Gathering native testimony about environmental changes in Alakanuk

Photo Credit: Emily Raboteau and Maria Tzortziou

​I was invited by my colleague Dr. Maria Tzortziou to join her on a research trip to the Yukon Delta where her NASA-funded team is studying coastal changes due to the climate crisis. (We are being financed by an interdisciplinary research grant through City University of New York.) As a climate writer interested in environmental justice, I feel excited and fortunate to be partnering with an environmental scientist who can help me understand the larger picture of global warming and its implications for frontline communities such as here in the remote village of Alakanuk, Alaska, by sharing her scientific observations. While Maria’s team continues methodically gathering water samples and taking satellite imagery that over time have a story to tell about environmental change in the most rapidly warming part of the planet, we have come for five days to gather stories from members of the local Yup’ik community – some of them collaborators in the larger research program - about what changes they have observed in their home place, how they are adapting to these changes on sociocultural and spiritual levels, stewardship, and traditional ecological knowledge.

Before journeying to the Arctic, I asked my friend, environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth, author of the epic Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait, what books I should read about this region to help me prepare. One of the many illuminating texts she recommended was Wise Words of the Yup’ik People: We Talk to You because We Love You by Anne Fienup-Riordan. It documents traditional Yup’ik qanruyutait (guiding wisdom) regarding a balanced way of life between men and women, parents and children, siblings and cousins, fellow villagers, visitors, strangers, and non-Natives, recorded by elders in the community twenty years ago in an effort at cultural preservation. According to this book, the Yup’ik people of southwest Alaska were among the last Arctic peoples to encounter non-Natives, and as a result, Yup’ik language and many traditions have remained intact.
 
One of the elders whose knowledge was collected in this book was Joe Joseph, born in Alakanuk in 1922.  Imagine my surprise to find him commemorated on the wall of elders in the same Tribal Council building where Maria and I are now sleeping among pictures of dozens of other elders who have passed on—a century after his birth.  In my short time here, it’s already clear that respect for elders is a pillar principle and way of life. I am grateful to Augusta Edmund, head of the Tribal Council, for helping to orchestrate interviews with some elders in the community, to learning more from them, and (with their permission) to sharing their wisdom.  

 - Emily Raboteau