corporations), which opened the doors for a government-to-government relationships between those tribes and the federal government.

ANCSA divided the state into twelve regions defined by the common heritage and shared interests of the indigenous peoples within each geographic area. The regional boundaries do not represent land owned by the Alaska Native regional corporations; instead, they established which of the twelve Alaska Native regional corporations would serve the people, villages, and communities within that area. Within each region of Alaska there is a complex landscape of governance, land ownership, roles, and relationships. While there is overlap in who the organizations represent, each entity plays a distinct role. Individuals and businesses alike experience the intricate network of Alaska Native regional corporations, Alaska Native village corporations, federally recognized tribes, city and borough governments, and Alaska Native regional non-profit organizations.

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The Twelve Regions - ANCSA Regional Association

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Alaska is a vast state with a relatively low population. Alaska covers over 400 million acres, which is more than two times the area of Texas. Meanwhile, the population of the state hovers around only 700,000 residents. There are nearly 200 communities across the state, which vary in population from less than 20 to roughly [...]

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a complete list of Alaska Native list of the communities and corporation names within a specific Regional Native Corporation.

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In October 1966, more than 400 Alaska Natives representing 17 Native organizations gathered for a three-day conference to address Alaska Native aboriginal land rights. A statewide organization was formed, with non-profit articles of incorporation for The Alaska Federation of Natives signed in early 1967. For its first five years, AFN worked primarily to achieve passage of a just and fair land settlement. On December 18, 1971 the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law.

In the early and mid 1970's, AFN provided technical assistance to help Alaska Natives implement ANCSA and set up the corporations mandated by the Act. Since then, AFN has evolved to meet the changing needs of Alaska Natives and to respond to new challenges as they emerge, working to address and protect Native interests at the state and federal levels.

AFN was instrumental in the development and passage of federal laws including the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, and the 1987 Amendments to ANCSA (the "1991 legislation"). At the state level, AFN plays an active role in the legislative process, promoting laws, policies and programs in areas such as health, education, resource development, labor and government. In the late 1980's, AFN turned its attention to social, tribal and economic issues.

Pre-AFN

Prior to the formation of AFN, various Native groups lobbied for rights to their aboriginal lands. Immediately following the sale of Alaska to the United States, the Tlingit Indians of Southeast Alaska protested the sale, arguing that they were the owners of the land they occupied. In 1912, the Tanana chiefs asserted title to their lands in interior Alaska after white settlers began to infringe on their territory. The Tlingit and Haidas began efforts to regain their land during a meeting in 1929. The Tlingit and Haidas sued the United States in 1935 (when Congress passed a law allowing them to sue the United States for lands lost), and won the case in 1959, receiving monetary compensation in 1968.

The 1960's

In the 1960's, Alaska Natives addressed the urgency to organize and fight for their lands. What began in 1961 as an effort by Natives to preserve their land rights concluded with the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). The Statehood Act did not recognize aboriginal title to Native lands, and the new state was about to select more than 103 million acres from the public domain. In response to the imminent threat of lost lands, Alaska Natives began forming rural, urban, and regional organizations. Collaboration between these organizations was hindered, due to the long distances between rural villages and urban Alaska, major cultural differences, and mistrust among Native groups. Howard Rock, an Inupiaq from Point Hope, formed a newspaper, the Tundra Times, in 1962 as a means of reporting policies and goals of Native organizations, and as a source of information about Native issues. Soon, the paper became the medium through which Alaska Natives were able to communicate and rally together concerning common concerns.

AFN Founded in 1966

The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) was organized largely in response to the Alaska land claims issue that re-emerged after Alaska Statehood in 1958. After statehood, the state of Alaska was poised to select 100 million acres of land. Much of Alaska's over 365 million acres of land had been occupied by Alaska Natives for thousands of years. AFN was the first statewide group organized to advocate for Native land claims. Early AFN leaders knew if they did not strive to retain aboriginal lands, they would be in danger of losing their homelands forever.

First Meeting

The Athabaskan president of the Cook Inlet Native Association, Emil Notti, called for the first statewide meeting of Alaska Natives and their organizations. A major turning point that aided the formation of AFN was the assistance of the Chief of Tyonek village, Albert Kaloa Jr. Tyonek had recently been awarded $13 million dollars from oil leases on its reserve, and the village provided most of the financing for the first AFN meeting. On October 18, 1966, 17 Native organizations and over 250 people attended the first AFN meeting. Many of AFN's early leaders were young and inexperienced, yet they successfully worked towards the passage of ANCSA.

