Authors' acknowledgements[1]

In this article we discuss an ongoing research project that links the knowledge and experience of Iñupiat Eskimo elders, hunters, and berry harvesters with scientific observations and methods, to better understand environmental change on the Arctic Coastal Plain.[2] Quantitative scientific questions about climate-related changes to the Alaskan tundra are at the heart of our study, but this is also an interview-intensive interdisciplinary project that utilizes mixed methods and generates a range of "secondary" findings. Our primary goal here is to provide a preliminary presentation of some of the important qualitative data that has emerged from our interviews with Iñupiat participants concerning climate change, subsistence, community values, and women's roles. We also provide detail on the background, methods, and objectives of our research, to help readers better understand the situation in northern Alaska, and to present our methodology for assessment by a multidisciplinary and multicultural audience.

Background: Arctic Geopolitics

People of the planet's northern regions are experiencing extraordinary environmental changes that are not well known to those who live in more temperate zones. For indigenous peoples whose subsistence and cultural identities are deeply tied to their environment, significant ecological change directly threatens basic welfare and traditional ways of life. The present effects and further potential impacts of climate change in the North have been recognized by the major political bodies of the circumpolar region, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council and the Arctic Council, and by various international agencies and environmental organizations. The World Wildlife Foundation's International Arctic Programme, based in Oslo, Norway, reports that:

Change is occurring on all arctic system levels, impacting on physical systems such as atmosphere and oceans, sea ice and ice sheets, snow and permafrost, as well as on biological systems such as species and populations, food webs, ecosystem structure and function, and on human societies. It is the breadth of impacts . . . that is adding weight to the conclusion that there is hardly a component of the Arctic that is not showing signs of change.[3]

And a recent draft document written by representatives of the United Nations Environment Programme describes their position as:

Extremely concerned over the impact of climate change on the polar regions, especially the Arctic which is experiencing some of the most extreme and fast moving change evidenced anywhere, with increasingly dramatic effects on Arctic peoples and biodiversity, as well as significant global consequences, e.g., through contributions from glaciers and the Greenland Ice Sheet to sea level rise . . ..[4]

The problems and challenges presented by the current situation in the far North exist at multiple levels and dimensions of scale. For indigenous and other local inhabitants, there are immediate needs for information about the real impacts of climate and environmental changes on health, food security, land stability, culture, and economic development in the region, and on strategies for addressing new conditions and challenges. Because particular effects are difficult to anticipate, communities need as much information as possible about local patterns of change and atypical occurrences, but most communities lack resources for systematically tracking the impacts of climate change. At another level, the region's ecological well-being impacts the entire global climate system, and the risks posed by melting sea ice or the potential release of large amounts of greenhouse gases currently sequestered in the rich peat of the permafrost are matters of concern to all. The Arctic is also a politically complex and historically contentious region that includes extremely powerful member states (the U.S., Canada, Russia, and Norway), as well as indigenous communities who are powerful in their own right, and who share a strong circumpolar identity due to close ethnic and linguistic relationships and common concerns about native land rights and autonomy. Yet another dimension of the region's significance is evident in its relationships to global capital, for weighty multinational companies are also major economic stakeholders there. At the same time, all of the relevant dimensions and levels of impact are intermingled and enmeshed, and "local" actions have "global" effects, and vice versa. It is perhaps not too dramatic to say that the potential for serious conflict and unforeseeable complication in a region such as this is tremendous.[5]

The situation in northernmost Alaska is particularly intense right now. The region is rich in oil and natural gas, and the natural environment there is already burdened by the impacts of industry and development. With rapid and unpredictable climate change, the effects of resource extraction are likely to be exacerbated. As a changing environment presents new opportunities for further exploitation of resources, such as offshore drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean, the future possibilities become ever more concerning.[6]

Perhaps any situation so rife with complexity and competition also has great potential as a site for innovative problem solving and collaboration. Certainly the intensity and urgency of present realities in the Arctic call for the best possible scientific and practical knowledge to serve immediate and long-term needs. Regarding the need for information about climate and environmental changes, the convergence of local and global interests in evaluating and addressing the stability of Arctic ecosystems creates a mandate for mutually beneficial collaborations on both scientific and ethical grounds. Most practical and scientific questions about climate change, anthropogenic impacts, and ecological well-being require attention to local knowledge and perspectives. Although theoretical and meta-level models and predictions are useful, the severity of local impacts is determined by effects on existing cultures, economies, and technologies, so micro-level observations and analyses are necessary for predicting and mitigating specific changes and impacts in any given location. For instance, in northern Alaska warming conditions have already brought about decreased summer sea and increased erosion of the Arctic coastline, but the impacts on specific inland tundra regions vary over time and across space. Some areas are becoming more wet and marshy in the spring and summer, and others show evidence of drying.[7] In addition, the impact of regional climate change are difficult to separate from the direct effects of local human activity. Warmer conditions in Alaska favor thaw of near-surface permafrost, which results in widespread but differential lowering of the ground surface, known as "thermokarst."[8] But local thermokarst can also be induced by disruption of the tundra surface from foot or vehicular traffic.[9] Eyewitness, "on the ground," reports can be crucial for tracking and interpreting specific changes and effects, or for assessing the relationships among various effects, as such specific details may not be accessible through scientific technologies and methods. As the literature on indigenous knowledge and northern climate change shows, native stakeholders' explanations of particular events, processes, and rates of change also provide important hypotheses for consideration, because local understandings include awareness of historical or contextual factors unknown to researchers from the "outside."[10]

Global climate change creates local and meta-level situations that are quite precarious, and situations where local and scientific communities need each other's help.[11] It is therefore not surprising that, in the Arctic and elsewhere, there is a small but growing body of scientific work that incorporates local or indigenous knowledge and perspectives, with hopes of improving scientific and ethical integrity of research by integrating important information obtained through direct observation, and by prioritizing the needs and interests of local communities.[12] Political organizations, researchers, journalists, and artists have documented environmental change in the far North. General consciousness-raising about the impacts of warming temperatures in polar regions is a step toward the creation of more effective policies.[13] But ongoing community-oriented research at local levels is necessary for assessing and responding to the difficult and costly consequences of changing weather patterns.

Located on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and extending south up to several hundred kilometers to the Brooks Range, the North Slope Borough is a petroleum rich area covering the northernmost section of the state of Alaska. The North Slope Borough is the largest political subdivision in North America, encompassing fifteen percent of Alaska's total land mass, with a total of 89,000 square miles, an area just a bit larger than the state of Minnesota. Approximately 74% of the North Slope's 7,555 residents are Iñupiat Eskimos, the indigenous inhabitants of the land, and close linguistic and ethnic relatives of the Inuit of Canada and the Kalaallit of Greenland. The Borough is primarily rural, although it includes the city of Barrow (the Borough seat, population 4,429), seven smaller villages, and Prudhoe Bay, the petroleum/industrial complex at the top of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System. Also included within the boundaries of the North Slope Borough are areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and a 23-million acre area designated as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), where oil exploration and drilling are administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management in accordance with the Naval Petroleum Reserve Production act of 1976.

