October 1, 2000
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The Inuvialuit and the Gwich'in casually refer to themselves as the Eskimos and the Indians. The Inuvialuit are one of four Inuit groupings of the Arctic. The Gwich'in speak an Athabaskan dialect, which means that they probably are distant relatives of the original Mattole and Sinkyone people as well as of the Navajo. Their lands range through the Yukon and into far northeast Alaska. They have spearheaded efforts to prevent oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (calving grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd that is precious to them).
Though the people with whom we spent time loved the land, it was hard for them to grasp that we visitors actually liked sleeping in a tent on beaches of the Arctic Ocean or the Peal River rather than in their warm houses. Hosts tended to compensate for the limits this placed on their hospitality by serving us large quantities of fresh meat and fish, caribou, moose, snow goose, beluga whale, Arctic char, whitefish, and iconou, as well as an array of berries from the tundra. The Inuvialuit and Gwich'in dearly love the kinds of food their land produces, and we were not altogether unhappy to have our low-budget travel larder so locally enriched. Store-bought food in the Arctic is brutally expensive.
The overall story that emerged was both simple and painfully complex. No one doubted the fact of global warming. Winters were not as cold. Ice went out earlier and came in later. Habitats were shifting north. Salmon were showing up in the Arctic, grizzlies on islands of the far north where only polar bears had foraged. These changes in the environment, it must be noted, were following fast upon a truly massive transition of culture. In a few short decades, elders we met had gone from the simple, hard lives of semi-nomadic trappers and hunters in the coldest of lands, with only the dog sled as transportation, to contemporary town life, coping with modern technological, political, and cultural realities. Well off and poor alike, were still being stretched on the rack of cultural change.
In an irony almost too painful to contemplate, people had been forced not long ago to give up their original adaptation to Anglo culture. Snowmobiles and modern outboard motor boats had enabled them to roam great distances and still live in settled communities. Trapping and fur sales enabled them to equip themselves for the overall hunt (which produced more fur). When European and American movie stars and socialites, organized by Greenpeace, began, with great public righteousness, to boycott fur to protest the clubbing by non-Inuits of harp seal babies in the eastern Arctic, the bottom dropped out of the entire fur market and has not been restored. Welfare dependency and alcoholism increased exponentially. As a way out, the native people find themselves replacing the fur market, a sustainable and culturally fitting economy, with oil and natural gas development.
Theirs is a cold, hard land. To ask people to forgo exploitation of their marketable resources would be to ask them to depend on a waning public dole or, now that furs have little value, to live an even harsher life than before. As much as they still love the land and life, few want to go back. There may be no "back" to go to. In this, they are representative of "developing" cultures everywhere.
The people in the Canadian Arctic are still surrounded by a vast, wild abundance. It makes their situation both unique andall the more ironic. Industrial pollution worldwide is impacting their land-based existence-airborne pollutants contaminate meat, depleted ozone is causing skin cancer, and the rapidly warming climate will demand even greater changes in culture-and yet they think their best hope for a comfortable future lies in developing their own fossil fuel resources and, soon, in ecotourism. If one can generalize, they seem to feel that the major challenge is continued adaptation and development, not correction or challenge.
Stories of our efforts here to make sustainable adaptations to place and to restore the once-great salmon runs-and how climate change might affect our success-were new to them and a little confusing. Our stories did not fit their expectations for tourists or Americans. They granted us a guarded respect as one might a strange new animal. In this light, such stories provide a needed antidote to the consumerist models that are constantly exported north and elsewhere.
This, of course, requires that many of us keep living out these stories. It may be as important as anything we do. While these northern peoples' original adaptations to their place are modulated and diminished by the advent of new technologies, some of us in the South are seeking ways back to right relationships to our own homelands and communities. We-northern land-based people seeking development of their resources and rural Cascadians working at alternatives to suburbanization-may be like ships passing in the night, doubling the speed with which our disparities grow, but we also might be natural allies of the spirit who share a potentially broad and livable common ground. If not, then what might disappear may be more than just outmoded ways of life but the whole human possibility on Earth. Finding sustainable paths forward in developing nations may not happen unless new paths backward emerge here. There are alliances to be made and new lines of communication to open. This is the real meat of our coming theater production.
Human Nature has been invited to premiere "Global Warming the Musical" at the Great Northern Arts Festival in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, July 2001.
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TOC for Forest & River News, Fall 2000