Organizational Structure

AFN organized as a non-profit to solicit government program funds, and eventually came to operate education, manpower training, housing and health programs. At the same time, AFN worked tirelessly to press their claims for lands. AFN was structured in a way that represented, and continues to represent, the diverse Native groups within Alaska at the state and federal levels. In 1966, the president and the board were created to represent the different Native groups within Alaska including tribal organizations, regional non-profits, individual village tribes, urban Native groups, and tribes that had federal reservations.

First Resolutions

At AFN's first convention, recommendations of the land claims committee, chaired by Willie Hensley, were unanimously approved by the conference. The land claims committee recommended that the Department of the Interior freeze all disposals of federal land pending a land claims settlement, that Congress should pass a law to settle claims, and that Alaska Natives should be consulted before the passage of any such law. The conference also made specific recommendations for legislation pertaining to land already taken by the state at current market value. In addition to achieving a united stand regarding land claims, the meeting was important in identifying Natives as a significant political force.

The Second Meeting

To continue the work of the Alaska Federation of Native Associations, the name temporarily adopted for the statewide group, an Aleut from St. George, Flore Lekanoff, was elected chairman. When the group met for a second time (early in 1967) it emerged with a new name, the Alaska Federation of Natives, and a full-time president, Emil Notti.

AFN and Land Claims

The first major task of early AFN was to settle the land claims. Early leaders traveled tirelessly around the country speaking about their cause. Soon, the land claims issue was brought to the United States Congress. Arthur Goldberg, a former supreme court justice, and Ramsey Clarke, the Attorney General under President Kennedy, counseled AFN leaders in how to proceed with their land claims. They helped bring legitimacy to AFN's cause and gain the attention of key leaders in the Congress and White House. In a speech given in July 2001, Willie Hensley stated, "What gave AFN the ability to move the Nation was the strong spirits of its membership and the ability to focus on the key issues of the day. . . We faced pressures from state politicians as well as members of Congress and our own internal warfare. We persevered, knowing that if we gave up due to our egos being hurt or our issues being ignored, that our people would be the ones to suffer." As a fledgling organization, it was able to convince the White House and Congress of the fairness and justice in conveying 40 million acres and $1 billion to Alaska Native peoples.

Sources:

Arnold, Robert. Alaska Native Land Claims. Anchorage: The Alaska Native Foundation, 1976.

Willie Hensley's Speech to the First Annual Native Hawaiian-Alaska Native Summit, July 6, 2001

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In October 1966, more than 400 Alaska Natives representing 17 Native organizations gathered for a three-day conference to address Alaska Native aboriginal land rights. A statewide organization was formed, with non-profit articles of incorporation for The Alaska Federation of Natives signed in early 1967.

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ANCSA
"divided the state into twelve distinct regions and mandated the creation of twelve private, for-profit Alaska Native regional corporations and over 200 private, for-profit Alaska Native village corporations"
fed govt. also compensated corporations $962.5 million
encouraged oil/gas extraction/exploration
Trans-Alaska pipeline system
economically beneficial but compromised so many traditional ways of life for different tribes

Alaska became a state in 1959
oil was discovered in AK in the 1960s
have to be 1/4 Alaska Native to be a shareholder (blood quantum)

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The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) was a new approach by Congress to federal Indian policy. ANCSA extinguished aboriginal land title in Alaska. It divided the state into twelve distinct regions and mandated the creation of twelve private, for-profit Alaska Native regional corporations and over 200 private, for-profit Alaska Native village corporations. ANCSA also mandated that both regional and village corporations be owned by enrolled Alaska Native shareholders. Unlike in the lower-48 states where the reservation system was the norm, ANCSA departed significantly - its foundation was in Alaska Native corporate ownership.

Through ANCSA, the federal government transferred 44 million acres - land to be held in corporate ownership by Alaska Native shareholders - to Alaska Native regional and village corporations. The federal government also compensated the newly formed Alaska Native corporations a total of $962.5 million for land lost in the settlement agreement.