The landscape, climate, and native species of the North Slope have been objects of intense study for decades, for alongside the economic and political interests in its resources and "strategic" location, the region's unique geographic, atmospheric, and biological features are of great ecological and scientific significance. An extensive Naval complex (the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory) was constructed just north of Barrow in the mid 1940s to serve oil exploration, and until 1980 it also served as a base for conducting biological and geological research in the Arctic.[14] The current occupant of the site of the former Naval complex is the Barrow Area Science Consortium (BASC), a science facility funded by the National Science Foundation, formed through a partnership of the North Slope Borough, The Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corporation (the corporation representing the economic interests of the Iñupiat of Barrow), and Ilisagvik College (the region's tribal college). Since 1995 nearly all of the scientific research conducted near Barrow has been done under the auspices of BASC.

Figure 1

The existence of a science station with firm ties to sturdy sectors of the local community helped create the conditions for the development of our research. For several years some members of our team had been studying the "thaw lakes" and drained lake basins that together cover about 46% of surface of the Western Arctic Coastal Plain (see Figure 1). Thaw lakes are formed when water ponds atop underlying, impermeable frozen ground, or permafrost, and they are the dominant geomorphic features in the northernmost regions of Alaska, Siberia, and Canada. A thaw lake drains in response to ice-wedge erosion, bank overflow, stream piracy, or breaching of the lake margin (see Figure 2). Drained lake basins are among the primary reservoirs of carbon in northern Alaska, and so understanding the lakes, and how they form and drain, is necessary for determining how carbon accumulation rates respond to regional changes in climate, and the extent to which warming temperatures will result in releases of greenhouse gases into the global atmosphere. Our team's research utilizes the sophisticated tools of physical geography, including high-resolution multispectral satellite data, ground-penetrating radar, extensive coring, radiometric dating, and microfossil analysis, to estimate the amount of carbon sequestered in the drained basins.[15]

Figure 2

In 2002, one scientist on our team gave a community presentation in Barrow on thaw lake process as part of an NSF-funded community outreach project. The subsequent discussion elicited a helpful response from an Iñupiat elder who worked as community liaison for BASC. She remarked that local understandings of thaw lake drainage differed somewhat from the scientific theories, and suggested talking with local elders. Prompted by that suggestion, in the following field season we conducted videotaped interviews about the lakes and landscape of the surrounding areas with several elders in Barrow and Atqasuk, a small inland village sixty miles to the south of Barrow.[16] In the initial interviews, some recalled family stories of rapid lake level changes near traditional summer hunting camps, and others described drainage events that were induced by their own activities, such as bank breaching.

In interviews, elders shared scientifically interesting and consequential information about thaw lakes. They also volunteered personal memories and accounts of cultural traditions, and responded to general questions about local environmental conditions with engaged and detailed accounts of changes in the landscape, animal migration patterns, and weather. As in many indigenous communities, Iñupiat elders hold a repository of knowledge about traditional culture and local history entwined with their knowledge of the landscape. Northern Alaska has experienced rapid and dramatic change in the last century, and there is a strong sense that elders' unique knowledge is extremely valuable but in danger of being lost. Interviewees and their families therefore expressed positive feelings about having interviews recorded, and encouraged us to make videos of interviews available to younger people in their communities. Videos and other documents are thought to be useful for preserving the traditional, cultural, and historical knowledge possessed by elders, as well as their memories, stories, and linguistic expertise. Because the North Slope school system places some emphasis on teaching traditional knowledge, there is an existing context available for sharing archived materials.

We were able to corroborate the timing of observations of past lake drainage events using satellite imagery, confirming our sense that the elders had a wealth of relevant knowledge. The combination of compelling data and community needs led us to develop a research project that would bring together experiential and scientific knowledge to answer specific questions about thaw lakes on the North Slope. Another primary goal was to help document elders' experiences, reflections, and ecological wisdom in a way that would be useful and accessible to their community. As an interdisciplinary team, we also had questions and research interests beyond the explicit focus on thaw lakes. For example, we were interested in the ways that interviews with Iñupiat elders might contribute to better understanding of environmental ethics in the Arctic, where an exceptionally demanding context has led to the development of human cultures that seem to exemplify "wise use" paradigms for relationships with nature. And although information about gender was not likely to be central in our findings about the thaw lake cycle, we saw this project as an opportunity to implement feminist methods, such as collaboration across epistemic and cultural differences, and the intentional inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented perspectives. Our own perspectives are informed by the view, most fully articulated in feminist philosophy, that members of distinct social groups have "epistemic authority," or unique and important knowledge about their own lives, their social and environmental contexts, and the issues with which their material and emotional experiences put them in close contact.[17]

Feminist theories of the epistemic advantages of marginalized or subordinated perspectives emerged in the late 1970s as women began to apply Marxist theories of the advantaged and revolutionary perspectives of workers to the state of women in sexist societies. As Nancy Hartsock succinctly put it, "Each division of labor, whether by gender or class, can be expected to have consequences for knowledge."[18] Gendered differences in knowledge or access to knowledge are not considered natural or absolute. Rather, they emerge from the material conditions that are created and enforced through divisions of labor.

The material specificities of regional and cultural differences also have consequences for knowledge. On the North Slope, indigenous elders and others with experience on the tundra have epistemic authority regarding the environment where they have lived, learned, and traveled for many years. Important knowledge about the state of that environment will be neglected if those local experts are not consulted. In addition, history shows that unequal power dynamics are replicated when local knowledge and impacted communities are not considered worthy of respect by powerful agents (such as government-funded scientists). Regarding the potential role of science itself in disrupting unequal or damaging dynamics, philosopher Sandra Harding writes, "It is scary to contemplate how the power that Western sciences and technologies make available is likely to result in increased destruction to humans and our environments—and especially to economically and politically marginalized humans and environments—unless this power can be harnessed quickly to work on agendas for more democratic world communities."[19]

In initiating collaboration with elders of the North Slope we were asking them to share their wisdom and experiences with us, for the shared benefit of improved understanding of the landscape in warming conditions. But the primary goal of the project was not simply to glean information from the locals. We hoped that this research could benefit the community, by providing an archive of videos and logs of interviews, and making available our findings about local environmental change. Because the North Slope Borough maintains a geographic information system (GIS) with an indigenous knowledge component, for "documenting, monitoring and managing resources, and assessing cumulative impact to the marine and terrestrial environment,"[20] we determined that a relatively permanent way to make the information shared with us available to the community was to develop a GIS based on the interviews, which would ultimately be the property of the local community. A GIS is a layered, multidimensional map that displays geographically referenced data in a variety of ways, creating a powerful tool for managing, analyzing, and querying spatial information. Through the GIS, all geographically specific information provided by participants, which they have given consent to share, can be accessible and available to the local Iñupiat community for a variety of purposes, such as analyzing patterns of environmental change, researching historical sites, tracking changes in hunting, fishing, and berry harvesting, and cross-referencing with other data.

Before embarking on the project or determining our specific methods we held informational meetings and met with community leaders to ascertain whether this sort of collaborative research and archiving was desired. Other visiting researchers have worked with Iñupiat elders, and in recent years a number of journalists have journeyed the North Slope to gather first-hand accounts of climate change and responses to planned expansion of oil drilling, so we were concerned about contributing to "interview fatigue."[21] We found that local elders were quite interested in participating in this sort of research, and nearly everyone with whom we spoke expressed curiosity about our scientific project and a desire to share information about changes they have witnessed in the landscape. Respecting elders' knowledge and expertise is a common local theme, and people are quite aware of global concerns about climate change. In addition, many residents of the North Slope have some familiarity with the technologically intense petroleum industry, which is widely regarded as a powerful partner rather than an outside enemy, and that same attitude may extend toward scientific research. Another contributing factor to the relatively positive response to our research may be that in Alaska there are number of institutions and organizations, such as BASC, the Alaska Native Science Commission, and the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, which advocate for native peoples' interests in relation to scientific research.[22] It seems that the existence of agencies whose work includes fostering contacts between scientists and community members helped pave the path for our collaboration.

