Hey, it's Amy. I want to let you know that we're doing something a little different this time. We just had so much content that felt important to share in this episode that it grew to almost an hour, and then that felt like kind of a lot, so we made this a two-parter. It's one episode telling one part of the story of the refuge, but we've divided it into two pieces. That's all thanks for listening.
This series was supported by the Pulitzer Center. Kathy Itta-Ahgeak: Well, we know, we know who we are, right? We're Inupiaq. Well, you know where that word comes from, the word inuk.
This is Kathy Itta-Ahgeak. I'm talking with her in the Inupiat Heritage Center in Utqiagvik, Alaska. Kathy was the director of the center when we met. Kathy Itta-Ahgeak: and the word inuk is a person. It comes from the word inu, to live. So we are living people. But in addition to that, we add piaq, which means real. So we are the real people. Welcome to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and
this is season three of our show. We're exploring the 40-year battle over drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. My conversation with Kathy wasn't about that controversy, though. It was about Inupiaq language and culture. Kathy Itta-Ahgeak: And our food is niqipiaq, the word niqi, it's food. Niqsaq is to get food. And we add to our Native food, we call it niqipiaq. Real food. So we are real people eating real
food. Maybe once upon a time, there were imaginary things and we had to know what's real. The Inupiat are part of the Inuit family of cultures. Inuit territory stretches from eastern Russia across the northern part of Alaska and the enormous Canadian Arctic and all the way over to Greenland. If drilling moves forward in the
refuge, it'll be happening on ancestral Inupiaq lands. Kathy says there's a lot of diversity among all the different Inuit communities, but also many common values and traditions. And one of those values she told me about has been looping in my brain as I've been reporting on drilling in the refuge. It's called atauchikun. Kathy Itta-Ahgeak: Atauchikun is together and everything has to be in harmony and together, be of the same mind. Atauchikun
comes from the word a doubt. A doubt is to be underneath, like a foundation. Yeah. Oh, interesting. So, like the foundation is togetherness. No matter where human beings live, we have to try to get along with each other. But here, in one of the harshest environments on the planet, community cohesion isn't just a nice goal, it's a life or death survival skill. In the middle of an Arctic winter, you can't just get angry and leave your community all by yourself, or you can, but you'll probably
die. Inupiaq people have survived here for thousands of years by figuring out how to keep working together no matter what. Hunting together, sewing together, preserving food together. And Kathy says this ethic of atauchikun is still deeply ingrained in the culture and reinforced in all kinds of ways, like through one of the signature Inupiaq games, called the blanket toss. This is where dozens of people hold the edges of a seal skin blanket and toss a jumper in the middle, high up into the air.
Kathy Itta-Ahgeak: When we're doing the blanket toss and we're tossing a jumper, somebody elder will tell us, atauchikun! Go together! You know, we have to go together. We have to throw the blanket together, and even in the hunting, we have to work together. So I think that is probably one of the best characteristics that we have, that we could share, is that, you know, the love and respect for one another and working together. So why has atauchikun been on my mind so
much while working on this series about the refuge? Well, I've been producing this at a time when the United States as a whole is extremely divided. Drilling in the refuge is just one of many hot button family dinner ruining, polarizing issues in our country right now. And I've been wondering, how does this kind of stuff play out in an Inupiaq context? How are people holding on to these values of togetherness and
harmony when they disagree? Because people do disagree about drilling in the refuge, not just people who live in faraway places, Inupiaq, people. People who live right next to where the drilling might be. So what happens when the values of unity and community cohesion come into conflict with other fundamental values like caring for land and water and animals? How do any of us work together and stay strong together, even when we
vehemently, passionately disagree? These are some of the defining questions of American life right now, and they're also the questions people are grappling with in the Inupiaq village of Kaktovik, Alaska.
I could be here and see the last polar bear in Alaska.
We're melting rapidly along the coast. The weather's getting weird.
Kaktovik is the only community within the boundaries of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We are not an exhibit in a museum.
