“Home sweet home.” That’s how Helen Kakoona calls her Alaska Native village of Shishmaref when asked what it means to live on a remote barrier island near the Arctic Circle.
Her home and the traditional lifestyle kept for thousands of years is in peril, vulnerable to the effects of climate change with rising sea levels, erosion and the loss of protective sea ice.
So much has been lost over time that residents have voted twice to relocate. But Shishmaref remains in the same place. The relocation is too costly.
In this Inupiat village of 600, residents live mostly off subsistence hunting of seals, fishing and berry-picking. Some fear that if they move, they’d lose that traditional way of life that they’ve carried on from their ancestors.
On a recent day, hunters boarded boats at sunrise in the village’s lagoon and returned in the evening hauling spotted seals. Kakoona and her mother helped skin the seals with an ulu or women’s knife and prepared to cure them in a weeks-long process.
“No other place feels like home but here,” said Kakoona, 28. She tried to settle down in different towns, but she ended up returning to Shishmaref to stay with her mother, Mary Kakoona, 63.
“I know we gotta move sometime,” Mary said, about a relocation that at times seems inevitable. “Water is rising and this island is getting smaller.”
Shishmaref is located on an island that is a quarter mile (0.4km) wide and about three miles (4.8km) long. It is one of dozens of Alaska villages that are under threat from climate change.
“We’ve been here all of our lives,” said Ned Ahgupuk, a Shishmaref resident, who on a recent day strolled on a beach at sunset with his girlfriend and their one-year-old son. Climate change, is “kind of” a concern, he said, but he won’t leave the island. “Everyone,” he said, “is like a big family caring for each other.”
Sadie McGill and husband Tracy McGill feel the same. On a chilly fall day, they played with puppies bred to be sled dogs in front of the home where she was born and raised.
After living abroad, she recently returned to the village to take care of her ageing mother. The effects of climate change worry her and she’d be willing to relocate but she’d prefer to remain home.
“It’s really sad to see our native land go and disappear into the ocean,” she said. “I want to stay here where we were raised and born – and (where) we know how to survive.” – AP
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Life in Shishmaref village, Alaska
Helen Kakoona, 28, with skinned seals in front of her home in Shishmaref, Alaska, on Oct 3, against the setting sun. ‘No other place feels like home but here,’ she says. Photo: AP
Small waves crashing into reinforced seawalls in Shishmaref, on Oct 4. Rising sea levels, flooding, increased erosion and loss of protective sea ice and land have led residents of this island community to vote twice to relocate. But more than six years after the last vote, Shishmaref remains in the same place because the relocation is too costly. — Photos: AP
Wearing a seal fur hat made by his mother, Andrew Kakoona, 46, sits on an ATV with a hunting rifle secured on his chest as he and his relatives get ready for seal-hunting in Shishmaref.
Children playing in Shishmaref, located on the small island of Sarichef – just 0.4km wide and about 4.8km long. Only about half of it is habitable, but hundreds of feet of shore have been lost in past decades.
Seal hunters Thomas (left) and Anthony Pootoogooluk unloading seals onto the edge of the lagoon in Shishmaref, on Oct 4.
The sun sets in the horizon as Ned Ahgupuk and his girlfriend, Kelsi Rock, piggybacking their one-year-old son, Steven, stroll along the beach on the Arctic Ocean in Shishmaref.
Seal hunter Wilbur Kuzuzuk, 53, dragging a spotted seal, his only catch of the day, onto the edge of the lagoon in Shishmaref. They might be at the edge of the world, but elsewhere they would be far from some of the prime spots for subsistence hunting of bearded seals and other sea mammals or fishing and berry- picking in the tundra that make up most of their nutrition.
A polar bear’s hide hangs on a rack near the village’s airstrip in Shishmaref.
Patrick Iyatunguk, a 31-year-old seal hunter, building his boat outside his home in Shishmaref.
The northern lights appear over Shishmaref on Oct 2.
