Bush Planes, Moose Kills & Juan Carlos

It is actually a daunting task to begin this blog post because I am pretty sure I could write many pages about all my conversations and adventures this week. The opportunity to synthesize when everything is so fresh in your mind can be really helpful but sometimes things need to percolate awhile before they are ready to share. So even if my "coffee" is a bit weak at this stage, you can hopefully get a taste of what is going on here in Alaska.

My supervisor Michelle helped me engineer my schedule for the week in order to have the most interactions and conversations  possible. This meant I was able to talk to people from a wide range of organizations, tribes, non-profits, and think-tanks. It also meant that the days were sometimes very long and a little tiring. Among my interactions were meetings with Alaska Sea Grant, Cold Climate Housing Research Center, Alaska Pacific University, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Tanana Chiefs Conference, Alaska Center for Climate Assessment & Policy, etc. As you can imagine by the time I was done talking to all of these people, I had a pretty good idea of just about any major climate change mitigation or adaptation activity in the state. It was also helpful to know what kind of information is available and what kinds of adaptation examples are just non-existent at this stage in the game.

One of the meetings that stands out the most to me was with Larry Merculieff, a leader from the Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands. He has decades of experience leading organizations and educating others about specific tribal needs and traditional solutions to many tribal concerns. He is also an educator and an esteemed elder in his community. Michelle and I had lunch with him for 2 hours and he took time to help me understand the traditional ways of his people . He emphasized the ways western science and policy has acted so obtrusively and inappropriately in his community. His comments sparked many ideas for re-contextualizing my project, in format and word choice, in a way which would fit most naturally in their culture framework.

They are a culture of people who have been adaptable for thousands of years and their outlook on life has always spanned multiple generations. Larry said one of the biggest parts of any adaptive strategy should be the emphasis on building and maintaining relationships. The ability for an elder to pass on his traditional wisdom to the children in the village is vital and reconnects people with the land. This is also a strategy to build adaptive capacity in a community by making them more resilient to change for  many generations. Larry said that so many times, when scientists have come in to villages armed with data and plans for research and project implementation, they ask the village to help them integrate Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) into their existing work. But to the community, this caveat for integration is more like "mining for a resource", treating the knowledge simply as anecdotal information rather than traditional wisdom. It also subverts traditional wisdom as something "extra" rather than a central part of problem solving.

Larry is a man with very strong opinions but he unashamedly brings to the table a wealth of cultural understanding and deep love and concern for his people and the environment. He talked a lot about the spiritual aspect of relating to the land. Almost all the tribal names in Alaska can be translated as "the real human being." To be truly human is to demonstrate love, peace, and forgiveness and Larry said that you cannot live a life marked by these things unless you get the inside right first. He said so many times people try to solve problems with just their heads and they forget the feeling. Throughout this entire conversation I could hear so much that was similar with the Christian faith and could see a very consistent a demonstration of faith among all their community relationships.

It was with a sharp twinge of sadness, however, that I walked away from our meeting knowing that for as much as he "knew" and respected the Christian faith, he did not truly know the awesome beauty and power of Jesus. For Larry, any spiritual path would lead to fulfillment people as long as it resulted in people balancing  and respecting themselves and those around them. How much more then should we, as followers of the true Creator and Redeemer Jesus Christ, be pursuing right relationships with our families, communities, and all of the created order!  Tribal communities have gotten so many things right because they understand a more holistic picture of what it means to have full and rich relationships with all of creation. We certainly can learn something from Larry and his people and it is Jesus who embodies this effort of complete reconciliation and harmony better than anyone.

Potluck by the river on which they fish and use for drinking water.

Their beach showed significant coastal erosion. 

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to jump on a bush plane and fly across Cook Inlet to the native village of Tyonek. It is apparently a pretty closed community and if you aren't invited they will send you back on the plane. Fortunately, as a testament to the good relationships formed between the tribe and our office, they happily welcomed me into their village. They gave me a tour of their compound and I join them at a potluck for lunch. It was a very poor community with many dilapidated buildings and erosion was threatening many structures close to the shore. Despite the poverty, there were evidences of a tight-knit community such as through the elder kitchen which provides lunch daily for the elderly in the village. It was great to be able to see what life was really like in these tribal communities and talk to them directly about  their most pressing needs and concerns. I also really liked the plane ride there and back; I saw beluga whales, spotted seals, moose and bald eagles!

 

Bears? Ramsey helped to scare them off.

Some of my co-workers

Of course you cannot go to Alaska without hiking around and enjoying the mountains around Anchorage. I stayed in town a couple of nights and one of my co-workers took me to Portage Glacier and Flattop Mountain. The weather was perfect and with the summer solstice, we couldn't of had more daylight. On one of the trails there was a great warning sign about a fresh moose kill along the trail but with 4 dogs and 4 people, we went for it anyway. Don't worry mom, we saw no trace of bears. 

The view from Michelle's back porch.

