arctic voices arctic voices resistance at the tipping point Edited by Subhankar Banerjee seven stories press New York Copyright © 2012 by Subhankar Banerjee contents a seven stories press First edition 1 Arctic Voices is being made possible by a generous grant from the From Kolkata to Kaktovik En Route to Arctic Voices Alaska Wilderness League. Something Like an Introduction subhankar banerjee All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, 23 or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Here’s What You Can Do to Keep Wild Alive emilie karrick surrusco and cindy shogan seven stories press 140 Watts Street New York, NY 10013 sevenstories.com 37 part one College professors may order examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles for a free six-month trial period. To order, visit http://www.sevenstories.com/textbook snapshot of now or send a fax on school letterhead to (212) 226-1411. 39 library oF congress cataloging-in-publication data From Early Warming: Arctic voices : resistance at the tipping point / edited by Subhankar Banerjee. p. cm. Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North Includes bibliographical references. nancy lord ISBN-13: 978-1-60980-385-8 (hardback) ISBN-10: 1-60980-385-X (hardback) 1. Arctic peoples—Social conditions. 53 2. Indigenous peoples—Ecology—Arctic regions. They Have No Ears 3. Traditional ecological knowledge—Arctic regions. 4. Environmental degradation—Arctic regions. riki ott 5. Environmental responsibility—Arctic regions. 6. Arctic regions—Environmental conditions. I. Banerjee, Subhankar. 66 GN473.A76 2012 BPing the Arctic? 577.0911’3—dc23 subhankar banerjee 2012011126 91 photography throughout by subhankar banerjee (unless otherwise indicated) Teshekpuk in the Arctic’s Biggest Wetland steve zack and joe liebezeit design by pollen, new york printed in the united states 107 Protecting the Apples but Chopping the Trees andri snær magnason v vi vii 123 254 part two We’ll Fight to Protect the Caribou Calving Ground and Gwich’in Way of Life pain and joy of being connected jonathon solomon, sarah james, and reverend trimble gilbert 125 270 From Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic Caribou Time marla cone nick jans 142 The Fall of the Yukon Kings 285 dan o’neill part four 165 arctic ocean is our garden Following Cranes to the Arctic 287 george archibald From Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape barry lopez 179 Broken Promises: The Reality of Big Oil in America’s Arctic 301 pamela a. miller We Will Fight to Protect the Arctic Ocean and Our Way of Life robert thompson, rosemary ahtuangaruak, 207 caroline cannon, and earl kingik From Kivalina: A Climate Change Story christine shearer 335 Dancing for the Whales: Kivġiq and Cultural Resilience Among the People of the Whales 221 chie sakakibara part three we are the caribou people 347 223 part five From People of the Deer Farley mowat reporting from the field 349 238 From Coming into the Country Caribou Currency john mcphee seth kantner viii ix 363 451 In the Great Country part seven peter matthiessen we gather; we speak out; we organize 375 453 Coast to Coast: A Brief History of Native Solidarity Perilous Journeys with Arctic Shorebirds maria shaa tláa williams stephen brown 468 387 We’ll Fight to Protect the Gwich’in Homeland and Our Way of Life In Calloused Human Hands: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge Tuullik, Teshekpuk, and Our Western Arctic chieF dacho alexander, marilyn savage, jeFF Fair and matthew gilbert 486 403 Past and Present, Culture in Progress part six velma wallis decade, after decade, after decade . 499 405 From The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Sprits in Siberia From Two in the Far North piers vitebsky margaret e. murie 417 From Being Caribou 517 karsten heuer Acknowledgments 430 519 From Midnight Wilderness Contributors debbie s. miller 530 439 Credits and Permissions Saving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge george b. schaller 532 Index From Kolkata To Kaktovik En Route To Arctic Voices Something Like An Introduction subhankar banerjee “I learned by living out in the wilderness.” —Sarah James1 “When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits—limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.” —Vandana Shiva2 1. How do we talk about the Arctic? How do we think about the Arctic? How do we relate to the Arctic? And, why talk about the Arctic, now? These are some questions we explore, through stories, in this volume. Along the way, we talk about big animals, big migrations, big hunting, big 1 2 From kolkata to kaktovik en route to arctic voices land, big rivers, big ocean, and big sky; and also about big coal, big oil, big warming, big spills, big pollution, big legislations, and big lawsuits. And we talk about small things, too—small animals, small migrations, small hunting, small rivers, small warming, small spills, small pollution, small legislations, and small lawsuits. 