It's a big opportunity that we be able to profit off of.
No, I'm sorry. I'm not going to be quiet anymore. I'm going to start wasting my concerns and my opinions.
The first time Nora Jane Burns remembers being aware of injustice was when she was in kindergarten in the 1960s. She grew up in Kaktovik, Alaska, a village of close to 300 people located on an island just north of the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And she remembers being pretty shocked at how her classmates were being treated at school.
Every time some kid did something, they would get whacked and stuff like that. And, you know, like, if they just say an Eskimo word, like, if you drop your pencil, oh, my pencil, karuq. And then, you know, we say the word karuq the teacher was fast to whack us on our hands or whatever, so that we wouldn't speak our language. And that's the first time ever seen anything happen like that.
Nora Jane's father was a teacher in that same school. In fact, the school is named after him now, and he had told her before she started kindergarten that if she didn't understand something, she should just raise her hand and ask about it. So she did.
And I think I over raised my hands to that poor teacher, and she didn't like me at all because I'd asked why we have to do it this way? How come we have to do it that way? Isn't there another way to do it, you know?
Quick side note, that's Nora Jane's little dog barking in the background. Anyway, she says her teacher got frustrated with her and her best friend.
She told our older sisters that that we were both dumb, that we're not going to learn anything, and then it just went downhill.
The teacher just stopped teaching Nora Jane.
She didn't know World War Three was going to happen after that, so I made it miserable for her rest of the school year.
How did you make it miserable?
Just do all kinds of crazy things that the kid would do to disrupt her from teaching the other guys. I say, if you going to teach those guys, yeah? And then not me? My kind of thinking, anyway.
So you had a little bit of a rebellious streak?
Yeah, I think from day one.
Nora Jane went on to college and later served as the mayor of Kaktovik for many years, and she says she developed the confidence she needed to stand up for herself and be a community leader by being out on the land with her family.
Yes, growing up, my father would take us out, you know, after school was out in June, and when we're able to boat, he'd take us to our family camp at Jago.
The Jago is one of the rivers that runs north out of the Brooks Range and across the 1002 area, the part of the refuge where drilling has now been approved. Nora Jane says her dad taught her how to use a small bow and arrow when they were camped over there, even though some of the boys her age said girls couldn't hunt.
So he had an ice cellar over there, and that's where he would put our caribou that we harvest during the summer. He'd get enough to last us a whole, all winter, because he was a teacher and he couldn't go hunting during the week like the other guys when they're not working and stuff,
so he'd have whole bunch of caribou in the ice cellar. And then on weekends, when he was off, he would go out, and it would be an all day trip for him just to go out there and go get the caribou out of the ice cellar.
Like he'd take the snowmobile out?
No, he had dog teams.
When she was a child, Nora Jane, had to walk a ways inland to get to the ice cellar. But lack of sea ice has ramped up the erosion of many parts of the Alaska shoreline, and now, like so many other culturally important sites in coastal Alaska, the family ice cellar has been swallowed by the sea. What do you think about climate change?
It's happening. We're melting rapidly along the coast. And I know it's happening. You watch the seasons, the weather's getting weird.
The snow used to start falling in August or September, she says. But now sometimes the island is still getting rain in October.
Even when I fish I had told my cousin, hey, my hands never get cold when I was checking my fish net in July and August, I said, your fingertips should have been really cold when you're checking your fish net and stuff like that. And they said, my hands didn't get even cold.
Is the sea ice different?
Yeah, there's no sea ice. When I was growing up, we'd have ice flows out there that you can go out seal hunting and, and last how many years we haven't really seen any. And I just wonder what are happening to the seals out there if there's no ice for them to lay and rest, you know, and it's affecting the polar bears too. So whatever affects the seals, it affects the polar bears and the fish. So, yeah.
What do you think is causing climate change?
I have no idea. It's just happening.
You don't necessarily think it's fossil fuels?
That could be a factor. And I was hearing the rainforest being chopped off because they helped clean out the atmosphere and stuff like that, so.