ANCSA had expansive effects, reaching far beyond Alaska Native people. The passage of ANCSA allowed for federal lease sales to move forward across Alaska, with proceeds going to the federal government. Oil and gas exploration on the North Slope of Alaska and the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System created thousands of jobs and pumped revenues into the state coffers eventually leading to the creation of the Alaska Permanent Fund. Since the passage of ANCSA, various industries have been strengthened in Alaska, creating jobs in both the private and public sectors. By creating Alaska Native-owned, for-profit corporations, ANCSA also brought additional economic diversity to the state that has benefited, either directly or indirectly, all Alaskans.

To understand ANCSA, it is important to understand the history of aboriginal land claims in Alaska. More than 100 years prior to the enactment of ANCSA, Alaska was purchased from Russia. From the time of purchase until the passage of ANCSA, aboriginal land claims were not definitively addressed by the federal government.

Timeline of Significant Events: How ANCSA Came To Be

Below is a timeline that outlines how failure by Congress to address aboriginal land claims in decades worth of legislation led to the eventual passage of ANCSA in 1971. Federal legislation from the Treaty of Cession to the Statehood Act did not explicitly address aboriginal land claims, leaving it to finally be dealt with by Congress 104 years after Alaska was purchased from Russia.

1867: The Treaty of Cession The United States purchases Alaska from Russia

In 1867, the Treaty of Cession was signed. The treaty outlined the terms for the sale of Alaska from Russia to the United States. The United States paid $7.2 million for Alaska.

The Alaska Native peoples who had inhabited Alaska for thousands of years disagreed with Russia right to sell their land. The Russian claim to aboriginal lands of Alaska was under the Laws of Discovery, which state the two conditions aboriginal people can lose their land: 1) through a just war, or 2) by giving up specific land in a treaty. Neither of these conditions applied to the Alaska Native people, which left land claims unresolved when the purchase took place.

1884: The First Organic Act for Alaska becomes a civil and judicial district of the United States

When the Organic Act of 1884 was passed by Congress, it established the civil and judicial district of Alaska. Status as a civil and judicial district allowed the non-indigenous residents of Alaska to stand up a civil government, which included a district governor, a district court with a judge and court clerk, four commissioners, and a United States marshal.

The Organic Act of 1884 marginally addressed land issues relating to mines and mineral privileges. The act also specifically mentioned Alaska indigenous peoples (calling them Indians) and their occupation of the land, but did not resolve their land claims. The act states,

The Indians or other persons in said district shall not be disturbed in the possession of any lands actually in their use or occupation or now claimed by them but the terms under which such persons may acquire title to such lands is reserved for future legislation by Congress

1912: The Second Organic Act for Alaska becomes a territory of the United States

The Second Organic Act established Alaska as an incorporated United States territory, which allowed Alaska to elect a territorial delegate to Congress, elect legislators to a territorial legislature, and elect a territorial governor. The Second Organic Act outlined the laws for territorial elections and the purview of elected officials.

The Second Organic Act included no specific language addressing aboriginal land claims, leaving them to be dealt with by Congress in the future.

1959: The Alaska Statehood Act of 1958 Alaska becomes the 49th state of the United States

In 1958, Congress passed the Statehood Act, which made Alaska the 49th state of United States, effective on January 3, 1959. The Statehood Act established a state government, defined elected representation for the state in Washington, D.C., and outlined the types of public lands that the state could select.

Again, the Statehood Act did not specifically address comprehensive land claims by Alaska indigenous peoples. The Statehood Act did, however, declare that the

State must disclaim all right and title to lands and other property not granted or confirmed to the State including right or title which may be held by any Indians, Eskimos or Aleuts (natives) or is held by the United States in trust for said natives.

The act went on to state that any land that may belong to natives shall be under the jurisdiction and control of the United States.

Because Congress did not resolve the issue of aboriginal land claims outright, it was around this time that Alaska Native leaders began to organize into groups to represent their respective regions as they sought resolution to their land claims.

1966: The Alaska Federation of Native is formed to advocate for a land claims settlement

The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) formed in 1966 in response to the land claims issues that were being brought forth by various organized Alaska Native groups. AFN consolidated the various Alaska Native groups efforts and became the statewide organization to advocate for aboriginal land claims.

AFN earned an early victory in 1966 when then-Secretary of Interior Stuart Udall imposed a land freeze. AFN delegates pressed for the land freeze to stop land selections and conveyances across the state, which were viewed by Alaska Native people as encroachment on their lands. By freezing all land conveyances within Alaska, Secretary Udall forced the State of Alaska, the federal government, and the Alaska Native people to resolve aboriginal land claims before any further land selections could take place.

