[mikesee]

Back in August Jeny and I joined a few friends for an Alaskan coastal traverse.



We rode ~160-miles of the Alaskan Arctic coast between Point Hope and Sheshalik, deploying packrafts twice to cross deeper water.





I've been working on the trip report for more than two months. I am, in a word, stuck.



I've been really struggling to get words on a page. An abundance of mostly intact carcasses — primarily walrus but lots of bears, too — really threw me for a loop. I can’t make good sense of how a culture that used to show such respect for animals, but particularly bears, has departed so completely from an ethos they’d held for millennia.




So I'm just sort of processing still. Thinking about what I want to say, and how I want to put it out there, before I do.



For now, please enjoy the few stills above and the moving pixels below.

More later.





​

 

[Snowfat]

Sounds like you may have a romanticized view of subsistence bush living. Pulling up next to swimming caribou in a boat and shooting them while they cross a river, what’s not to like? Throwing your bags of trash into the ocean is a routine disposal method. Complaining that the state of AK doesn’t subsidize the local school and airport enough while you pay zero property taxes because you choose to live in an unincorporated area. I’m not sure I see the problem?

 

[mike_kelly]

If you have not lived there you don't know. They live a hard life. They don't look at things the way urban people do. Public Health Service comes into a village to build a million dollar water treatment plant and leaves satisfied they have improved life. But nobody can pay the utility bills to keep the plant running. So it does not. It is a different reality from the one urban people enjoy. Mike their culture has been warped by the introduction of white western ways. Ways that don't fit for the most part. Don't work for the bush. It can rip a culture apart.

 

[Snowfat]

If you have not lived there you don't know. They live a hard life. They don't look at thinks the way urban people do. Public Health Service comes into a village to build a million dollar water treatment plant and leaves satisfied they have improved life. But nobody can pay the utility bills to keep the plant running. So it does not. It is a different reality from the one urban people enjoy. Mike their culture has been warped by the introduction of white western ways. Ways that don't fit for the most part. Don't work for the bush. It can rip a culture apart.

The urban versus bush divide can be a very controversial, contentious, and politicized. Many people that live in the bush don’t live the way they did in a traditional sense, they want all the modern luxuries that the rest of the modern world has. But the majority don’t want to do the other part like pay taxes, hold normal, steady jobs that you have to go to five days per week. In many villages the main hub is the state of AK subsidized school. It can be the only place that has running water, internet, reliable heat and is usually one of if not the nicest building in the village and often the only source of steady employment for many.

The subsistence concept is so broken. You are not truly living off the land when fuel oil, groceries, building materials and other goods and supplies are being barged and flown in. Those things require money to buy. There are few jobs in those areas so between the permanent fund, native cooperation dividends and other social programs people squeak by. Keeping the environment pristine makes for great headlines to fight against some mine or new oil drilling prospect, but the animal species suffer far more than what you’d ever see in any National Park in the lower 48. Even the ones that have seen a lot of commercial develop met for tourism and visitors.

 

[mike_kelly]

They don't hold steady jobs because there aren't any. They never had a cash economy in the old days. They lived in a way that allowed them to survive for centuries. Until we showed up. We showed them all the things they were missing in the world. You can never go back. So they are stuck between to worlds. No opportunity to have the things you have and you complaining that they can't pay taxes and don't hold steady jobs. They are not "living off the land" that is a urban new age concept. They just try to survive and your concept that "running water, internet, reliable heat and is usually one of if not the nicest building in the village" is valuable shows your urban point of view.

 

[Snowfat]

They don't hold steady jobs because there aren't any. They never had a cash economy in the old days. They lived in a way that allowed them to survive for centuries. Until we showed up. We showed them all the things they were missing in the world. You can never go back. So they are stuck between to worlds. No opportunity to have the things you have and you complaining that they can't pay taxes and don't hold steady jobs. They are not "living off the land" that is a urban new age concept. They just try to survive and your concept that "running water, internet, reliable heat and is usually one of if not the nicest building in the village" is valuable shows your urban point of view.

I have an urban point of view because basically anyone who lives in a first world country can’t have anything but. The rub is these folks want all the modern amenities but not pay for them. Nobody forces them to buy snowmobiles and ATV’s, give up their skin covered kayak for an aluminum skiff with outboard motor or use electricity and heating fuel or live in a normal wood framed home. They want those things because they make life easier and better than their traditional lifestyle. When you choose to have those things they cost money. When no local economy exists to provide said money it’s kinda hard to not live in squalor. Many mining towns in the American west dried up and blew away when the gold ran out. Those states didn‘t subsidize dying settlements that had no means to support themselves.