Nora Jane worked in the Prudhoe Bay oil field as a summer job when she was in college, picking up trash and doing other odd jobs. And when she first heard about the possibility of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, she was for it.
When I was young in my early 20s, thought that was good because it would provide jobs.
She got married and moved back to Kaktovik in 1988.
Then I was still for it, but then I became a planning commissioner.
That position gave her an insider's view of development decisions on the North Slope, and that's when her opinion on drilling in the refuge started to change.
Just from watching how the oil companies get their permits, they always say they're going to start just in this area. They say they'll start here, but then they'll spider off over here. You know, every other season seems like just from watching that and then just from getting older and wanting healthy animals to eat.
Nora Jane says she's heard from people in other villages close to oil fields that the fish and the caribou aren't as healthy as they are around Kaktovik, and she says people in those places have to travel much farther to hunt to get away from the noise and lights of the oil industry.
Why would we want to have Prudhoe Bay? You see all the oil rigs and stuff, and it's not fancy stuff.
She's also very concerned about the possibility of an oil spill. And she's not alone. The fear of a major oil spill in this remote, hard to reach area has been raised by many people. Even the very first step in a cleanup would be problematic. The large equipment needed would have to be shipped
in, and the refuge is a long way from any major ports. Nora Jane says she's brought things like this up in many meetings, and the pro oil people try to reassure her by saying that a spill is unlikely and that would be cleaned up quickly.
I said, you can assure us, A, B and C, but listen, you guys are not gods. You guys cannot prevent any oil spill on the ground, and it takes forever to clean up and to get rid of the contamination. We're in a cycle. They forget that the water comes from the ocean and it comes back around and it's, it's a circle of life.
If you heard our last episode when we talked to people in Kaktovik who support oil development, you might be thinking, but what about the money? What about the ways that drilling for oil and the refuge could help people in Kaktovik? Would you personally benefit from it?
Well, well, I'm ASRC shareholder for one, and so I'll benefit just a little bit, but even, but I'd rather have healthy food, healthy caribou, healthy land. Birds, you have birds that fly in and out, and you don't want them to be dying off and stuff like that, and even our ocean water, we have to be careful with that too.
ASRC stands for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, one of the native corporations we talked about in our last episode. It's become a powerful force on the pro oil side, along with the North Slope Borough. Boroughs are like counties in Alaska, but the North Slope Borough is so big, it's really more like a state within the state. It's roughly the size of Wyoming, but with fewer than 10,000 permanent
residents. The Prudhoe Bay oil field, the National Petroleum Reserve and a big chunk of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are contained within its borders. Jobs can be hard to come by on the North Slope, and the Borough is a major employer. In 2015, 48% of North Slope residents worked directly for the Borough government or for the North Slope School District, and those jobs, like almost everything on the North Slope,
are funded by taxes from oil and gas development. So if a North Slope person wants to speak out against oil development, they risk going up against their employer, their government and the oil and gas industry. This creates a certain kind of atmosphere. One that several people I spoke to in different communities in Alaska described as intimidating. It's hard to speak your mind if you feel like you might lose your job, and it
also makes it hard to talk to reporters. People who feel like they've faced retaliation from the Borough because of their opinions have little to gain and a whole lot to lose by sharing their stories. Nora Jane says, here in the village, everyone pretty much knows where everyone else stands on oil, and she knows some people have been really mad at her for speaking out against it. Does it make you uncomfortable in your community to be a little bit of a rebel like this?
Shoot, I've been fighting all my life.
Ever since you were that kindergartner!
Yeah! No, sometimes it hurts a little bit, but to say, well, they have their own mind, and I have my own mind, so I'll, I'll keep thinking the way I want to think, and they can keep thinking the way they want to think. And if we talk about it, we can get all angry and stuff, but then in the end, we're all still family.
And she says here in the village, even when they have conflicts, people are repeatedly drawn back together through the process of providing for themselves as a community. She told me, just shortly before I had arrived, some hunters had caught some whales, and as they've done for thousands of years, that food was distributed throughout the village.