As of July 2008 we have interviewed fifty-two Iñupiaq residents of the North Slope Borough communities of Atqasuk, Barrow, Wainwright, and Nuiqsut. Most participants are elders, and one third (eighteen) are female. Participants are identified by asking local contacts the names of elders with extensive knowledge of the landscape and lakes of the area, and by snowball sampling, or asking interviewees to recommend other possible participants. The elder whose initial suggestion helped spark this research has often served as a "fixer" and translator. Interviews revolve around detailed maps, such as recent satellite images or official North Slope Borough maps that feature native allotments. At the outset we tell participants that we are studying the thaw lakes and how they form and drain, and that we are interested in anything they know about the lakes, as well as any landscape changes they have witnessed. We also let them know that we are archiving the interview for the community, and that they are welcome to share anything that they would like to have recorded. All participants are asked if they are willing to sign a consent form, and the form indicates that video and other records of the interview will not be used in public without explicit consent of the participant.[23]

Each interview is rather unique, taking shape in relation to the experiences and interests of the participant and the particular dialogue that emerges. Even when arrangements have been made to talk with one person, conversations often turn into group interviews, for spouses, friends, and family members want to listen and contribute, and sessions are seen as an opportunity to visit and share stories (see Figure 3). Most interviewees are very adept at identifying locations on maps, but careful to distinguish between things that they know directly, and things that they are aware of only through hearsay. The time scale of peoples' knowledge and memories vary, but regardless of the age of participants, interviews inevitably include much discussion of landscape and weather changes that have been noticed over the course of a lifetime, or over a significant number of years traveling and engaging in subsistence activities.

Figure 3

For Iñupiat who rely on hunting and fishing for basic sustenance in the difficult environment of the Arctic, anything related to travel is a matter of safety and food security, and so is of the utmost importance. Travel patterns are quite seasonal and cyclical. Hunting and time spent at native allotments revolve around predictable patterns of animal migration, fish spawning, and berry ripening. Modern travel over the tundra is by snow machine, four-wheel all terrain vehicle, or motorboat, and existing trails and natural features are the only landmarks in the flat treeless tundra. Although some participants lamented a lack of knowledge of small detail, larger-scale changes in the landscape and quality of the tundra (whether it is frozen, dry, marshy, etc.) are unmistakable to the experienced traveler.[24] Those who hunt whales and other sea mammals are also highly attuned to changes in the location, depth, and quality of sea ice from year to year.

Each interview is carefully logged by two members of the research team, who transcribe all substantive comments and encode every mappable location for inclusion in the GIS. Of course, GIS technology is but one way of capturing, displaying, and analyzing data, and not all of the information given in interviews is geographically specific, or easily translated into GIS points. For some questions or audiences the narrative and interpretive information that is captured in narratives and videotaped interviews is more important. For example, as the testimony presented in the following sections show, Iñupiat elders' responses to questions about their landscape elicit reflections on life and livelihood that are quite compelling and instructive, and much of the very important information and analytic wisdom conveyed in the interviews is not geo-specific, or locatable on a map.

With the recent proliferation of projects integrating local knowledge and spatial information technologies, a significant debate has arisen about the usefulness of GIS and other technologies for indigenous communities, and the tendency of such technologies to misrepresent traditional knowledge, or to reproduce the values of researchers at the expense of local communities' interests.[25] Geographers Harris and Weiner present a list of methods and approaches that help create a GIS that is "community-integrated" and "progressive," rather than reproductive of existing relations of power. They argue that a GIS should be constructed with the assumption that local knowledge is valuable and expert, the project should broaden community access to technologies and data, and a GIS should integrate multimedia in order to maximize accessibility to community members.[26] While many of the qualities recommended by Harris and Weaver have been integrated into our methodology, the debate about GIS technologies continues to inform our development of the GIS, our conversations with community members about the format and future of the GIS, and our collaborations with the North Slope Borough GIS office.

Interviews with Iñupiat residents of Alaska's North Slope have generated important information about thaw lake processes and environmental changes on the Western Arctic Coastal Plain, and we have been able to corroborate participants' observations of past lake drainage using satellite imagery and site visits via helicopter. Interviews with elders have also validated the timing of landscape changes studied by the physical geographers on our team, and provided data that was instrumental in a recent analysis of the impact of climate change on travel routes. Several scientific publications have resulted from this research.[27] But in addition to providing important information that helps us better understand the dynamic nature of the permafrost in northern Alaska, the interview process generates qualitative information about general environmental change and contemporary Iñupiaq subsistence practices and values. In the following sections we discuss prominent themes that have emerged in interviews conducted from 2003 through 2008, and present excerpts from several recent interviews.[28]

Environmental Change, Subsistence, and Sharing

There is a striking degree of agreement and overlap in participants' responses to interview questions about changes in the landscape, and in general musings about environmental issues that have arisen in recent decades. Participants indicate that weather patterns have altered significantly, and that conditions on the tundra and along shorelines show the effects. These comments by Lewis Brower, an experienced and respected hunter in his mid-forties, about the temperature changes he has recorded at his cabin on the Chipp River, are a typical example of remarks made about weather in nearly every interview:

Over the years and over the summers there, say 10, 15 years ago, 75 to 80 degrees was normal warm weather . . .. Nowadays it gets into the 90s . . . so there's a large increase in temperature. When you're there at the right time, you can record those.

Participants also report an increase in storms and severe weather, unusually warm winters, and changes in animal migration patterns, or disorientation in animals, due to earlier spring thaw and unusual weather events. Discussion of travel across the tundra is dominated by descriptions of increased erosion and thermokarst (areas where ice-rich permafrost has melted, leaving mounds, depressions, and ridges), and reduced consistency and predictability of weather patterns, all of which are serious matters of safety in the demanding and difficult environment of the Arctic. Arnold Brower Sr., a prominent whaling captain and businessman in his mid-eighties, has noticed some dramatic changes in conditions on the tundra:

In October the thickness of the ice was about . . . maybe eight inches . . . we could even cross this by dog team, this area. You can't do that in October now because it doesn't freeze up that way. So, these changes are there.

Participants have identified areas where permafrost thaw has been extreme, creeks have dried up, and erosion has occurred along the seacoast and river bluffs. They report that normal landscape changes, such as erosion and river migration, are now alarming because they are occurring at unusually rapid rates. The implications for North Slope residents are very serious, as homes and cabins are threatened, and overland travel, necessary for subsistence hunting and fishing, has become less predictable and therefore more hazardous. Like others with cabins and land allotments near the Chipp River, Evelyn Donovan, a hunter in her mid-fifties, had to move her family cabin due to erosion:

The deep permafrost is melting . . . I had to move our camp . . . about eight feet from the bluff because the permafrost melted . . .. We took four four-wheelers, tied it up, and we literally moved it because of the permafrost melting.

