Today's News, Tomorrow's Lesson

Allison McCartney for PBS
NewsHour
Extra

Inupiat Eskimos have built a way of life around subsistence hunting
and fishing in their native land of northern Alaska. However, Arctic
ice melt and rising sea temperatures are now threatening their
traditional lifestyle.

The ice melt is already impacting many Inupiat traditions, including
hunting the bowhead whale to provide food for the community. In order
to hunt the whale – an activity that Inupiats have special permission
for – crews must be able to stand on thick ice. Now that the ice is
thinning and shrinking, conditions are becoming increasingly dangerous
for hunters and the community has suffered.

“Last spring was very poor,” said whaling captain Harry Brower. “We
didn't even harvest one [whale] for Barrow throughout the whole
migratory season…That becomes a food shortage in a sense, if you think
about, you know, one whale providing for a whole community.”

Ignatius Rigor, of the University of Washington’s Polar Ice Center,
described the Inupiats’ struggle as “the front line of global climate
change”.

“Before the planet can heat up, you have to get rid of the ice –
just like your glass of water before it can get warm. And so we are
seeing the ice disappear and we are seeing the Arctic Ocean start to
warm up.”

Despite the drawbacks, the warmer waters are also bringing economic
opportunity in the form of offshore oil development and newly-passable
shipping lanes that have opened up where ice has melted.

Rigor said that the local community was torn between the benefits
and the drawbacks of increased development.

“The local populations…realize that there is a bounty off their
coast that could really improve their lifestyle, but those bounties
also could be catastrophic for their way of life. And if an accident
happens, you know, there goes subsistence hunting and whaling.”