2. In the Arctic, impacts of climate change can be seen and/or experienced everywhere.3 Indeed, the Arctic is warming at a rate double that of the rest of the planet. When I was in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in 2001–02, there was much talk in the communities about oil development, but very little about climate change. But when I returned north to Alaska/Siberia/ Yukon in 2005, 2006, and 2007, almost everyone was talking about the effects of climate change on animals and on the communities. I had wit- nessed things that I had not seen before—an exposed coffin from melting of permafrost (plate 15); a drunken forest in Siberia, trees leaning at odd angles from softening of the permafrost; and the skeleton of caribou that had died from starvation due to winter icing on the tundra. I also had heard stories of communities that needed to relocate because of coastal erosion (see Christine Shearer’s essay in this volume); the drying up of lakes that is affecting subsistence fishing; and deeper snow or taller and bushier willows making the migration much harder for the caribou, for examples. We tell many stories of climate change in Arctic Voices. At the same time, I am realizing that there is an Arctic paradox: that oil, coal, and gas, the burning of which has caused unprecedented Arctic warming, are the same nonrenewable resources whose extraction projects are expanding rapidly in the Arctic—terrestrial and offshore. In the winter of 2006 about a thousand caribou from the Teshekpuk Lake herd came over to the Arctic These days there is talk about ecological restoration, including ecological National Wildlife Refuge, a 240-mile journey. Kaktovik resident Robert Thompson said that this never corridors—to connect up landscapes that we fragmented all through the happened before. He speculated that the tundra froze, and the caribou came looking for food. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries—from Yellowstone to Yukon; from Baja tundra also froze in the Arctic Refuge, resulting in the deaths of several hundred animals that winter. to Bering. In the Arctic, however, we are going in reverse—severely fragment- The skeleton shown is one those dead caribou that was photographed the following summer. Due ing the ecocultural space with great speed. There are resource wars4—for oil, to unprecedented Arctic warming there is thawing of snow and rain during the autumn and winter gas, coal, and minerals—everywhere in the Arctic—from Alaska to Siberia, months, followed by freezing that produces solid ice on the tundra. Hoofed animals, including caribou/ with Nunavut and Greenland along the way. In Arctic Alaska, these wars have reindeer and musk ox are able to dig through snow to find food, but are not able to break through ice— intensified since I first arrived there more than a decade ago. I’d also note they are starving and dying. In many parts of the arctic these freeze-thaw cycles have contributed to here that Arctic Alaska resides in the most biologically diverse quadrant of significant population decline for these animals. (Photograph by Subhankar Banerjee, August 2006.) 4 From kolkata to kaktovik en route to arctic voices From kolkata to kaktovik en route to arctic voices 5 the circumpolar north. There is a great irony in the fact that oil sits under- imagined that my photographs would be used on the US Senate floor to argue neath caribou calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; oil against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—yet that is exactly sits underneath bird nesting and molting grounds in the Teshekpuk Lake what Senator Barbara Boxer did and won a crucial vote on March 19, 2003. Wetland; coal sits underneath caribou calving grounds in the Utukok River Nor did I imagine that my exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution would Upland; oil sits underneath the migration route of bowhead whales in the be censored7 and become the topic of a Senate hearing at which Senator Beaufort and Chukchi seas. Richard Durbin would support my work, or that later a Senate investigation It’s worth taking a look at how much coal and oil is up there in Arctic would follow. But when then-Senator Ted Stevens during a May 2003 Senate Alaska. By current estimates, there is some 30 billion barrels of oil in the debate said that President Jimmy Carter and I were giving “misinformation to Beaufort and Chukchi seas.