Pointing out several locations on what used to be an excellent lake for catching whitefish, she describes how warmer temperatures result in uneven effects:

We normally would put our net in the middle [of the lake]. So I can't even put a net out over here cause it's drier and it's not deep enough to put a net out. This is completely dry . . .. And I'm seeing more ponds on this end while [pointing elsewhere] this side is drying up a little more.

"Global warming" is often mentioned as a likely cause of unusual patterns of erosion, but it is also not at all unusual for people to discuss concern about changes and damage to the landscape caused by oil and natural gas exploration and drilling. A number of participants attributed specific examples of erosion and areas of severe thermokarst to anthropogenic activity related to drilling, seismic survey activity, and related exploration. Some of those who have done industry or government work on the tundra have directly witnessed or contributed to the damage. Indicating a place on the map that has thoroughly eroded away, Arnold Brower, Sr. relates the lasting impacts of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) stations built in the 1950s in northern Alaska, Canada and Greenland as a safeguard against Soviet missile attack:

This Tangent Point is no more. It washed away. Now so many sand bars are gone . . . this building of these DEW lines [took] away too much of the sand down from the beach . . .. I think man helped to make this erosion work faster, let me put it that way, by removing gravel from this general location . . .. I was a [Navy] scout, and we didn't even know at the time what environmental protection was . . .. We were trying to get the exploration and get started. I learned a lot by the mistakes that we made there.

Lewis Brower expresses doubt that everything is related to "natural" causes, and calls for more public conversation about the real issues:

Everything's happening in its own way and a lot of it is not happening [due to] natural occurrences. A lot of it may be due to the Prudhoe Bay system here. A lot of it may be just due to what maybe all what we do over here . . .. Drilling and seismic is done over here and . . . immediately after that is done we don't see no animals, we don't see no fish or anything. We need an impact [statement]. And when you have communities that depend on that, you know, they want to know why, and so I think there would be more question and answer sessions . . ..

For a community whose cultural identity and basic sustenance is equated with hunting and whaling, and therefore thoroughly enmeshed with the well-being and relative stability of the natural environment, weather and landscape changes that disrupt native animal populations threaten the fundamentals of life.

Many participants express concern about the possible loss of their culture and unique "subsistence" lifestyle due to anthropogenic impacts, including global warming and activities of the petroleum industry. For example, whale hunting, which holds an exalted place in Iñupiaq material culture and spirituality, may be threatened by climate change, the accompanying loss of sea ice, and alterations in seasonal patterns of ice freezing and breaking up of the Arctic Ocean. The loss of sturdy multi-year sea ice (ice which persists year after year, through the spring/summer thaw) is particularly worrying. The dangers are not theoretical—in 1997, and again in 2002, groups of over a hundred whalers from Barrow (and their expensive equipment) had to be rescued by helicopter when the ice they were traveling on disintegrated unexpectedly.[29] Ida Olemaun, a prominent whaling captain's wife, voices great concern about changes in the sea ice:

During whaling, we've noticed that the ice is thinning more. And it goes out earlier than before. And during the winter we get open water, you know, during the month of December. One time right up to the shoreline it opened up. So that's a lot of risk you know that our hunters take in participating with the whaling . . .. One thing that I've also noticed is that the ice is not coming back and that prevents us from catching the seals, the bearded seals and walrus. So we hardly catch any bearded seals now over there cause it goes out too fast now. It never comes back.

"Subsistence" is the English term of choice by which many Iñupiat refer to the essence of their culture and ways of life. The formal definition of a subsistence economy is one that is self-sustaining, where what is needed for life or nourishment is grown or obtained by a society, for itself, without need for imports, investment, or trade. Clearly the subsistence economy that previous generations of Iñupiat created has been profoundly impacted by capitalism. In fact, as Evelyn Donovan conveys, it takes quite a lot of cash to participate in subsistence activities:

I know when I go hunting I spend over a thousand dollars—gas, propane, gas for the four-wheelers and snow machines, and we need the radios in case something happens. It just adds on. But we don't complain once we get to camp. It's so nice and there's serenity up there. And we can hunt and actually we can make a better person out of you. You're ready to come back and deal with the whole world.

Despite the monetary costs, and the fact that many Eskimos participate in business, industry, and development, it is a subsistence lifestyle that was described as most highly valued, and most strongly identified with being Iñupiaq, and valuing one's cultural identity.[30]

"Subsistence" is also an important political term for the Iñupiat, for native Alaskan subsistence hunting and fishing rights are outlined in the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which defines subsistence uses of fish and game as "the customary and traditional uses by rural Alaska residents of wild, renewable resources for direct personal or family consumption as food, shelter, fuel, clothing, tools, or transportation."[31] And according to the regulations of the International Whaling Commission, it is the designation of indigenous groups' whaling practices as "subsistence" rather than "commercial" that allows them to engage in whaling. Yet the legal definitions are not the only relevant meanings of subsistence. When interviewees were asked about the meaning of subsistence, they emphasized subsistence as self-sufficiency, or being able to provide for family and community, as well as relationships with the local environment and the animals used for food. A subsistence lifestyle was defined as regularly procuring and eating the native animals and berries that Iñupiat have been living on for generations, spending time camping, away from the power grid and store-bought food, and sharing native food with others in accord with Iñupiaq traditions.

Subsistence is maintaining the food that is on the table, that you put on the table, and that's caribou, the walrus, the seal, the bearded seal, the ducks, the geese, and hunting them, and providing a good diet for yourself. That's what subsistence is all about, a good diet from the native food. (Ida Olemaun)

Subsistence to me is to enjoy the lifestyle of hunting, enjoying going out to camp, and thirdly, enjoying the serenity, the peacefulness of living out hunting—no electricity, no gas, and we're literally camping out. Not the business of the south and whatever. And if I don't hunt, I don't have the caribou, the fish that I want to eat with the rest of my family, you know? (Evelyn Donovan)

In interviews a loss of connection to native food and replacement with "Western" or "store-bought" food is repeatedly lamented and criticized as nutritionally inferior. The bearded seals Olemaun mentions provide seal oil, a staple food for the Iñupiaq that is eaten year-round, and cannot be replaced by anything purchased in a store. Elders attribute increases in illness to eating store-bought food, and it is common knowledge that store-bought food cannot sustain hunters on the tundra or the Arctic sea. When children enjoy native foods, this is celebrated as an expression of their Iñupiaq identities.