The late 1960s: Commercial quantities of oil are discovered on the North Slope of Alaska

In the late 1960s, commercial quantities of oil were discovered on the North Slope of Alaska. To get the oil to market via the Gulf of Alaska, it first needed to traverse the state from the North Slope all the way down to Valdez. The proposed Trans-Alaska Pipeline system (TAPS) would need to cross over land that various Alaska Native groups claimed. With Alaska Native land claims still unsettled and the land freeze in place, the proposed construction of TAPS was put on hold. Further oil exploration and development also stalled.

These circumstances put Secretary Udall land freeze in the spotlight in both Washington, D.C. and in Alaska. The oil and gas industry and early environmentalist organizations entered the land claims debate, adding more voices and complexity.

1971: The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 Federal government explicitly addresses aboriginal land claims in Alaska

After intense internal negotiations among the various Alaska Native groups and between Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) delegates and representatives of state and federal government, Congress finally passed Alaska Native land claims legislation in 1971. On December 18, 1971, President Richard Nixon addressed the delegates of AFN by phone and informed them that he had just signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act into law.

At the time of its passage, ANCSA was entirely different than any previous federal Indian policy. ANCSA extinguished aboriginal land claims in Alaska and mandated a for-profit model with land title under corporate ownership. Upon the passage of ANCSA, a new era began for Alaska Native people. Many of the early leaders of the Alaska Native regional corporations had never worked in a corporate business and few had college degrees, let alone advanced degrees in business or law. Despite the humble beginnings, Alaska Native regional corporations have become an integral part of the Alaska economy.

December 18, 1971 marked a new era for federal Indian policy. It was also a significant day for Alaska Native peoples on an individual level. Several provisions of ANCSA affected individuals in ways that neither they nor the federal government really understood at the time.

ANCSA original language addressed the specific congressional mandates of Alaska Native corporations: government oversight of the corporations, eligibility requirements to enroll shareholders, the land selection process, redistribution of monetized natural resource wealth among regional and village corporations, and more. There have also been significant amendments to ANCSA since its passage, most notably the 1991 amendments.

The Twelve Regions, a Federal Indian Reservation, and a Thirteenth Regional Corporation

ANCSA divided Alaska into twelve regions defined by the common heritage and shared interests of the indigenous peoples within each geographic area. The regional boundaries established which people, villages, and communities that each Alaska Native regional corporation would serve. The boundaries do not directly represent land ownership; they did, however, define the areas in which each regional corporation could select lands to be conveyed under the provisions ANCSA. Today, within each region there is a complex landscape of governance, land ownership, roles, and relationships.

At the time Congress passed ANCSA, the Metlakatla Indian Community opted out of the settlement agreement. The community instead chose to be designated as a federal Indian reservation. The Annette Island reserve is the only federal Indian reservation in the state of Alaska.

In 1975, ANCSA was amended to create a thirteenth Alaska Native regional corporation, known as the 13th Regional Corporation. The 13th Regional Corporation was established to ensure that Alaska Native people who were not permanent residents of Alaska but who were otherwise eligible to enroll in an Alaska Native regional corporation were included in the land claims settlement. Unlike the original Alaska Native regional corporations, the 13th Regional Corporation did not receive any land conveyances under ANCSA; therefore, it cannot contribute any 7(i) funds; it is, however, eligible to receive 7(i) funds from the other Alaska Native Regional corporations. In 2013, the 13th Regional Corporation was involuntarily dissolved by the State of Alaska when their registered agent resigned.

Original Shareholder Enrollment (1971-1991)

Each Alaska Native regional and village corporation had to enroll shareholders within two years from the date that ANCSA was signed into law. This was no small task; Alaska Native people were spread across vast distances in every region, often with no roads connecting homes and communities. When the two-year deadline arrived, the twelve Alaska Native regional corporations had enrolled just over 64,000 original shareholders, each of whom received 100 shares.

The original language in ANCSA defined the eligibility requirements for enrollment in an Alaska Native corporation. It was not until the 1991 amendments to ANCSA were passed that individual Alaska Native corporations, through a vote of their shareholders, could amend their articles of incorporation to expand shareholder enrollment eligibility.

In particular, two requirements of original shareholder eligibility are noteworthy: blood quantum and date of birth.

