Tag: Alaska Native Community Resiliency

Get Hal Shepherd’s new book “Return to Ekeunick’s Time – Defending Waters and Tradition in the Arctic”

One of the primary motivations

behind the campaign for Alaska’s statehood was the impact of large canneries on salmon that used fish traps and wheels to drain returning runs. At the same time, due to the lack of the Territory’s regulatory authority and because federal authorities were under the control of corporate interests, these canneries avoided paying taxes and laws to protect the fishery.

Return to Ekunick’s Time looks at how, as the 49th state to enter the union, Alaska had the benefit of observing the mistakes made by other states that were beginning to experience environmental degradation due to industrial extraction. As such, in the early years after statehood, the State was a leader in creating and enforcing environmental policy which, together with the emerging activism of Alaska Native communities, played a part in the birth of the nationwide environmental movement.

Eventually, however, the lure of the riches, particularly from the discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay, became too much for Alaska’s political leadership, and over the past 50 years, the extraction industry has dominated state policies. Today, under a series of conservative politicians in power at both the federal and state levels (as championed particularly by the former Trump administration), resource extraction corporations are once again having substantial impacts on water and subsistence resources relied upon by Alaska Native communities.

At the same time, after a campaign led by powerful industrial interests and conservative politicians to discredit the environmental movement, today tribal leaders and everyday citizens in Alaska are hailing a new era of protecting water resources by emphasizing traditional values and management strategies in the face of existential threats from climate change and politics. According to Alaska Native author William Oquilluck, during the time of Ekeunick – the legendary leader of the Inupiat people in ancient times – “the Eskimo’s ancestors did not use their minds like later times when they invented tools, clothes, houses, boats, and weapons. They had no worries about living.”

Could the return to traditional values as a means of addressing the impacts of climate change and mismanagement of natural resources, help to move the needle towards a return to times when Alaska Native people will no longer have to worry about the survival of their traditions and culture?

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Imagine A Day Without Water in the Arctic

The theme of last year’s World Water Day was “Imagine a Day Without Water,” which focused attention on how we would manage for a single day without the many benefits that water brings to our lives. It appears that many coastal communities in Alaska, do not need to “imagine” not having access to running water because they are just one step away from the breaking down of their water systems due to the often intricate relationship of such systems to other critical infrastructure.

A case in point -, to work with the tribal staff on an instream flow data collection project. While waiting for my flight to Nome at the airport in Anchorage, during a business trip to Elim a couple of weeks ago, I received a text from out Project Coordinator, stating that “someone ran into a power pole and the entire village has no electricity or running water.”

While I was staying in the Village and the water was still out, I had a conversation with one of the janitors at the Aniguiin School, who said that once the power line was knocked out, “everything went down like a dominos because without electricity, the water pump blew a fuse. The city ordered a new pump but there’s no telling how long it will take to get here.” At the same time, people couldn’t rely on nearby creeks for drinking water which were frozen due to the temperature being in the teens.

Meanwhile city and school employees were working tirelessly to find back-up water for the school and other critical facilities. Ultimately, it took 5 days for the part to arrive before running water could be restored. But several days later, some were still boiling water because of worries about sanitation.

Last week’s situation in Elim is vivid example of the vulnerability of small Alaska communities to the impacts of climate change on water infrastructure. This winter, for example, the Arctic experienced the warmest March on record, and the second consecutive winter with extremely low levels of ice in the Bering Sea. The unprecedented loss of shoreline sea ice which normally acts a kind of barrier to protect coastal communities in the Arctic, from increasing storm surges means that drinking and other water infrastructure are more vulnerable to flood damage.

Other climate related changes to water resources in Alaska include the earliest recorded breakup for many rivers including the of the Tanana and Kuskokwim. Shorter ice seasons on rivers have profound impacts for the villages which use rivers for their main transportation routes.  As of the end of April this year, for example, around a dozen people died or had to be rescued after their snow machines or 4-wheelers fell through ice that was too thin. When rivers become too dangerous or otherwise, unavailable to use villagers are forced to either not travel at all or to rely on planes or other more expensive alternatives.

In light of the substantial impacts to Arctic coastal communities in the most rapidly warminig state in the country, it’s unfortunate that when asked about his strategy for addressing climate change during the campaign for Governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy’s response was “We are not a smokestack state, so we don’t contribute that much to climate change.” Ignoring the fact, therefore, that Alaska is one of the largest oil producing states in U.S., immediately after taking office, Dunleavy eliminated the Climate Action for Alaska Leadership Team established by Gov. Bill Walker, and removed the group’s strategy and action recommendations for helping Alaska Native and other communities adapt to climate change.

According to Dermot Cole, who is a columnist for Arctic Today, scrapping of the Team is a major loss for villages threatened by climate change because many of them “are one major storm away from being wiped out. If and when such a storm strikes, the state will respond — it just won’t be as organized as it could be with a mitigation plan.”

So, with the official response from the Dunleavy administration to impacts of climate change on the Alaska Native and other communities and for planning for the rapid changes coming to the state, being a resounding “We don’t care”, it’s a good thing that communities like Elim are already setting the example for resiliency when the grid actually does go down. Maybe the rest of us should take a page from their book.

This article was re-printed in the May 2, 2019 edition of the Nome Nugget News: http://www.nomenugget.com/sites/default/files/05_02_2019NN_0.pdf