“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.”1 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.2
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.
- Sophie Thériault, et al, “The Legal Protection Of Subsistence,” 43. [↩]
- 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. [↩]