If you eat all . . . the Eskimo food that we have up here, whale, caribou, the seal, it can sustain you and keep you fulfilled throughout the day. But we're now eating too many potato chips, store bought food with all the preservatives and we're not as healthy, as lean and strong as our grandparents were . . . they didn't have TVs to flick like I do. (Evelyn Donovan)

Sometimes they'll say, Mom I want muktuk [whale skin with fat] for dinner, and I was like, 'yeah, that's my kid!' . . .. Our babies, they teethed on the whale flippers . . . we get big pieces and put them in the high chair and take off all their clothes, you know so they don't get oil all over, and they just won't let go . . .. That helps them to set the flavor for other foods to come. We also gave them dried seal meat and caribou to teethe on . . .. One time with my son, he was learning to talk but he was pointing to the freezer . . .. He was crying for muktuk and that really melted my heart. (Mary Sage)

People who rely on hunting local wildlife for food are highly tuned in to the regular patterns and physical condition of local species. Iñupiaq hunting traditions are generally scheduled very precisely in relation to the regularity of animals' migrations and life cycles, which flow like clockwork with changing seasonal conditions. Many participants voiced grave concern regarding demonstrable changes in animals' regular patterns. Interviews and the GIS are replete with reports of deviations in caribou and bird migration patterns. These include examples of particular breeds of birds or fish showing up in unusual locations, and with animals' disorientation in relation to changes in the usual weather cycles. The health of animals is a matter of utmost importance that demands heightened awareness for a number of reasons. Although local animals are a primary source of food protein for many Iñupiat families, and traditional foods are thought to be the healthiest diet, it is also well known throughout the circumpolar region that eating local wildlife comes with some risk. In recent decades there have been well-publicized reports of high levels of toxins in Arctic animals, and in the breast milk of Eskimo women living there. A 2004 article in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health reports that the problem remains quite serious:

The invisible contamination of traditional foods with man-made chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, toxaphenes, and other pesticides, which are transported to the Arctic by ocean and atmospheric currents and then are biomagnified in the marine food web, ultimately end up in humans.[32]

Those who engage in subsistence hunting raise questions about the ways climate change may contribute to the problem:

We found a lot of sick caribou last year. One of them literally had ribs eaten out. And I've tried to tell . . . the fish and game manager up here. One year we found a caribou that the baby was stillborn inside . . .. We've seen several caribou with puss. We've seen a lot of caribou really skinny at different seasons and this has become apparent within the last five years, my guesstimate, maybe longer. [Interviewer asks if there are theories about the increase in sick caribou] No. I am sure with all the global warming and what they're eating. (Evelyn Donovan)

In spite of such concerns it is evident that participants do not feel suitable contexts exist for discussing these matters and questions within the community at large. Most of those who had directly experienced alarming events and conditions reported that they had only discussed them with family members. This indicates that even in a relatively economically healthy community such as Barrow, with cutting-edge climate and biological research happening right up the road, it can be very difficult to organize collective conversations about and responses to dramatic environmental change.

Another material and spiritual element of Iñupiaq subsistence culture that is jeopardized by climate change is the practice of storing meat and fish in traditional ice cellars that are dug several meters into the permafrost.[33] The thawing of ice cellars is a common theme in interviews. One elder described an ice cellar, located a hundred and fifty feet away from a river, which was entirely washed away when the river rapidly eroded laterally. Ida Olemaun relates the importance of ice cellars:

The ice cellars are what we store our food, especially the whale, you know, cause it ferments more in there, gets it more tastier. And right now there's some ice cellars that are thawing out too fast. So we have to be real careful with that whenever we store some whale meat, cause that's for the Thanksgiving feast, for the Christmas feast, that we store, even our caribou, our ducks, geese . . .. When you have meat in the ice cellars they're a lot tastier; they're not freezer burn, they have more taste to it whereas when you store it in the freezer, it just freezes . . .. You have to be careful now with this global warming cause some have flooded too . . . and wastes all that meat.

Along with allowing meat to age properly, the cellars serve an important cultural and spiritual role in Iñupiaq whaling traditions, for a clean and empty ice cellar is required before one can go whaling in spring. Spring cleaning of ice cellars is also a ritual in the culture of sharing, as all stored meat and game must be consumed or given away as part of the cleaning process. In the words of a young Iñupiaq woman, "You have to clean out your ice cellar cause the whale won't give itself unless it has a clean place to rest." For the Iñupiat the loss of ice cellars is not trivial, for ice cellars are a crucial element of Iñupiaq subsistence life ways.

As the necessity of a clean ice cellar indicates, success in subsistence hunting depends on appropriate behavior. Of primary importance for the Iñupiat is the virtue of sharing. The spiritual and cultural significance of sharing, one of the core "Iñupiat values," promoted through posters all over the North Slope, was raised in a great many of our interviews.[34] For example, hunting is generally described as having two fundamental purposes: to provide for one's own family, and to share with others in the community. Sixty-three percent of households in northern Alaska harvest game, and ninety-two percent of households gain access to that harvest through networks of sharing.[35] Sharing is also believed to strongly influence relationships with the natural and spiritual worlds, as comments by Evelyn Donovan and Ida Olemaun illustrate:

(My parents and grandparents) always told us to share, the hunt, the food . . .. If you are to have a successful hunt than you have to share and give what is down there and we're taught not to waste. And it's true that if you're not sharing and you're stingy, better way to say it I guess, you won't have a bountiful hunting season as well. I've experienced that. (Evelyn Donovan)

You always share the bounty that God gives you 'cause that's . . . why it's giving of itself is that you share to the poor, the widow, the orphans, and . . . I think that's what subsistence is all about, to share the bounty that God has given you, and that it'll return, that you'll have more to come back for you . . .. You know, that's what it is—all the joy that you get from giving and it comes back in a different way to meet your need. (Ida Olemaun)

In Iñupiaq culture, sharing has deep significance beyond its obvious importance in ensuring survival in a harsh environment, for sharing the natural bounty is also a way of enacting ethical virtue, and strengthening and maintaining bonds within the human and natural communities. Sharing with other people is necessary for maintaining good relationships with other species, for animals will continue to give themselves up to hunters who enact appropriate sharing attitudes.[36]

Hunting and the Significance of Gender

We mentioned earlier that this project integrates feminist research methods, such as highlighting Iñupiat epistemic authority, or unique, "situated" wisdom concerning environmental change and ecological well-being on the North Slope. Another way that feminist methods form and inform this research is through our efforts to interview female elders, and to work against unconscious tendencies to propagate marginalization (such as sexist assumptions about the gender of the local hunting experts).[37] Social scientists have noted that there is a limited amount of research focused on women in the Arctic and that "few researchers anywhere in the Arctic have documented in detail the daily routines of women and the vital contributions they make to the social and economic vitality of their communities."[38] We are therefore generally attentive to matters of gender that arise in the interviews, and ask questions about gender roles and norms when the topic arises in the course of an interview (which admittedly occurs most often in the course of interviews with female participants). Because the focus of our interviews is on the natural environment, discussions related to gender are most typically about women's roles in relation to subsistence practices, and especially hunting.

Iñupiat women's concern with food and cleanliness, evident in the excerpts above, should not be taken to imply that their roles in relation to subsistence practices are limited by European notions of femininity or women's work, or by a strict hierarchical dualism. Women do have specific roles in hunting, including sewing the clothing that is necessary for the hunt, skinning and butchering, and preparing meat for consumption. But women's relationship to hunting is not necessarily limited to the standard roles, and traditionally, women's standard roles are not considered secondary or auxiliary to the role of animal slayer. In her landmark 1990 essay "I'm Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is: Iñupiat and Anthropological Models of Gender," Bodenhorn argues that the traditional anthropological view that in subsistence cultures women "gather" but do not "hunt" does not fit the Iñupiaq example; Eskimo conceptions and definitions of hunting extend beyond the act of seeking out and killing animals, and hunting includes activities typically characterized as women's work. Bodenhorn writes, "Among the Iñupiat, 'hunting' is defined to include attracting, killing, butchering, transforming the animal into food and clothing, and following the proper rituals, all of which are needed to maintain amicable animal/human relations."[39]

The centrality of women in successful whaling is described in detail in an interview we conducted with Ida Olemaun, a female elder of Barrow and a whaling captain's wife. Here she describes what she learned from her mother (also a whaling captain's wife) about the spiritual connection between women and whales, and the responsibilities of the wife of a whaling captain to the whaling crew:

One thing that Mom has told me was that whenever there is a whaling crew that is setting up to become whalers . . . it's the lady that's more the one that's really in control . . .. And that the whale looks at the woman and that the whale lands on real like, green pasture. That's how I can describe it. And gives of itself . . .. And what the woman does is prepare for their clothing, make sure that they have food as the preparation is going on, and they have warm parkas . . .. So as a whaling captain's wife you have to be responsible for that, to ensure that they have their needs met.