ANCSA defined native as: a citizen of the United States who is a person of one-fourth degree or more Alaska Indian (including Tsimshian Indians not enrolled in the Metlakatla Indian Community) Eskimo, or Aleut blood, or combination thereof. Meaning only Alaska Native people of blood quantum were eligible to be enrolled in an Alaska Native corporation (regional or village). ANCSA did define other ways around this.

Only those Alaska Native people of one-fourth blood quantum who were born on or before 11:59 p.m. on December 18, 1971 were eligible to enroll in Alaska Native regional and village corporations. Those born on December 19, 1971 or after were not eligible.

Land Selection Process

ANCSA language stated that Alaska Native regional and village corporations would be conveyed a total of nearly 44 million acres of land in Alaska, about ten percent of the state. However, there were large tracts of land across all twelve regions that the federal government had already claimed for strategic purposes or conveyed to other entities. Because those lands were not eligible for selection by Alaska Native corporations, the corporations were compensated $962.5 million for lost lands.

The land selection process defined in ANCSA was different for Alaska Native village corporations and Alaska Native regional corporations. Alaska Native village corporations were to select lands on which any part of the village was located. For the most part, Alaska Native village corporations received title to the surface rights of those lands. In contrast, Alaska Native regional corporations were to select any lands from within the larger regional boundaries defined in ANCSA. Alaska Native regional corporations received title to the subsurface estate of much of the land they selected. Consequently, most of the Alaska Native regional corporations balanced their land selections between areas that had significant cultural or subsistence value and areas that had potential economic value for natural resource development.

Since the passage of ANCSA, some Alaska Native corporations still have not received their full conveyance of land. In addition, a number of Alaska Native corporations have engaged in land transfers with state and federal agencies and with other Alaska Native corporations, resulting in a mix of surface and subsurface rights owned by regional and village corporations.

The Revenue Sharing Provisions of ANCSA: Sections 7(i) and 7(j)

From the beginning of the land claims debate there was recognition that some regions were richer in natural resources and therefore had more potential for economic development. Congress and various Alaska Native groups felt a mechanism was needed to address the issue of regional natural resource haves and have nots. In the years leading up to the passage of ANCSA, several iterations of the land claims bill introduced in Congress attempted to address the disparity in natural resource wealth between the regions when calculating land conveyances and compensation for land lost.

The revenue sharing provisions that ultimately passed as a part of ANCSA were contained in sections 7(i) and 7(j). The goal of the sections is to ensure that all Alaska Native corporations, and accordingly their shareholders, benefit from revenues derived from natural resources developed on ANCSA lands. While typical for-profit corporations would balk at these provisions, many people believe that without sections 7(i) and 7(j), ANCSA would not have passed.

The original language of Section 7(i) states:

Seventy per centum of all revenues received by each Regional Corporation from the timber resources and subsurface estate patented to it pursuant to this Act shall be divided annually by the Regional Corporation among all twelve Regional Corporations organized pursuant to this section according to the number of Natives enrolled in each region pursuant to Section 5.

Section 7(i) requires that any annual revenues that an Alaska Native regional corporation receives from ANCSA lands (e.g., from timber resources or natural resources in subsurface estate) must be shared in a 70/30 split. The allocation means that 70 percent of the revenue is dispersed to the other Alaska Native regional corporations and the remaining 30 percent of the revenue is kept by the Alaska Native regional corporation that developed the natural resource.

Section 7(j) ensures revenues from natural resource wealth are also shared with Alaska Native village corporations. Section 7(j) directs Alaska Native regional corporations to disperse 50 percent of the Section 7(i) revenues they receive to Alaska Native village corporations within the region. Unlike Section 7(i), Section 7(j) does not require any revenue sharing distribution from Alaska Native village corporations to other village corporations or to regional corporations.

The original language of Section 7(j) states, in part:

Not less than 45% of funds from such sources during the first five-year period, and 50% thereafter, shall be distributed among the Village Corporations in the region and the class of stockholders who are not residents of those Villages, as provided in subsection to it.

To address issues that were not foreseen at the time ANCSA was passed, Section 7(i) has been amended a few times to address issues that have arisen since 1971.