The last part of my blog title is about Juan, a Argentinian man that I met while at Michelle's house. He has been up in Alaska about a month leading expeditions and will be off traveling again in the next month. He is a mountaineer, outdoor leadership guide, and not to mention a rather attractive Spanish speaker. So, we hit it off and because he had just visited Peru, we were able to talk all about my upcoming internship in Lima. He really provided some good cultural insight into life in the city and how different Peru was from his experiences in Buenos Aires or in his hometown in the mountains. I think we will keep in touch and he seems like the kind of guy that  always keeps you guessing about where you may run into him next.  

I just spent the past weekend in Denali National Park but that deserves its own post later. I'll get back to Seattle early tomorrow morning and then turn around and fly out to Kona, Hawaii on Tuesday. 

Thanks for your prayers (and for reading along)!

Rachel

Weekend Wilderness Highlights

Let me tell you, my first weekend in Alaska has been a blast. It is light ALL the time and so you don't even think about the fact that you are hiking around at 10pm when the sky should be dark and you should be tired. Somehow your body just adapts and you forget all about sleep --- well until the next morning when you have to wake up early. I actually was up for 20 hours on Friday because I had such an early start in Seattle and was up late my first day hiking out in the Alaskan wilderness. Totally worth it but, probably should not make a habit out of it.

I started work today at the Anchorage office and have a full schedule meeting many cool people from all over the state this week. But, I had some really fun times this weekend so I wanted to share a few pics photo essay style now and give an update on all the rest later.

Hatcher Pass, outside of Wasilla, Alaska

Independence Mine State Historical Park. Imagine how cold that job was in the winter.

Rail line for the mine's trains

A Pika!

The berries were from last season and had frozen over the winter. The flowers will be this year's berries.

Canoe trip with my supervisor's family to Nancy Lake State Recreation Area. Michelle, her husband John, and Richie.

Richie and the most adventurous 2 year-old Mave.

Michelle's daughter Lily

A loon. I love loons.

 

 

 

More meetings tomorrow and Wednesday I get to fly on a bush plane to Tyonek, a native village on the other side of Cook Inlet. I am really looking forward to that. Lots of learning happening! 

All for now but I will probably post again at the end of the trip.

Rachel

Trip 1: Spokane

So I got back to Seattle late tonight and am leaving again early tomorrow morning for Anchorage but, I wanted to share some insights I gathered from the National Tribal Forum on Air Quality (NTF) I attended this past week.

The NTF conference was sponsored by the EPA, the National Tribal Air Association (NTAA) and the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals (ITEP). This means that the approach was a compilation of academic presentations, regulatory emphasis, and a venue for tribes to communicate with each other about their current needs and projects. There were tribes represented from all across the nation and I learned so much about the relationship between tribes and federal agencies like the EPA. There was a huge emphasis on tribal sovereignty and their right to be a part of regulatory processes right from the beginning. 

Funding was another issue that was heatedly debated because many tribes want to come to the table and participate in major inter-governmental efforts on climate change adaptation but many do not have the resources to get there. One cool effort I did learn about were Landscape Conservation Cooperations (LCC) which are made up of all the federal resource management agencies like U.S. Fish and Wildlife (FWS), United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the  Bureau of Land Management (BLM), state governments agencies, and tribal organizations. They have segmented the country into  22 different LCCs according to ecosystem  and migratory pathway zones and are collaboratively working on collecting scientific data and identifying management solutions to many ecological concerns like climate change. This kind of  large scale effort rarely happens across agencies so it is cool to see it happening.

I attended the breakouts in the Climate Change track and was able to hear different tribes present their work on the adaptation and mitigation efforts they are pursing on their own reservations. They are all aware of the problems they are facing. For example, the members of the Nez Perce tribe located in northern Idaho are salmon people and usually start their fishing efforts in early May. However, because of irregular stream temperatures the salmon are “frozen” farther upstream and haven’t yet made their way down to the reservation. This has an obvious impact on the livelihoods of tribal members.  While the problems may be readily apparent, the solutions and adaptations to these problems are much harder to implement. 

The Swinomish tribe along the western coast of Washington has a very comprehensive adaptation plan developed after two years of assessment and study. But even their tribe is having difficulty with implementation partly due to funding and partly because of the geography of their reservation land. Options like abandonment of land or movement of people is not very easy to do when your culture and livelihoods are inextricably tied to your small plot of federally recognized land. Many of the issues tribes highlighted throughout the conference were Environmental Justice issues and the EPA has developed an EJ office focused on reaching marginalized communities.

Hearing from some Alaskan natives put a face to the challenges I have been reading about concerning the devastating effects of climate change on their natural landscapes and culture. In conversations with people I felt the urgency to find practical and immediate solutions to the problems they were experiencing but also have noted the severe lack of options and examples for them to follow. My job continues to get more challenging but I am learning so much along the way. I met with David Guest, a senior policy analyst from EPA headquarters in Washington D.C., and he has been a great resource and encouragement. 