Because the presence and participation of women, and wives in particular, is necessary for a successful whale hunt, their role is in no way auxiliary. As Bodenhorn summarizes, "wives ritually attract the animals and are thus classified as hunters by Iñupiaq men," and "animals give themselves up to men whose wives are generous and skillful; it is also the men's responsibility to treat the animal properly, but it is the woman to whom the animal comes."[40]

Sociologists Janet Mancini Billson and Kyra Mancini provide a similar analysis of traditional Inuit culture in Nunavut, Canada prior to European influence:

The Inuit did not delineate gender roles as precisely as some have reported, which, in turn, had a profound effect on the balance of power . . .. Contrary to popular images of nomadic life, females crossed over into "male" territory when it was necessary for survival. They also fished and helped with communal caribou drives . . .. Similarly, although women counted food preparation and cooking as a central part of their role, men crossed into the woman's territory of preparing food and mending clothes when they lived on the land for extended periods while hunting or fishing.[41]

Evelyn Donovan captures the sense of complementary roles and the sharing of in the following quote. Although she is a skilled hunter, she also takes great pride and pleasure in the work of sewing and cooking:

I've gone up and hunted myself . . . and there's other women who've done the same . . .. We need each other to balance the subsistence lifestyle as well. We all have our own places, we have our own jobs to do. The minute we go to camp, while the male, the men set up camp, I've already started cooking so we can eat and make for sure that everything's right. And we work hard like this instead of standing around. There's a difference but really not, I guess if you will, in the sense where we go hunting every person no matter whether they're a woman, a man, or child, we all have a job to do.

Mary Sage is a young Iñupiaq mother who grew up in Seattle and Fairbanks but moved to Barrow several years ago, because she wanted to become more involved in traditional culture (her mother is originally from the North Slope). Here she describes learning to butcher, and its multilayered significance concerning identity and community participation:

At first I was really intimidated because I've never seen butchering and I've never participated in butchering an animal or hunting . . .. The first time I saw someone butchering was my neighbor and it was this huge bearded seal and it just shocked me because oh my gosh, you know, I've never seen that. You don't see that in Fairbanks, you know? . . . And then I felt like a tourist cause when my friends parents' were butchering I would take pictures . . .. Once I learned how to butcher, you feel like you're giving more, you know, you're helping out and it gives you a good feeling of connection to your ancestors . . .. So, it's a lot of fun. I've learned a lot.

Iñupiat women have distinct and special roles in relation to subsistence practices, but their contributions are not strictly limited to those roles. In a different vein, Evelyn Donovan enthusiastically describes her love of hunting, and how she learned to hunt:

Four of us older sisters we were taught to hunt. So that's why I love to go. A lot of women don't do all what men do . . .. The way I learned my Dad would take us cause we're four older girls. He'd take us on the boat and we'd go hunting. And back then, I'm almost sixty, back then you have to be really rich to have an outboard motor. So what did we do? We'd go on the edge of the water and by the edge of the rivers and pull the boat along . . .. And I loved to hunt so I always went with him. I know I carried many hundreds of hind-quarter of caribou every hunting season.

In interviews, participants often mentioned women hunting caribou, and on the walls of quite a few of the homes we visited were yellowed photos of female ancestors and family members, posing proudly on the tundra next to felled caribou, looking fabulous, with hunting rifles in hand. Both male and female participants discussed women hunters with admiration, and although women whalers and hunters of sea mammals are far less common, exceptional women whalers and seal hunters were also mentioned. This is consistent with the picture of gendered norms in Iñupiat society presented by Bodenhorn, who found that women who slay animals are considered skilled rather than "unwoman-like," and "men and women are not thought to be somehow congenitally incapable of doing something generally assigned to" the other sex.[42]

Some Conclusions

As this is a preliminary discussion of a great deal of indigenous elder cultural environmental knowledge on the North Slope, there is much that remains under-examined here. Our main goals have been to present local testimony about the current realities in northern Alaska and to articulate our interdisciplinary methods. The environmental realities in far Northern regions are alarming, but regional politics and ecological urgencies create important and interesting opportunities for collaboration and the sharing of information across epistemological and cultural differences.

Iñupiaq perspectives and subsistence practices are powerful lenses through which to consider and evaluate the impacts of climate change, and to identify local strengths and resources for dealing with present and future challenges. In addition to vitally important information about environmental changes, our landscape-focused interviews with Iñupiaq elders include a wealth of information about contemporary land-based practices and cultural values. Along with the effects of anthropogenic global climate change (not unrelated to petroleum), the residents of the North Slope of Alaska are concerned about the immediate impacts of local petroleum development on their environment. Yet concerning environmental change, subsistence practices, and even gendered social roles, the Iñupiat appear to maintain a strong commitment to core values while enacting a high degree of flexibility and adaptability. Those are likely to be tremendous virtues as Arctic communities face the great unknowns of the future.

Our project aims to address common needs and a common sense of urgency, due to the rapidity of climate change in the North and the threat of cultural loss as highly respected elders grow older and face declining health. Sharing common concerns does not mean that everyone involved embraces identical environmental values, or that we see the North Slope environment or human community in the same way. Rather, we found that a shared sense of hoping for and working toward the well-being of the communities, animals, and ecosystems of the region has provided the necessary common ground for the knowledge-generating relationship we have worked to foster. While it would be a mistake to try to codify that sense or feeling into a method, we believe it would be difficult to complete mutually beneficial research connecting scientific and local knowledge if some sort of caring connection and/or high levels of respect for local autonomy were not somehow motivating the work. It is not always easy for researchers to know whether our contributions are beneficial to the communities with whom and for whom we work, but perhaps right now it is particularly important to try.

