Climate Change and Subsistence

Despite daily headlines about collapsing ice shelves, carbon emissions and energy conservation, for most North Americans the realities of climate change remain vague. Recent U.S. polls suggest that, for now, everyday necessities take precedence.

Yet there are Americans for whom a changing climate and feeding a family are inextricably linked. In the Far North, where global warming is already affecting daily life, reliance on local Arctic foods – the traditional hunting, fishing and gathering often referred to as subsistence – is central to the health and culture of native communities. The well being of the region’s residents depends on their ability to harvest what the seasonally constrained land and sea provide.

Last winter, as sea ice was building, I spent several weeks on the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, the CCGS Amundsen on an International Polar Year expedition. Between late November and the days before Christmas, we navigated the ice in the Beaufort Sea off the coast of the western Arctic Archipelago.

Wildlife monitor for that leg of the expedition was Trevor Lucas, a lifelong resident of the Inuvialuit community of Sachs Harbor on nearby Banks Island. Over the last couple of years the permafrost has been melting rapidly on Banks island, Lucas told me, especially near inland lakes and along the coast. Softer ground and less snow means it’s not been possible for his family to hunt in the same way they usually have, pulling handmade wooden sleds laden with hunting and camping gear. Thin sea ice not only hampers but also poses dangers to Artic winter hunting and fishing. Ice floes break up and drift unpredictably, changing travel patterns for both hunters and prey (pdf).

Different birds and animals are starting to appear at different times of year, said Lucas. I heard similar stories from families I met on St. Lawrence Island, an Alaskan island in the Bering Sea where whale, seal, walrus, reindeer, salmon, and halibut along with river fish and tundra greens and berries are staples of the traditional Yu’pik diet. “That’s my garden. I eat from the sea there,” an elder told me.

Changing temperatures in the short Arctic seasons are affecting animal migration. In some northern communities, these changes have begun to push people away from the traditional food and toward greater dependence on market food, which can be extremely limited in remote Arctic villages. On St. Lawrence Island, the Savoonga village store in mid-summer had almost no produce, few dairy products, little unprocessed meat, and was stocked mainly with staples like flour, sugar and coffee, canned goods, and long shelf-life convenience foods, all at prices reflective of the shipping costs.

Research by Grace Egeland, Canada Research Chair in nutrition and health at McGill University, shows that traditional Arctic foods – fish, Arctic mammal meat, gathered greens and berries – tend to provide more protein, vitamins and minerals than typically available local market food, which is usually higher in carbohydrates, fat and sugar.

The shift to these market foods, Egeland and colleagues’ research indicates, is putting indigenous Arctic communities at risk for increased incidence of obesity and related health problems, including diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

“These people are feeling so many pressures of transition that they're now at risk,” Egeland told me in a phone conversation.

One afternoon on my visit to Savoonga I tour the island coast with eight year old Kevin Miklahook and his father Wilfred on their ATV. We bump along sand tracks on the dunes below coastal cliffs that rise up toward an ancient volcano. We stop at several inlets and a wide black sand beach where I’m told carvers dig for fossil ivory. There are bits of whale, seal and walrus bone and skin on the beach and flat stones for skipping on the overcast day’s calm water. There are also large rusting barrels and tangles of plastic netting, fishing line and packaging that have washed ashore. Kevin teaches me the Yu’pik words for seal and whale and finds my pronunciation hilarious. He tells me his Eskimo name, which means “strong flat ice.”

For Arctic communities like those on St. Lawrence and Banks Islands, climate change is not a hypothetical event on some far horizon but one that is affecting what families feed their children. It sounds dramatic, but the retreating ice is literally beginning to erode the fabric of life that Arctic residents have relied on for generations. I wonder what Kevin’s Eskimo name may mean to his children.