I attended a dinner one night featuring a drum group from a local reservation and was amazed at the subtle differences and beauty in their songs of celebration, lament, and honor.   There is also always an invocation at the beginning and end of the sessions and it is offered in the man’s native tribal language. One speaker even made a comment that their spiritual beliefs were similar to Christianity because they believed in respect for self, others, and the environment around them. There are some important differences in our religious beliefs yes, but I am not hesitant to say that they certainly do a much job of respecting creation than we often do in the western church.  

Well, off to Alaska tomorrow! Will have a lot more to learn and experience there. Enjoy the following pictures of Spokane - I had to explore a little while I was there.

Challenging the Notion of "Reality"

Started my Spanish Independent Study this week and am reading an anthology on "la ecocritica." Basically, it is a form of literary criticism which seeks to understand - by analyzing Latin American literature - the complex relationship between the environment/nature and mankind - culturally and historically. I know you may already be bored with this post but, stick with me a few more paragraphs.

Part of the purpose of this study is to eventually delve into Peruvian Lit and try to understand the cultural context of the reforestation/community work A Rocha Peru is doing. How do people view the natural world around them? And, what is man's relationship with nature supposed to look like? As I was reading through some essays, I came across a very interesting remark by Nicarguan author Gioconda Belli. In her book Waslala (which I am actually reading next month) she writes from an eco-feminist persuasion in which she seeks to "overturn the power structure" that has traditionally viewed Lain American women as passive objects of reception and has also "systematically oppressed nature." As a women coming from this environment herself, her words ring loud and clear for many living in the majority world. I thought her comment on the "utopia" she describes in her novel, provides an interesting perspective: 

" In the world of fiction, [utopias] are possible. If literature manages to convey them as credible and possible, converting them into fictions that come to live in the minds of men and women, their immaterial existence can be converted into real subsistence.... New worlds, new societies, new human relationships must be created in literature, in painting, in all of the arts. Thus humans of this and future generations, even though they may live in a plastic world with gas masks and plagues, will know that there is another reality possible and some day they will dare to set off in search of it" 

pg 149

For Belli, literature is the force behind which entire cultures can shift and bring empowerment and hope to the marginalized. She calls for people to reverse the patterns of tradition which have for so long abused women and the natural world.  This is a difficult and at times overwhelming task. But, she doesn't think the "idealistic" outcome is completely unattainable and uses the power of fiction to make her point.

I can think of multiple examples in American literature which also could arguably have shifted the way we look at the world around us. Although not fiction, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, written in 1962, revolutionized the way many people viewed pesticides such as DDT and brought to light the detrimental effects it had on people and the environment. Its' purpose was to educate but also to inspire people to imagine a world which was free from the poisons which destroyed the very least among us. Again, this task seems overwhelming but Carson used people's stories to spark reflection and encourage bold  (and admittedly unpopular) action.

It is just the beginning of this exploration but I am sure to find more interesting connections along the way. Not to mention the fact that actually being in Peru ,where I can talk with the people around me, will lead to more questions and provide greater insight.

Do you think utopias are unreachable and completely unrealistic or do you think people just have to put things in perspective long enough to realize they can change common (and sometimes destructive) perceptions of reality?

Kind of a deep one today. Don't worry, I'll put up more pictures of my trips throughout the next few weeks :)

And the Sun Came Out

This weekend has been amazingly sunny and I have had a great time being outdoors. Today, Tammy and I went sea kayaking on Union Bay and enjoyed a scenic view of the mountains & the city. Tammy and I met at Community Group and she has been a lot of fun to be around. She goes to the University of Washington but will be spending the summer here in Seattle. Yay! On Saturday, the whole community group went to Gas Works Park and we had a beautiful view of the city. It is aptly named "Gas Works Park" because it contains remnants of the sole remaining coal gasification plant in the US. I guess that is one way to deal with unwanted infrastructure on prime waterfront real estate.

Because the sky was so clear, we were able to see the beautiful mountains along the horizon. Mt. Rainier was especially visible! It looks like it shouldn't be real - kind of like a huge fluffy cloud along the horizon. I am looking forward to hiking around it sometime this summer. 

Also on Saturday, I took Erin on a bike ride to Green Lake which is only a handful of miles from the house. It was fun to spend some one-on-one time with her and let her splash around in the water. I don't think she has the opportunity to just get dirty playing outside and so I am always happy to help with that.

Tomorrow begins the last full week of work before I am  off traveling to Spokane for a tribal air conference, to Alaska to visit some native villages (and go hiking in Denali!) and finally to Kona, Hawaii to attend an interdisciplinary environmental conference and of course check out the volcanoes. 

Needless to say I am very excited but it will be pretty non-stop for a while. I would appreciate prayers for safe travels and that I would be able learn a lot from each of these trips. I am praising God for what He has been doing so far through my job and through my relationships and I look forward to seeing how He will use the next 3 weeks. Let me know if there is any way I can be praying for you!