So I was able to get some meat and the blubber to make the oil I was blessed with that. So this community shares. We may look dysfunctional, but we all share, they all take care of it. You know, when they see somebody needing they'll, they'll, they'll step up.
Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's not like, oh no, Nora Jane's against oil, so we're not going to give her any whales.
No, no, and it's not like that. No, yeah, yeah. Blood runs deep. So you got family members that you're related to, and we may think differently, but in the end, we always end up when we have to work together. We all work together.
Listening to Nora Jane, I felt like I was hearing about atauchikun in action, and it actually made me long for some similar kind of thing that we could do as a whole country. Some hands on physical project in the natural world that we do with and for each other, no matter what our political views. It wouldn't make our disagreements go away, but it might help us remember just how interwoven our fates truly are.
At least that seems to be how it works for Nora Jane and other people I talked to in Kaktovik.
I try to look at it that way and say, just because I think this way, I'm not going to hate your guts for thinking that way, because I know that they want best for themselves, but I just say, well, we want to make sure we have something for our future generation to be able to use the land and stuff like that.
We'll have more after this short break.
I'm Dallas Taylor, host of 20,000 Hertz, a podcast that reveals the untold stories behind the sounds of our world. We've uncovered the incredible intelligence of talking parrots. Basically, bird brain was a pejorative term, and here I had this bird that was doing the same types of tasks as the primates. We've investigated the bonding power of music. There's an intimacy there in communicating through the medium of music that can be really a powerful force for bringing people together.
We've explored the subtle nuances of the human voice.
We have to remember that humans, over many hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, have become extremely attuned to the sounds of each other's voices.
And we've revealed why a famous composer wrote a piece made entirely of silence.
I think that's a really potentially quite useful and quite profound experience to have.
Subscribe to 20,000 Hertz right here in your podcast player. I'll meet you there.
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Excited! Most excited I've maybe ever been at 6am.
Welcome back to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and that's producer Nick Mott. This was our very first morning in Kaktovik. We're gonna go drive around Kaktovik and apparently meet some polar bears. Polar bears in town are actually not a good thing, but it's an interesting thing. We throw on our rain shells, hats, gloves and boots- this is August in the Arctic after all- and five minutes later, we meet Robert outside.
I know there's another bear in town. I'm sure I saw one.
Robert Thompson runs a company that takes people on tours to see polar bears in and around Kaktovik. He'd spotted some bears close to his house on the other side of the village, and drove over to get us so we could see them too. He drives us slowly along the gravel roads, scanning for bears, and then parks on the edge of town facing out toward the ocean. He thinks we have a good chance of seeing a bear here.
Oka this, this is what we're doing. It might be kind of boring, but it pays off.
It's not boring to me. There's water everywhere in Kaktovik, not just the ocean ringing this little island, but also puddles and pools seeping up from the ground below and a constant mist falling from the clouds above. Cold, gray, drizzly morning. Oh, oh, there it is.
Yep, there is a bear over there.
Straight ahead.
Oh, yeah.
I''ll turn it sideways.
There's another one. Two bears are ambling along the edge of the island, clearly led by their noses. They lower their heads to sniff the ground and then raise them to sniff the air, in a sort of slow rhythm as they walk. Robert says, as the Arctic warms, more and more bears are coming to the refuge and to Kaktovik.
You know, in a time when all the ice is gone in Arctic Ocean, all the bears gonna have to come ashore. So they could become extinct.
Polar bears evolved to spend a lot of time living on sea ice. They sleep on it. They hunt seals and other ocean animals from it. They even build their winter dens in it. But lately, sea ice has been receding into the far north in the summers, and it can carry the bears into really deep
water, where they have a hard time finding food. Robert thinks some polar bears are learning to get off the ice before it melts, and instead, make a go of it on land, places like the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and barrier islands like this one. This influx of polar bears has been good for Robert's guiding business, but it's also made him keenly aware of what's at stake here.