I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere and pay very high property taxes. I also don’t expect the government to provide a Home Depot, Costco, automobile dealerships, huge hospitals, restaurants of all shapes and size, etc, etc. If I want those things then I either visit there or move to a larger community.

 

[MendonCycleSmith]

Impressive.

In one, simple post, Mike has managed to harness both liberal, and conservative viewpoint adherents, and get them to lay bare, that which no one seems willing to admit which is, both sides have merit, but no one is willing to meet in the goddamn middle anymore.

I'm right, you're wrong, my team is awesome, your team sucks.

Let's try a mini thought experiment.

Pick one point the other person made that is valid, admit it, and then two points that are off base in your POV, and offer up a solution possibility that has merit, respect, and true integrity for those affected.

Otherwise you're both just throwing a lot of alternative facts at one another in drive by fashion.

It's time to be collaborative and create, effective, useful, compassionate, forward facing change, especially since you both seem to passionately support your version of rural reality.

I know Mike well enough to know he has been there many times, and has experienced, the many sides of the very unfortunate reality you guys are trying hard to place blame for, and it's a lot to try and figure out. Meanwhile, their culture fades farther into obscurity, the environment continues to get raped in a manner it can never recover from in our lifetimes, all in order to enrich those who will never even grace the shores of AK with their footprints, while it's native population watches, and loses it all.....

 

[uintah]

"I've been really struggling to get words on a page. An abundance of dead animals — primarily walrus but lots of bears, too — really threw me for a loop. I can’t make good sense of how a culture that used to show such respect for animals, but particularly bears, has departed so completely from an ethos they’d held for millennia."

Do you really believe that they haven't hunted these animals for millennia?

 

[mike_kelly]

White privilege brings with it a very narrow righteous point of view. I've lived in more than 30 bush villages starting in 1977 when there was just the beginning of white western influence. The power and telephone companies made a fortune off government grants to bring power and telephone service to a people who had never asked for nor knew anything about it. That action changed everything and it was a white western world trying to convert everyone to their way of life. Just like the bad things the missionaries did to the natives because they knew the right way to live. These are not alternative facts, it is the way it is from a first person account.

 

[MendonCycleSmith]

These are not alternative facts, it is the way it is from a first person account.

Yep, I understand, and it was admittedly, all absorbed through your experience, and your human lens.

Now reach across and create a connection with Snowfat that cannot be looked away from, be it out of ignorance, lack of depth of experience, political grooming, etc.

If all we do is tit for tat, ping pong, nothing happens.

Tell a story, tell the truth, explain.

Snowfat, that goes for you too.

Me? I'm busy trying to keep my ex from disowning our (adult) son for just being who he is.

So playing mediator is just a mode I find myself in currently wrapped up in.

Be good to each other, try to see where others are coming from, and if it's truly a morally, and socially indefensible position, help them see that without malice or contempt.

Uintah, I think you're missing the point, I'm fairly certain he knows that, I think most everyone can, at least to some degree.

His point is, they were left to rot, they could be "found" at all, if you will. In times past, the entire animal would have been used, consumed, rather than hunted and killed out of sheer delight in death and disrespect for the life taken.

And with that, I'm out.

 

[mike_kelly]

Without writing a book. That is what I tried to do. To say things are not what they appear to you from your point of view. This is a different reality with different rules. What would you do if a bear came into the village and tore things up, killed someone's malamute and threatened people? I am not justifying any action or way of life. It is a complicated world out there with parameters that are way different than ours in the cities. No 911, no instant anything, no roads, no super markets, no hospitals. You are responsible for yourself to survive. 45 below zero in the winter.

 

[Sparticus]

And with that, I'm out.

Please reconsider. I appreciate your perspective as well as your presentation; can't imagine I don't speak for others in this regard.
The skill of bridging social chasms isn't generally taught in schools and social media should be renamed anti-social media.
My intention here isn't to imply that you have more to say, only that if/when you do, that you'll say it. Thanks for considering.
=sParty

 

[mikesee]

Do you really believe that they haven't hunted these animals for millennia?

That isn't what I said, but I certainly could have been clearer. I wasn't expecting really any response to this post, so I thought I had some time to ruminate and figure out exactly how to paint the broader picture.

Hunting isn't what I'm referring to. Harvesting animals to feed your family is and will always remain sacrosanct.

And historically these people have held a deep, almost indescribable reverence for the lives of the animals that have given themselves up to sustain the human community.

The humans reciprocated by taking only what they needed, doing so with ritual and respect, and using every part of the animal from meat to bone to hide to sinew. Nothing went to waste.