Endnotes

1. We would like to thank all of the residents of Atqasuk, Barrow, Wainwright, and Nuiqsut who have supported or participated in this research, especially Lollie Hopson, Arnold Brower, Sr., Kenneth Toovak, Ida Olemaun, Evelyn Donovan, Lewis Brower, Mary Sage, Ronald Brower, Sr., Larry Aiken, Thomas Brower, Jr., Virginia Brower, Mayor Elizabeth Hollingsworth of Atqasuk, and the staff of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium. We would also like to thank the graduate assistants and colleagues with whom we have worked on this project: Stephanie Doktor, Michael Wellman, Adrienne Gallo, James Bockheim, Ben Jones, Richard Beck, and John Hurd. Funding and additional support for this project has been provided by the National Science Foundation (grant BCS-0548846), The University of Georgia Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and the Willson Center for the Arts and Humanities. Chris Cuomo also thanks members of the Feminisms, Nationalisms, and Transnationalisms workshop sponsored by the Institute for Women's Studies at UGA for very helpful suggestions and feedback on an earlier draft. [Return to text]

2. In this paper, for the sake of simplicity we generally take science to be knowledge that has been established through rigorous testing according to accepted scientific methods, and always potentially subject to peer review. We therefore deploy a rhetorical distinction between experiential knowledge and scientific knowledge, primarily because they are validated through different norms and traditions. Nonetheless, there is no consensus in our research team on a clear definition of science. [Return to text]

3. Martin Sommerkorn, and Neil Hamilton, eds., "World Wildlife's Arctic Climate Impact Science Report," WWF International Arctic Programme, 2008:1. [Return to text]

4. Committee of Permanent Representatives to the United Nations Environment Programme Joint Subcommittees I and II, "Revised Draft Decision on Sustainable Development of the Arctic." 1 February 2008. United Nations Environment Programme. 4 August 2008. [Return to text]

5. We recognize that "local," "global," and other terms that attempt to identify interest groups with geospatial scale or location are rather deceptive, especially in the midst of aggressively global and high-tech capitalism. [Return to text]

6. See Doreen Walton, "Living with Arctic Climate Change." BBC News. 10 July 2006. Accessed 4 August 2008. And Jad Mouawad, "In Alaska's Far North, Two Cultures Collide." New York Times, 4 December 2007, B1. [Return to text]

7. See, for example, Ben Jones, Kenneth Hinkel, Christopher Arp, Wendy Eisner, "Modern Erosion Rates and Loss of Coastal Features and Sites, Beaufort Sea Coastline, Alaska," Arctic 61:4 (December 2008): forthcoming. [Return to text]

8. Y. L. Shur and M. T. Jorgenson, "Patterns of Permafrost Formation and Degradation in Relation to Climate and Ecosystems," Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 18:1 (2007): 7-19. [Return to text]

9. Wendy Eisner, Kenneth Hinkel, Ben Jones, Chris Cuomo, "Using Indigenous Knowledge to Assess Environmental Impacts of Overland Travel Routes, Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska," in D. Kane and Kenneth Hinkel, Eds. Ninth International Conference on Permafrost. Fairbanks, AL: Institute of Northern Engineering, University of Alaska, 2008, 415-420. [Return to text]

10. See F. Berkes, "Epilogue: Making Sense of Arctic Change?" in I. Krupnik and D. Jolly, eds., The Earth is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic Environmental Change, Fairbanks, AL: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States, 2005, 335-349, and Julie Cruikshank, Do Glaciers Listen? Local Knowledge, Colonial Encounters, and Social Imagination. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005. [Return to text]

11. It may also be the case that, in the face of the "anti-science" position of the Bush administration, and that administration's failure to acknowledge the seriousness of climate change in a timely fashion, some scientists are unusually motivated to design projects that are in line with their own ethical priorities. [Return to text]

12. K. Brewster, "Native Contributions to Arctic Science at Barrow, Alaska," Arctic 50 (December 1997): 277-284; Henry P. Huntington, "Observations on the Utility of the Semi-directive Interview for Documenting Traditional Ecological Knowledge," Arctic 51:3 (September 1998): 237-242; G. Wenzel, "Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Inuit: Reflections on TEK Research and Ethics," Arctic 52 (1999): 113-124; H. Huntington, "Using Ecological Knowledge in Science; Methods and Applications," Ecological Applications 10 (2000): 1270-1274. For more information about projects linking indigenous knowledge and scientific inquiry, see "Indigenous Knowledge and Science." [Return to text]

13. "Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Scientific Report," Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Gilles Mingasson, "The End of Shishmaref," Photography, 2005; Steve Connor, ed., "Global Warming 'Past the Point of No Return'", The Independent, 16 September 2005; Mason Inman, "Global Warming Drying Up Ancient Arctic Ponds," National Geographic News, 2 July 2007. [Return to text]

14. M.B. Blackman, Sadie Brower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989. [Return to text]

15. J. G. Bockheim, K.M. Hinkel, W. Eisner, and X. Y. Dai, "Carbon Pools and Accumulation Rates in an Age-Series of Soils in Drained Thaw-Lake Basins, Arctic Alaska," Soil Science Society of America Journal, 2004, 68:697Ð704; W. R. Eisner, J. G. Bockheim, K.M. Hinkel, T.A. Brown, F.E. Nelson, K.M. Peterson, B.M. Jones, "Paleoenvironmental Analyses of an Organic Deposit from an Erosional Landscape Remnant, Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska" Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2005, 217: 187-204; R.C. Frohn, W.R. Eisner, K.M. Hinkel, "Satellite Remote Sensing Classification of Thaw Lakes and Drained Thaw Lake Basins on the North Slope of Alaska," Remote Sensing of Environment, 2005, 97 (1), 116; K.M. Hinkel, R. Beck, W. Eisner, R. Frohn, F. Nelson, "Morphometric and Spatial Analysis of Thaw Lakes and Drained Thaw Lake Basins in the Western Arctic Coastal Plain, Alaska," Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 2005, 16 (4), 327, 341; K. M. Hinkel, B. M. Jones, W.R. Eisner, C. J. Cuomo, R. Beck and R. Frohn, "Methods to Assess Natural and Anthropogenic Thaw Lake Drainage on the Western Arctic Coastal Plain of Northern Alaska," Journal of Geophysical Research—Earth Surface, 2007, Vol. 112; Eisner et al 2008. [Return to text]

16. The Atqasuk region is of particular geological interest because it includes an ancient backshore beach dune complex, which forms the boundary between the inner (older) and outer (younger) Arctic Coastal Plain. [Return to text]

17. See Discovering Reality, eds.Merrill B. Hintikka and Sandra Harding, New York: Springer, 1983; Donna Haraway, "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991; Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, Feminist Epistemologies, New York, Routledge, 1993; Sandra G. Harding, ed., The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, New York: Routledge, 2004; Marianne Janack, "Standpoint Epistemology Without the 'Standpoint'?: An Examination of Epistemic Privilege and Epistemic Authority," Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 12:2 (Spring 2007): 125-139; Chris Cuomo, "Critiques of Science" in Women, Science, and Myth, Sue V. Rosser, Ed. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Press, 2008, 365-371. [Return to text]

18. Nancy Hartsock, "The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism," in Discovering Reality, eds. Merrill B. Hintikka and Sandra Harding, New York: Springer, 1983: 283-310. [Return to text]

19. Sandra Harding, "Introduction: Eurocentric Scientific Illiteracy: A Challenge for the World Community," in The "Racial" Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future, Sandra Harding, ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993: 1-22. [Return to text]

20. North Slope Borough Department of Planning and Community Services. "About the NSB GIS." 4 August 2008. [Return to text]

21. See for example Charles Wohlforth, The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change. New York: North Point Press, 2005. [Return to text]

22. "Principles for the Conduct of Research in the Arctic." National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. National Science Foundation. 12 December 2006. 4 August 2008. [Return to text]

23. All participants and translators receive an honorarium. [Return to text]

24. For a more complete discussion, see Eisner et al, 2008. [Return to text]

25. See for example Jadah E. Folliot, Evaluation of Approaches to Depicting First Nations, Iñupiat and Iñuvialuit Environmental Information in GIS Format, MA thesis, Ryerson University and University of Toronto, 2005; Gernod Brodnig, and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, "Bridging the Gap: The Role of Spatial Information Technologies in the Integration of Traditional Environmental Knowledge and Western Science," The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, 1 (2000): 1-16. [Return to text]