I could be here and see the last polar bear in Alaska. That would be sad to see. Hell, I haven't seen a bear for a few years, oh, they must be gone. Could be, you know, people don't realize that this climate change is quite serious. Is he still walking?
Yeah, it's actually, it looks like it's almost the water is like getting deeper and it's it's maybe about to start swimming. I don't know. You can see a little black nose moving back and forth. This is kind of how it went with Robert. We're taking in this really heavy information about the long term prospects for these animals, while simultaneously getting our minds
blown watching them go about their polar bear business. It's just a few degrees above freezing, the wind is whipping and tossing up big waves, and the polar bear we're watching just strolls into the water as if it's strolling across a park. It's just kind of bobbing around out there in the ocean. It's crazy. Now, of course, I know that polar bears are marine animals. I know this is a bear that can swim, but still, there's a bear
swimming right in front of me in freezing cold water. It feels like a party trick, maybe because all of my other bear encounters have involved large brown animals and forests. I just wasn't prepared for how surprising it would be to see a huge, shaggy creature casually walk into the ocean and swim about with such ease. There's something that's like playful looking about it, because it's, it's getting pushed around by the waves a little bit, and-
He still coming this way?
Yeah, I think so, just coming in and out of view. Oh yeah, yeah, shaking its head. Eventually, the bear swims into the shallows, stands up and walks out of the waves and onto the beach in front of us, and we can see the water just pouring off of its ivory fur. The individual hairs in that fur have evolved to repel water, so it only takes a strong, full body shake, and this bear goes from soaking wet to mostly dry in a few seconds. I'm captivated by its paws. Those paws look huge.
They are.
How big?
It would probably be, about a foot long.
They're almost like flippers in the water.
They swim with their front legs, they just drag the back feet around.
Oh, really, it's running.
They always look so comical when they're running.
I was just gonna say, I've got a really funny run.
They look clumsy, but they can run about 30 miles an hour for a short distance. I saw one grab a seagull out of the air once.
Wow.
Decided to catch it. It ran after it. The seagull took off and he grabbed it. I don't think a person could do that.
I know I couldn't. One of the surreal things about this scene is that when I glance behind me, I can see the village of Kaktovik right there, like I could walk to the school in less than 15 minutes. And this proximity to bears poses real challenges for people here and other Arctic villages seeing an increase of bear activity due to climate change. These are huge, potentially dangerous wild animals. Having a lot of them around means you have to be
vigilant. You have to think twice before sending your kids outside to play. You need to carry a gun when you go to the dump out on the edge of town. Kaktovik has actually set up a community polar bear patrolling system to alert residents when bears get close, and to try to haze them away from the village. Robert says all of this is a big change from how it used to be. He grew up in interior Alaska, but he moved to Kaktovik more than 30 years ago.
But bears weren't really a problem until recently with climate change and Arctic Ocean is opening up. When I first came, you could see the pack ice from the shore all summer.
How far away would that be?
Oh, within sight, like four or five miles. There was ice there all the time. We'd go out there with a boat and sit on the ice and hunt seals or whales. But now, last time I went whaling, we didn't see any ice. We won't see any now. It's all gone. There's probably 200 miles of open water right now, and every year it's more.
And this is one of the main reasons why Robert is strongly opposed to oil development in the refuge. He sees a direct relationship between drilling for oil and losing polar bears. The global population of polar bears is estimated to be around 25,000 animals, but there's a lot of uncertainty around that number, because it's difficult to get an accurate count of an animal that lives in a hard to access place
with a habitat that spans five national boundaries. Scientists have divided the global population into 19 subpopulations, and in some of those groups, polar bear numbers are holding steady or even going up. Some of them are a big question mark, not enough data to say what's really going on. And some aren't doing so well. The bears we're watching are part of the Southern Beaufort Sea group, and a recent study listed this sub population as one of the three most vulnerable
in the world. Robert says loss of sea ice isn't just a threat to these bears, either. It's also a major threat to Inupiaq culture.