What is happening now could more aptly be called slaughter. We saw hundreds of walrus carcasses rotting into the beach. Most were missing their heads. Some were hacked off with (probably) a hatchet, others chainsawed.

Undoubtedly some of them died at sea and washed up on the beach. That's where most floating detritus eventually ends up.

But hundreds? Climate change is undoubtedly heavily affecting the marine community up there. But hundreds in a ~160 mile stretch?

The sheer quantity makes it difficult to believe that human hands aren't directly responsible for some large percentage.

And then there are the bears. Bears used to be so heavily revered that the words "bear" and "hunting" weren't spoken, only obliquely implied, for fear of angering the spirit of the bear. The bear had to be willing to give its life to sustain the humans.

One day on this trip we saw five grizzly carcasses in a ~6 hour span. Five. All killed execution style -- single shot to the head.

Not a single part of them had been touched otherwise. Just left to rot.

 

[Jayem]

The urban versus bush divide can be a very controversial, contentious, and politicized. Many people that live in the bush don’t live the way they did in a traditional sense, they want all the modern luxuries that the rest of the modern world has. But the majority don’t want to do the other part like pay taxes, hold normal, steady jobs that you have to go to five days per week. In many villages the main hub is the state of AK subsidized school. It can be the only place that has running water, internet, reliable heat and is usually one of if not the nicest building in the village and often the only source of steady employment for many.

The subsistence concept is so broken. You are not truly living off the land when fuel oil, groceries, building materials and other goods and supplies are being barged and flown in. Those things require money to buy. There are few jobs in those areas so between the permanent fund, native cooperation dividends and other social programs people squeak by. Keeping the environment pristine makes for great headlines to fight against some mine or new oil drilling prospect, but the animal species suffer far more than what you’d ever see in any National Park in the lower 48. Even the ones that have seen a lot of commercial develop met for tourism and visitors.

The flipside is that the US decided to "buy" their land, that somehow they could "buy" the whole of Alaska that was inhabited by the people of Alaska. Not that it hasn't happened before, but this is just the situation here. And of course there's the natural resources the lower 48 states benefit from, oil, minerals, seafood, etc. So the US "buys" Alaska and makes all of these people "US citizens". So then why do these US citizens in Alaska not deserve health care, schools, cell towers, infrastructure, like the rest of the US citizens? One specific (out of many) example: Do the kids that go to schools in these villages that are part of their school's sports team not deserve to play against other schools like in the lower 48? They fly the kids from school to school using airlines, which as you can imagine is crazy expensive, and of course it's subsidized. There are literally hundreds of small villages with schools. I'm not even entirely sure if it's right or wrong.

That's always the issue.

Probably the biggest issue is that the "cat is out of the bag" at this point. It's at a point where there isn't really any turning back IMO.

It's an amazing privilege to get to visit so many native villages and it really gives you insight into their culture and way of life. Many of them are doing everything they can to preserve as much of it as they can, but again, the cat was let out of the bag many years ago...

 

[mike_kelly]

I ran a crew of about 8 kids, some college kids from the city and some local kids about to graduate from high school. The local kids told of dreams of going to college and studying aviation and maybe becoming pilots. Then they could stay in their home areas and make a living. They talked about how hard it was to move way from family to go to school. I was hoping they would find success. The village was dry but someone would smuggle booze into the village. A high school kid that scored a bottle was big man in the village. The cost was $50-$100 so it was expensive to acquire it. I kept track of these kids at college and watched them crash and burn. At the bottom of the hill at the University was a liquor store. Now they could walk down the hill and get alcohol almost for free. That led to alcohol abuse and with the painful separation from family most failed out of school.

I think there is a bit of that with hunting. So difficult in the old days to succeed in a hunt and bring home important food. Now there are snow machines and high power rifles, and unhappy young people with no jobs.... You also can not make assumptions in the bush. There are a lot of newcomers from outside. Some of them appear to be running from something outside. Some are downright scary. I can imagine some of them doing violent things. It is just complicated. Not good or bad just the way the landscape forces survival.

There have been documentaries about the habit loss due to climate change for the Walrus.

