Nobody Stumbles upon the Arctic

It's not like Omaha, a place you drive through on the way to somewhere else. Unless you were born there, people go to the far north either because they are looking for or running from something. I went for both reasons. After college I needed a job and wanted more adventure than I could find around me in sensible, down-to-earth, recession-ridden New England.

So in 1978 I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska and at the age of 21, with a degree in biology and absolutely no television experience, became the farthest north TV anchor woman in America. I got the job at KTVF-TV in Fairbanks because I met all the criteria for the position. I was a woman, I had all my teeth and I could form a complete sentence. And all sarcasm aside, I had worked as a reporter on my college newspaper and radio station and done a bit of freelance reporting before I left New England.

Whaling Captain and Visionary

The best part of that job (and the subsequent news work I did over the seven years I spent in Alaska), was the opportunity to cover Alaska Native issues. One of the things this work allowed me to do was meet a remarkable man named Eben Hopson just as he was making history.

Hopson was a visionary whaling captain from Point Barrow, Alaska. In the late 1970's it occured to him that while the Native peoples of the Arctic were spread over seven nations and spoke dozens of languages and dialects, they had one very important thing in common — the frozen, desolate north, a land under almost constant pressure from outside influences. Whaling companies. Oil companies. Military waste. Air and water borne pollution. In 1979, Hopson brought Inuit representatives from Canada, Alaska, Lappland and Greenland together to establish a united, pan-Arctic front against those pressures. That gathering, held in Barrow, created the Inuit Circumpolar Conference (ICC) , a non-governmental organization that has become the go-to institution for the world's Inuit. At each meeting that the ICC has held since 1979, they've included a symbolic gesture, maintaining an empty chair in honor of the Siberian Yup'k Natives who have been prohibited from attending first by the Soviet government and then now by the Russian government.

I mention the ICC for two reasons. It was the first time I got to see the north through eyes of the Inuit and I loved what I saw. Which is why even today, almost thirty years later, I keep going back to the far north as often as I can. The other reason the ICC is worth noting is that the organization endorsed this project in 2005, providing the effort with credibility just as it was getting started.

Facilitating a Knowledge Exchange

The first time I noticed changes to the Arctic environment was on a trip to Greenland and Baffin Island in 2002.  It was hard to put my finger on initially. Icebergs the size of city blocks drifted silently, seemingly weightless in the turquoise waters of Disko Bay. Little fuzz balls of Arctic Cotton floated on the summer breeze. And the mosquitos were maddeningly thick, noisy and blood-thirsty. For all appearances, things were normal. Yet as I climbed the hillside overlooking the Jacobshavn Glacier in Illulissat, I felt some mild anxiety that I couldn't put my finger on. That anxiety, however nameless and unfocused, turned out to be well-founded.  

The proof is in this photo which shows the toe of the glacier behind me. It was taken in 2002. When I knelt in that same spot in March of 2004, the glacier was no longer in the shot. By 2006, it had receeded by approximately 7 kilometers. And today, the only way to see the Jakobshavn, the most productive glacier in the northern hemisphere, is by flying inland in a helicopter. The IPCC says that this glacier is melting 10 times faster than it did one generation ago.

Shortly after visiting Greenland and reading some of the initial IPCC reports, I read a book called, The Whale and the Super Computer, by Alaskan writer Charles Wohlforth. The book extolls the value that traditional Inuit knowledge can provide to climate scientists. Traditional knowledge has helped scientists better understand shifting ocean currents and more accurately identify changes in the ice. After reading it, I thought about ways to bring traditional knowledge and climate science together. In spite of the increased focus on the north (2007 is the International Polar Year) grants for Arctic research are limited and I couldn't find any that allowed for study of the people most affected by Arctic warming. Almost all the scientific research involved the "hard" sciences, like meteorology, glaciology, geology and physics.  

Since no one was systematically studying the impact Arctic warming on the people, culture and environment of the region, I though well, hell, I may lack qualifications, but I'll try to do it anyway. It would be my tiny way of facilitating a knowledge exchange between those for whom the Arctic is a vocation and those for whom it is home.  Ultimately, I'd like to serve as a sort of virtual yenta with an online meeting place where scientists and indigenous people could inform one another. That's the original intent of this project.

I remain well-intentioned, but haven't reach that goal. Yet. The project's scope has been limited  by funding. I've paid for it entirely myself, sometimes working two jobs to pay for it.  But the effort has born some fruit. In addition to this website, I've given several talks on the subject, appeared on CNN and a few other news outlets and published an article and a paper. And in 2005, I received a fellowship from the Conservation Science Institute, which came without funds but worked wonders on my confidence.