“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.1 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.2
- See Charles Wohlforth, “As the Arctic Melts, An Ancient Culture Faces Ruins,” National Wildlife 43:3 (Apr/May 2005). [↩]
- 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. [↩]