26. T. Harris and D. Weiner, "Empowerment, Marginalization and Community-integrated GIS," Cartography and Geographic Information Systems 25:2 (1998): 67-76, as quoted in Brodnig, "Bridging the Gap," p. 9. [Return to text]

27. Hinkel et al, 2007, and Eisner, et al, 2008. [Return to text]

28. Excerpts in this and the following sections are from interviews conducted in Barrow in April 2007. [Return to text]

29. See Charles Wohlforth, "As the Arctic Melts, An Ancient Culture Faces Ruins," National Wildlife 43:3 (Apr/May 2005). [Return to text]

30. See Robert Jarvenpa and Hetty Jo Brumbach, Eds. Circumpolar Lives and Livelihood: A Comparative Ethnoarchaeology of Gender and Subsistence, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006; Sophie Thériault, Ghislain Otis, Gérard Duhaime, and Christopher Furgal, "The Legal Protection Of Subsistence: A Prerequisite of Food Security for the Inuit of Alaska," Alaska Law Review 22:1 (2005), 35-87; and Thomas F. Thornton, "Alaska Native Corporations and Subsistence: Paradoxical Forces in the Making of Sustainable Communities," in Sustainability and Communities of Place, Carl A. Maida, Ed. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007. [Return to text]

31. Sophie Thériault, et al, "The Legal Protection Of Subsistence," 43. [Return to text]

32. Peter Bjerregaard, T. Kue Young, Eric Dewailly, and Sven O.E. Ebbesson,"Indigenous Health in the Arctic: An Overview of the Circumpolar Inuit Population," Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 32:5 (2004): 390-395. For an overview of scientific projections of possible impacts of climate change on human health, see Climate Change and Human Health: Risks and Responses, A. J. McMichael et al., Eds. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2003; David J. Tenenbaum, "Northern Overexposure," Environmental Health Perspectives, 106:2 (1998): A64-A69; and Paul Webster, "Health in the Arctic Circle," The Lancet 365:9461 (2005): 741-2. [Return to text]

33. See Patricia Longley Cochran and Alyson L. Geller, "The Melting Ice Cellar: What Native Traditional Knowledge is Teaching Us about Global Warming and Climate Change," American Journal of Public Health, 92:9 (September 2002): 1404-1409. [Return to text]

34. One version of the list of values (not ordered hierarchically) is: Sharing, Love and Respect for our Elders and One Another, Spirituality, Family and Kinship, Compassion, Humor, Cooperation, Knowledge of Language, Hunting Traditions, Humility, Respect for Nature, and Avoidance of Conflict. For more on Iñupiaq values and environmental ethics see Cuomo, "Eskimo Environmental Ethics," forthcoming. [Return to text]

35. Sophie Thériault, et al, "The Legal Protection Of Subsistence," 56, citing Robert J. Wolfe, Subsistence in Alaska: A Year 2000 Update 2, Alaska Division of Subsistence, 2000. [Return to text]

36. It should also be mentioned that most Iñupiat on the North Slope are Presbyterian, and their articulation of appropriate behavior is also typically couched in religious terms. [Return to text]

37. The historical anthropological and pseudo-anthropological literature on Arctic peoples abounds with tangential descriptions of the work of women. Although it was nearly impossible for authors describing day-to-day life in the Arctic to ignore the contributions of women, it was apparently equally difficult for white male authors of a certain era to acknowledge the full significance of women's work. A typical example is Diamond Jenness' Dawn in Arctic Alaska, an account of a year spent among Eskimos in northernmost Alaska in 1913. Jenness relates many memories of time spent in Eskimo households, and describes women who trap, hunt, travel the countryside, prepare all meals, and work tirelessly to craft and repair the boots and parkas of everyone in the household, including visitors. Yet when describing "the Eskimo woman" (already admitting no diversity in the category), rather than taking the sum of interesting evidence into account, Jenness, who did not speak Iñupiaq and describes no situation in which he had a real conversation with an Eskimo female, relies on his own cultural projections. Here is an example: "An Eskimo woman demands very little: her world is small and her mental horizon limited. Life seems full and satisfactory to her if she has someone who will supply her basic needs of food and shelter, someone for whom she must cook and sew and by whom, in due course, she can bear two or three children . . .. Her proper mission, she believes, is to establish and maintain a smoothly running household." (Diamond Jenness, Dawn in Arctic Alaska. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957.) A similar pattern of erasure and misrepresentation is evident in varying degrees in related literature, including James W. VanStone, Point Hope, an Eskimo Village in Transition, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962; Nicholas, J. Gubser, The Nunamiut Eskimos, Hunters of Caribou, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965; Nuligak, I, Nuligak, Maurice Metayer, Trans., Toronto: P. Martin Associates, 1966; Richard, K. Nelson, Hunters of the Northern Ice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969; Richard K. Nelson, Shadow of the Hunter: Stories of Eskimo Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980; David Boeri, People of the Ice Whale: Eskimos, White Men, and The Whale, New York: Dutton, 1983; Thomas R. Berger, Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review, New York: Hill and Wang, 1985; John Murdoch, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. A well-known and more contemporary first hand account of an Inupiaq woman's life is found in M.B. Blackman, Sadie Brower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989. [Return to text]

38. Mark Nuttall, "Critical Reflections on Knowledge Gathering in the Arctic," in Louis-Jaques Dorais, Murielle Nagy and Ludger Muller-Wille, eds., Aboriginal Environmental Knowledge in the North, Quebec, GETIC: 21-35, quoted in Kerrie Ann Shannon, "Everyone Goes Fishing: Understanding Procurement for Men, Women and Children in an Arctic Community," Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 30:1 (2006): 10. [Return to text]

39. Barbara Bodenhorn, "I'm Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is: Iñupait and Anthropological Models of Gender," Etudes/Inuit/Studies, 14:1-2 (1990): 64. [Return to text]

40. Bodenhorn, "I'm Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is," 58, 61. [Return to text]

41. Janet Mancini Billson and Kyra Billson, Inuit Women: Their Powerful Spirit in a Century of Change, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007, 43. [Return to text]

42. Bodenhorn, "I'm Not the Great Hunter, My Wife Is," 60. Flexibility of roles is evident in recent studies of Iñupiaq family structures. In a study of twenty-five "complex" (non-nuclear family) households on the North Slope, anthropologist Amy Craver found that, "Generally Iñupiaq sex roles and division of labor are not rigidly defined. If a husband is disabled, the sons or wife will become the family's hunter. An unmarried woman with children will often hunt to feed her family or rely on a brother or relative to provide for them." But importantly, men will also take on caretaking and food preparation work typically associated with women when needed. The families Craver studied include quite a few examples of young, middle-aged, and older men taking care of elders and children as their primary work. Amy Craver, "Household Adaptive Strategies Among the Iñupiat," in Complex Ethnic Households In America, Ian Craver, Ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, 107. Similar data concerning flexibility and egalitarian tendencies in contemporary gender roles (in spite of the presence of sexism) are presented in Julie Winkler Sprott, Raising Young Children in an Iñupiaq Village: The Family, Cultural, and Village Environment of Rearing, Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 2002. [Return to text]