Walruses in a Time of Climate Change

K. M. Kovacs1, P. Lemons2, J. G. MacCracken2, C. Lydersen1 1Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway 2U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, AK, USA Highlights Sea ice deterioration due to global climate change is thought to be the most pervasive threat to ice-associated marine...

www.arctic.noaa.gov

'But, population models suggest a subsequent decline of approximately 50% (Taylor and Udevitz 2015), likely due to changes in vital rates associated with a population at or near carrying capacity. This decline has likely been exacerbated by declines in sea ice, which are associated with global climate change that are reducing the carrying capacity of the environment for walruses (Garlich-Miller et al. 2011, Taylor and Udevitz 2015). Hypothesized mechanisms include (1) the retreat of sea ice to a position over the deep Arctic Ocean basin, forcing walruses to use land-based haulouts where trampling events result in increased mortality to young animals (Jay and Fischbach 2008, Udevitz et al. 2012) and (2) the decline in sea ice reducing walruses' access to prey, which could affect adult female body condition, ultimately reducing calf survival and recruitment (Jay et al. 2011, Taylor and Udevitz 2015"

Mike I am sorry you had to experience the tragedy on your trip. I have spent a lot of time watching bears and feel the loss.

 

[uintah]

The flipside is that the US decided to "buy" their land, that somehow they could "buy" the whole of Alaska that was inhabited by the people of Alaska. Not that it hasn't happened before, but this is just the situation here. And of course there's the natural resources the lower 48 states benefit from, oil, minerals, seafood, etc. So the US "buys" Alaska and makes all of these people "US citizens". So then why do these US citizens in Alaska not deserve health care, schools, cell towers, infrastructure, like the rest of the US citizens? One specific (out of many) example: Do the kids that go to schools in these villages that are part of their school's sports team not deserve to play against other schools like in the lower 48? They fly the kids from school to school using airlines, which as you can imagine is crazy expensive, and of course it's subsidized. There are literally hundreds of small villages with schools. I'm not even entirely sure if it's right or wrong.

That's always the issue.

Probably the biggest issue is that the "cat is out of the bag" at this point. It's at a point where there isn't really any turning back IMO.

It's an amazing privilege to get to visit so many native villages and it really gives you insight into their culture and way of life. Many of them are doing everything they can to preserve as much of it as they can, but again, the cat was let out of the bag many years ago...

Haliburton and Baker Hughes sending 10's of thousands of alcoholics and meth heads up to work in the oil fields, making good money, giving them time off to go to said villages and spend their money did nothing to help.

 

[Jayem]

Haliburton and Baker Hughes sending 10's of thousands of alcoholics and meth heads up to work in the oil fields, making good money, giving them time off to go to said villages and spend their money did nothing to help.

What villages? I'm not sure I understand how that is possible. The only village really near the oil fields is Nuiqsut, out of the hundreds in Alaska. And it's not like you can walk or drive to these places. Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay isn't really a village, it's all industry. The oil fields have traditionally been 2 on/2 off schedules or some similar rotation. They fly up to SCC from either ANC or FAI or to one of the privately owned air-fields on the north slope, operated by the oil companies. For a long time, Conoco operated their own 737 fleet, now these are mostly charters, but there are still flight departments and aircraft used exclusively for these purposes. The workers often come from the lower 48, not actually residing in Alaska. That is also very common with the fishing industry. Lastly, what would they "spend their money on" in the villages? There is nothing really there to spend money on.

This does not compute for me. I'm not sure I've ever heard of thousands of oil field workings "going to" villages. What the rub has usually been is that outside operations, mining, oil, etc., have been hesitant or flat out unwilling to involve and hire personnel in the native villages, even when those villages are being used as bases of operation or as support for the operation (typical for many of the mining operations). This is usually tied to the alcoholism and other reliability issues in the villages. This is where a lot of work has been done by all parties (business, state, villages, native corps) involved to try and build reliable work forces in the native villages due to this. That kind of goes back to that job opportunities piece. There are very limited opportunities for significant employment and that results in extreme poverty in the villages.

There are a lot of complex issues here. I think it's at least good that they get some visibility, so other people (outside of here) can get some insight into it. I was talking with someone just yesterday about how most people "visiting" Alaska tend to have little idea what is really about and how people live here. Visit a dozen villages across the state and stay there for a few days. Then you will start to get an idea.

 

[mike_kelly]

I was there in the pipeline days and I did not see anyone from the oil fields out in the bush. They spent their money in Fairbanks and Anchorage.

 

[D. Inoobinati]

Member has removed content due to fundamental disagreement with this site owner's views favoring expanded access for electric mountain bikes (eMtb) on multiuse singletrack in public lands.

 

[WHALENARD]

I don't disagree with any of the above (I think they're all factors) but we can date this all the way back to Muir, as he wrote about it. His perspective was one of pre and post the arrival of missionaries. A culture and harmonious relationship formed with the land developed over millennia dismantled with the arrival of a new God.

Unfortunately I don't think there is a solution. Not a good solution but no solution. Just look at what we're doing to the globe on a larger scale. I can't speak to Mike's perspective but I would find it, at least on some level, infuriating, regardless any and all circumstances. We can't escape our own arrogance, it's impossible.

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