Subhankar Banerjee - Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point

resistance at the tipping point

Edited by

Subhankar Banerjee

SEVEN STORIES PRESS
New York

Copyright 2012 by Subhankar Banerjee

A SEVEN STORIES PRESS FIRST EDITION

Arctic Voices is being made possible by a generous grant from the Alaska Wilderness League.

All rights reserved.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Arctic voices: resistance at the tipping point / edited by Subhankar Banerjee.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13:978-1-60980-385-8 (hardback)
ISBN-10:1-60980-385-X (hardback)
E-ISBN: 978-1-60980-386-5
1. Arctic peoplesSocial conditions.
2. Indigenous peoplesEcologyArctic regions.
3. Traditional ecological knowledgeArctic regions.
4. Environmental degradationArctic regions.
5. Environmental responsibilityArctic regions.
6. Arctic regionsEnvironmental conditions.
I. Banerjee, Subhankar.
GN473.A76 2012
577.09113dc23
2012011126

PHOTOGRAPHY THROUGHOUT BY SUBHANKAR BANERJEE
(unless otherwise indicated)

DESIGN BY POLLEN, NEW YORK

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

From Kolkata to Kaktovik En Route to Arctic Voices Something Like an Introduction
SUBHANKAR BANERJEE

Heres What You Can Do to Keep Wild Alive
EMILIE KARRICK SURRUSCO and CINDY SHOGAN

PART ONE
snapshot of now

From Early Warming: Crisis and Response in the Climate-Changed North
NANCY LORD

They Have No Ears
RIKI OTT

BPing the Arctic?
SUBHANKAR BANERJEE

Teshekpuk in the Arctics Biggest Wetland
STEVE ZACK and JOE LIEBEZEIT

Protecting the Apples but Chopping the Trees
ANDRI SN.SR MAGNASON

PART TWO
pain and joy of being connected

From Silent Snow: The Slow Poisoning of the Arctic
MARLA CONE

The Fall of the Yukon Kings
DAN ONEILL

Following Cranes to the Arctic
GEORGE ARCHIBALD

Broken Promises: The Reality of Big Oil in Americas Arctic
PAMELA A. MILLER

From Kivalina: A Climate Change Story
CHRISTINE SHEARER

PART THREE
we are the caribou people

From People of the Deer
FARLEY MOWAT

Caribou Currency
SETH KANTNER

We ll Fight to Protect the Caribou Calving Ground and Gwichin Way of Life
JONATHON SOLOMON, SARAH JAMES, and REVEREND TRIMBLE GILBERT

Caribou Time
NICK JANS

PART FOUR
ardlic ocean is our garden

From Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape
BARRY LOPEZ

We Will Fight to Protect the Arctic Ocean and Our Way of Life
ROBERT THOMPSON, ROSEMARY AHTUANGARUAK, CAROLINE CANNON, and EARL KINGIK

Dancing for the Whales: Kiviq and Cultural Resilience Among the People of the Whales
CHIE SAKAKIBARA

PART FIVE
reporting from the field

From Coming into the Country
JOHN MCPHEE

In the Great Country
PETER MATTHIESSEN

Coast to Coast: Perilous Journeys with Arctic Shorebirds
STEPHEN BROWN

In Calloused Human Hands: Tuullik, Teshekpuk, and Our Western Arctic
JEFF FAIR

PART SIX
decade, after decade, after decade

From Two in the Far North
MARGARET E. MURIE

From Being Caribou
KARSTEN HEUER

From Midnight Wilderness
DEBBIE S. MILLER

Saving the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
GEORGE B. SCHALLER

PART SEVEN
we gather; we speak out; we organize

A Brief History of Native Solidarity
MARIA SHAA TLA WILLIAMS

Well Fight to Protect the Gwichin Homeland and Our Way of Life Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge
CHIEF DACHO ALEXANDER, MARILYN SAVAGE, and MATTHEW GILBERT

Past and Present, Culture in Progress
VELMA WALLIS

From The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Sprits in Siberia
PIERS VITEBSKY

From Kolkata To Kaktovik En Route To Arctic Voices
Something Like An Introduction

SUBHANKAR BANERJEE

I learned by living out in the wilderness.

Sarah James

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 limitslimits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.

Vandana Shiva

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 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, toosmall animals, small migrations, small hunting, small rivers, small warming, small spills, small pollution, small legislations, and small lawsuits.

In the Arctic, impacts of climate change can be seen and/or experienced everywhere.); 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 Shearers 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 Arcticterrestrial and offshore.

These days there is talk about ecological restoration, including ecological corridorsto connect up landscapes that we fragmented all through the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesfrom Yellowstone to Yukon; from Baja to Bering. In the Arctic, however, we are going in reverseseverely fragmenting the ecocultural space with great speed. There are resource warsfor oil, gas, coal, and mineralseverywhere in the Arcticfrom Alaska to Siberia, with Nunavut and Greenland along the way. In Arctic Alaska, these wars have intensified since I first arrived there more than a decade ago. Id also note here that Arctic Alaska resides in the most biologically diverse quadrant of