Nangaghneghput – our way of life

Abstract

Like all Indigenous people, I believe my home – the land and waters of St Lawrence Island in the Bering Strait – is the most special and sacred place on Earth. For thousands of years, my ancestors thrived here. Even throughout the millennia when there were periodic changes in climate, the variety and quantity of the natural resources sustained us. Whales, walrus, seals, seabirds, and millions of fish migrate through the strait between southern oceans and Arctic seas as the sea ice retreats in spring and advances in fall. However, we are now experiencing astonishing environmental change that is causing an unsettling shift in the traditional, ageless rhythms of our communities. Siku, sea ice, remains the most real and powerful presence in our relationship with our world in the Arctic. It defines our seasons and activities. For instance, our sea ice is important even as it begins to break apart and retreat north. It calms the wind-driven ocean waves and provides the perfect platform for finding, harvesting, and safely retrieving seals and walrus. The spring hunting season remains the most critical time for ensuring our communities’ food security, which depends on the complex interaction between the quality of the sea ice, wind direction and strength, general weather conditions, and marine mammals’ migration timing and location. However, as the condition of our sea ice weakens, our traditional hunting seasons are dissolving and blending together, with hunter safety becoming an increasing concern. We are traveling farther with less sea ice and with what seems like more disruptive, stormy weather during our hunting trips. Also with warmer seas, we are experiencing growing threats to the Arctic marine ecosystems on which we depend, including harmful algal blooms, ocean acidification, an unusual degree of mass mortality events involving marine mammals, and, perhaps most seriously, the destabilization of the Bering Sea food web. As the ice-free season lengthens to allow increasing commercial fishing and large vessel traffic, we are contending with oil and gas contamination, extensive marine debris, noise pollution, and increased risk of catastrophic accidents. Not only does this all challenge Arctic Indigenous people’s way of life, it also presents major unanswered national and international governance questions. Arctic Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and communities are indispensable to understanding and responding effectively to an evolving Arctic. Once commonly known as traditional ecological knowledge, IK goes beyond observations and ecological research. It is a systematic way of thinking applied to phenomena across biological, physical, cultural, and spiritual systems. It has developed over millennia and continues to do so as a living process, including knowledge acquired today and in the future, passed on from generation to generation. It is not something simply to be documented as data to be used by others for their own purposes. Instead, its true value is found when it is applied by our IK experts and knowledge bearers to questions about the health, condition, and well-being of their world – the land, waters, air, and all who inhabit it. It offers a unique “way of knowing” that can help complete humankind’s understanding of the Arctic, and which is necessary for informing scientific research and public policy. Indigenous Knowledge is grounded in the fundamental cultural belief of respecting and conserving the gifts the Creator provides us. Only by cherishing the blessing of a harvested walrus (or whale, or seal) are we worthy of continued successful hunting. Even our thoughts while accepting the gift offered to us must be proper and respectful, because they reflect how well we care for and conserve what is given. We give thanks. The cultural practice of humbly sharing our harvest is an expression of this understanding. While it is beyond translation, this profoundest IK and way-of-knowing in my language is Esla. It encompasses and connects all things. One of my mentors, the late Caleb Pungowiyi, would share a lesson from his grandmother to “listen to the whispers of the grass”. We must realize the importance of being closely connected to our environment, to open our ears to hear, or our eyes to see, or any of our senses to experience. We must open ourselves even to what may seem irrelevant. So while the natural world is acting strangely and the traditional rhythms of our lives are unsettled, the Arctic will always be our home, eternal and sacred. It seems that we now are struggling with our land and waters and are not in balance with them, as before; but our communities will continue adapting and will rely on our IK to maintain our relationship properly with our world. VERA K METCALF Eskimo Walrus Commission, Nome, AK