I was here before environmental was even discussed or talked about or a concern. We lived here like this is going to go on forever. We didn't even think that it could change.
Yeah.
You know, when we go out hunting, this is what we did, what we're going to do, and now that's in jeopardy.
Robert says drilling for oil and the refuge is like taking a one two punch at Inupiaq culture. It contributes to the global warming that's disrupting their ways of life and it undermines their values by putting an emphasis on making money off of the land versus subsisting off of it in traditional ways. He says he asks his neighbors who support oil development-
What do you want to do, make a lot of money or preserve the culture? They know that it's not right to be that way.
What would you say to people who are like, You know what though, people in Kaktovik, they live here, they need the money to help their community. You know, there's the argument like, well, we need the money.
Well, they can go get a job and work for it. I don't have much sympathy with that, because I'm not worried about money. And it, they don't need this money to get ahead in this community, because they still got, what, 95% of the North Slope that can be exploited. They don't need to do the refuge to get the money.
That percentage is pretty accurate. The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of the only places on the North Slope where oil development was expressly prohibited. The vast majority of the region is legally open for drilling. And Robert thinks more than enough money can be made on land outside of the refuge to help people in Kaktovik and other small villages on the slope get ahead.
So, the argument we have to do the refuge so we get money, it has no merit.
Robert also thinks the economics of drilling in the refuge just don't really pencil out. The United States already has so much oil waiting to be produced that's far easier and less expensive for companies to bring to market, like the huge amount of shale oil that's been discovered in Texas in recent years. He doubts that the people of Kaktovik will really benefit that much from drilling. He thinks they're being sold an empty dream.
But that's what people want to hear. So people ask to want to hear, we'll get big dividends, we'll have all this money, we'll be happy, but I don't see it happening.
Robert has attended international climate change conferences. He's spoken out against oil development at shareholder meetings, and he takes hundreds of tourists on trips to see polar bears, tourists who go home with a new found appreciation for the specialness of this place. All of this has put him right in the crosshairs of the pro oil crowd.
And I've had, I've seen in writing criticism. Oh he speaks, oh, he does trips, and he's making money off it. Well, yes, I am. I'm showing people the refuge, and then they go and talk about it. So there's some resentment that there's people here showing the public about it. So I'm not going to worry about it. It can't trip me up. I fought for the right of freedom of speech, democracy, and I can say anything I want.
And when Robert says he fought for that right, he means it very literally. He's a veteran of the Vietnam War.
My 20th birthday was my first day of duty in Vietnam, and they put me on duty and I said it's my 20th birthday, first day of duty in Vietnam. And then I came up here and started living here and hunting, and I said, they're gonna put an oil field where I go hunting, and I don't want to live in an oil field, so I do what I can to stop that.
Do you think your experience in Vietnam shapes how you look at some of these environmental issues at all?
To some degree, because, you know, the peace and tranquility you get from being on the land is something that we should all look at, you know, especially after, you know, being in a war and so on.
You really, you could feel how you needed that.
Oh yea, a lot of people do.
When you're trying to maintain a sense of togetherness, even during times of conflict, One of the biggest questions you have to answer is who is invited to the conversation? This comes up again and again in the national debate over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If you've never been to the refuge, if you don't live in Alaska, should you have a say in determining the fate of this place? Robert Thompson says
yes. He says you don't have to live in Kaktovik to find meaning and comfort in knowing the refuge is there without the roads and lights and noise that fill up so much of the rest of this planet.
Most people won't be out on that refuge. 325 million people in United States. What percentage will ever get here? But to know that there's places still, I guess, you say, for future generations that are pristine and nice to go to. So those are things that people can look at.
But many people on the pro-oil side feel differently. Including one of Alaska's most powerful politicians.
Listen to the people live there. That's all I ask you to do. Listen to them. Hear what they say. Not someone is living in Fairbanks, not those that are foreigners or living away from the area.
This is Alaska congressman, Don Young. We'll pick up the story there in part two.