Despite the ongoing debate about specifics of the revenue sharing provisions, the redistribution of natural resource wealth has generally had positive effects on all regions. In 2018, the ANCSA Regional Association commissioned a report by the McDowell Group on the economic impacts of sections 7(i) and 7(j) of ANCSA. Some key findings of that report are:

Every Alaska Native regional corporation has had periods when it received more 7(i) payments than it paid out so each of the twelve Alaska Native regional corporations (and therefore the shareholders of each corporation) has been a Section 7(i) beneficiary

The redistribution of wealth among the regions that receive 7(i) revenues creates a leveling effect in economic activity that otherwise would not occur

*McDowell Group A summary of the economic benefits of ANCSA section7(i) and 7(j)
The 1991 Amendments

Several original provisions of ANCSA that dealt with stocks and shareholder eligibility were set to expire in 1991, twenty years after passage of the bill. Expiration of the provisions presupposed that between 1971 and 1991, Alaska Native shareholders would gain a strong grasp of corporate ownership and activities and be ready to make significant decisions that would potentially impact Alaska Native ownership of the government-created corporations.

However, as the conclusion of the twenty years neared, the overall profitability and success of Alaska Native corporations was not where Congress had anticipated it to be. Therefore, in 1988, Congress passed amendments to ANCSA addressing provisions relating to the sale of stock, exemption from federal securities laws, and the expansion of eligibility of shareholders.

The series of amendments was passed in 1988 but because all amendments addressed changes to ANCSA that were to occur in 1991, they are often referred to as the 1991 amendments. While ANCSA has been amended numerous times since its passage, the 1991 amendments have been the most significant to Alaska Native corporations and their shareholders.

Prohibition of the Sale of Stock

As originally written in 1971, ANCSA had a twenty-year prohibition on the sale of Alaska Native corporation stock. In other words, stock in Alaska Native corporations could not be sold until 1991. In 1988, ANCSA was amended to prohibit the sale of stock in perpetuity, unless the shareholders of an Alaska Native corporation voted to amend the articles of incorporation of their corporation to remove restrictions on stock sales. To date, no Alaska Native corporation has amended their articles of incorporation to allow for the sale of stock.

While stock cannot be sold or traded, original stock (i.e., stock issued to those born on or before December 18, 1971) can be gifted, willed, or bequeathed.

The Exemption from Some Federal Securities Laws

Originally, ANCSA exempted Alaska Native corporations from some federal securities laws for twenty years. Because Alaska Native corporation stocks were not eligible to be sold or disposed of during the twenty-year period after the passage of ANCSA, many federal securities laws did not apply.

Because the 1991 amendments extended the prohibition of the sale of stock into perpetuity, accordingly the exemption of Alaska Native corporations from certain federal securities laws was also extended.

Expansion of Shareholder Eligibility

To individual Alaska Native people, one of the most significant of the 1991 amendments (and a subsequent amendment in 1992) was the expansion of shareholder eligibility. The amendments addressed the eligibility of Alaska Native people who missed the original enrollment deadline and the date-of-birth cutoff of December 18, 1971.

The initial amendment allowed a corporation shareholders to vote to amend its articles of incorporation to add new shareholders. In 1992, an amendment clarified and expanded how shareholders of an Alaska Native corporation could allow for additional shares to be issued to descendants of Alaska Native shareholders. The 1992 amendment also removed the blood quantum requirement originally set by ANCSA.

For an Alaska Native corporation to expand shareholder eligibility and allow for additional shares to be issued, the shareholders of that specific Alaska Native corporation must vote to amend their articles of incorporation. To date, six of the twelve Alaska Native regional corporations original shareholders have voted to open their rolls to those born after December 18, 1971, resulting in a larger shareholder base.

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About the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act - ANCSA Regional Association

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Introduction The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) was a new approach by Congress to federal Indian policy. ANCSA extinguished aboriginal land title in Alaska. It divided the state into twelve distinct regions and mandated the creation of twelve private, for-profit Alaska Native regional corporations and over 200 private, for-profit Alaska Native village [...]

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founded in 1971 with the ANCSA
private, for-profit corporations owned by Alaska Native shareholders

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Entities Operating in the Twelve Regions

To understand the complex landscape of Alaska Native representation, it is important to learn the differences between Alaska Native corporations, Alaska Native regional non-profit organizations, and tribes.

Tribes located in Alaska do not have a land base (e.g. reservations). Through ANCSA, Alaska Native corporations hold title to roughly 44 million acres of land held in private corporate ownership. Because land ownership and the governmental relationship are held by two different and distinct entities that represent Alaska Native people, the differences in Alaska are magnified when compared to Lower 48 tribes.

Alaska Native Regional Corporations
Number currently operating in Alaska: 12
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 extinguished aboriginal land title and mandated the creation of private, for-profit corporations owned by Alaska Native shareholders. Alaska Native regional corporations are owned by over 140,000 Alaska Native shareholders and hold title to nearly 27 million acres of land across Alaska. Alaska Native regional corporations manage the land for the benefit of their shareholders.

Alaska Native Regional Non-profit Organizations
Number in Alaska: 12
Alaska Native regional non-profit organizations were created to provide social services and health care for Alaska Native peoples. The specific objectives of the organizations vary but generally focus on health, cultural, and educational opportunities. Through federal compacts, grant funding, support from the regional corporations, collaboration with village non-profit organizations, and other means, the regional non-profits deliver a range of services. Programs include physical and behavioral health care, scholarships for Alaska Native students, sponsorship of cultural events, Alaska Native language preservation efforts, protection of sites with historic or religious importance, and more.

Communities, Cities, and Boroughs

Communities
Number in Alaska: over 160, including 114 city governments
The State of Alaska has three classes of city governments: home rule, first class, and second class. The classification of a city government determines what governance structure must be followed within its boundaries. There are 114 organized city governments in Alaska ranging in population size from less than 100 to more than 270,000.

Boroughs
Number in Alaska: 18
The State of Alaska has five classes of borough governments. Whether the borough is organized or unorganized and its classification determines what type of governance structure must be followed within its boundaries.

Alaska Native Village Corporations
Number currently operating in Alaska: 174
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 extinguished aboriginal land title and mandated the creation of private, for-profit corporations owned by Alaska Native shareholders. Alaska Native village corporations are owned by Alaska Native shareholders and hold title to nearly 17 million acres of land across Alaska. Alaska Native village corporations manage the land for the benefit of their shareholders.

Federally Recognized Tribes
Number in Alaska: 229
Federally recognized tribes possess certain inherent rights of self-government (i.e., tribal sovereignty). The designation comes with specific responsibilities, powers, limitations, and obligations. Most federally recognized tribes in the lower 48 are able to exercise their powers within a land base (e.g. reservations). Alaska federally recognized tribes are unique because aboriginal land title was extinguished through ANCSA and reservations were not created. Federally recognized tribes are eligible to receive certain federal benefits, services, and protections, such as funding and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Federal Indian Reservations
Number in Alaska: 1
A federal Indian reservation is an area of land reserved for a tribe under treaty or other agreement with the United States. Generally, federal Indian reserves are exempt from state jurisdiction, except when Congress specifically authorizes such jurisdiction. There are over 320 Indian land areas in the United States that are administered as federal Indian reservations; however, as evidenced in Alaska, not every federally recognized tribe has a reservation. There is only one federal Indian reservation in Alaska, the Annette Island Reserve: http://www.metlakatla.com/

Prominent Alaska Native Cultures
Number in Alaska: 11
Alaska Natives belong to many diverse cultures, including Inupiaq, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, Athabascan, Yupik, Cupik, Sugpiaq, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Unangax. Within the eleven distinct cultures, there are various subcultures with differences in dialect, cultural activities, and traditional ways of life. Among the eleven major cultures, over 20 different languages are spoken.

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Overview of Entities Operating in the Twelve Regions - ANCSA Regional Association

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Entities Operating in the Twelve Regions To understand the complex landscape of Alaska Native representation, it is important to learn the differences between Alaska Native corporations, Alaska Native regional non-profit organizations, and tribes. Tribes located in Alaska do not have a land base (e.g. reservations).

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2 formerly used defense sites (FUDS) on St. Lawrence Island
near town of Gambell during and following WWII
Airforce site —> 1948-56
- abandonned
similar site constructed on Northeast Cape
White Alice Communication Site (NEC) —> operated 1957-72

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ACAT works with communities, implementing effective strategies to limit their exposure to toxic substances and to protect and restore the ecosystems that sustain them and their way of life.

We work to eliminate the production and release of harmful chemicals by industry and military sources, ensure the public's right-to-know, achieve policies based on the precautionary principle, and support the rights of Indigenous peoples.

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ACAT works with communities, implementing effective strategies to limit their exposure to toxic substances and to protect and restore the ecosystems that sustain them and their way of life. We work to eliminate the production and release of harmful chemicals by industry and military sources, ensure the public's right-to-know, achieve policies based on the precautionary principle, and support the rights of Indigenous peoples.