The effects of climate change are not coming, they are here. For over a decade villages in northwest Alaska have been watching their coastlines erode away, as the warming climate reduces permafrost and the formation of sea ice that protects and maintains their shores. Many of the villages are in low-lying coastal areas near freshwater sources, surrounded completely by water and making them vulnerable to storms.
CLIMATE CRISIS Alaskan
Village Shishmaref Sinking Into
the Sea
By CHRISTINE SHEARER
JUNE/JULY2009 CONDUCIVE
One of those villages is Shishmaref, inhabited by the Inupiaq people for thousands of years. The land is very important to them and their culture, with the Inupiat words for months literally translating into their hunting and harvesting cycles.
However with their village eroding beneath them, swallowing up homes and even one life, the residents voted to relocate. That was in 2002, and is still ongoing. The relocation is hampered by lack of federal and state funding and a coordinated government body to assist the villagers. This has made them largely responsible for coordinating and partially funding their own relocation. As they piece together a plan, the village and people of Shishmaref are temporarily protected from storms by a hurriedly constructed seawall.
Resident and technical support for the Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Committee Brice Eningowuk shared the village’s experience with Conducive.
Christine Shearer: Could you tell us how climate change is affecting your village?
Photos courtesy of Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Committee
Brice Eningowuk: For about the past ten years we have been experiencing erosion on our shore, the shore facing the Chukchi Sea. Average storm loss is between 25 to 50 feet of land per storm, and in one storm we lost about 125 feet in one day. Our island is roughly two miles in length, and in some places as wide as a quarter of a mile. With our growing population of over 600 residents that leaves little room for development and land safety. If we get a big storm that raises the tide level, since most of our village is at or below sea level there is a danger of being flooded or going into the ocean.
Shearer: Do you get nervous when storms come, for yourself or for your people?
Eningowuk: Yes. The first priority is to monitor. We have some boats on the lagoon side, the south side of our island, that’s where our boats are harbored up. Our boats are one of our main forms of transportation other than air during the summer months when there is no ice. Boats allow access to the mainland. If there is a severe storm that limits air transportation, there are only two options for evacuation: stay in place and wait out the storm, or attempt to reach the mainland by boat. So our boats are very important, although evacuation by boat means provisions have to be made ahead of time, as trying to reach the mainland by boat during a storm will be risky.
Also, a majority of the boats here are homemade and designed to go out in the
ocean and have been maintained for many years. The ocean is like our store for the community, and our boats are like public transportation to the ocean, much like buses in an urban community. So we take care of our boats, they provide us access to the ocean and our subsistence food source. If we lose them, we will be in worse shape than ever before, having to rely on store bought food that has a 150 to 200 per cent mark-up compared to the same item in a grocery store in a city. So before, during, and after a storm monitors will be out at the lagoon and will notify the authorities that more aid is needed if boats are in danger of losing their anchorage.
Shearer: Boats are particularly important because you are completely surrounded by water, yes?
Eningowuk: Yes. The closest mainland we have to Shishmaref is about five miles southeast.
Shearer: The Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) set up protections for your island. Are they working?
Eningowuk: One of the first few sea walls that they had out here were mesh baskets tied together and if one area fell they would – it would basically bring the whole section down.
Shearer: So the baskets failed? 
Eningowuk: Yes. We’ve had different types of sea walls here in Shishmaref. Before the baskets we had large concrete blocks tied together built in 1986 and the waves got so high that it went up over the sea wall and undercut it, and that’s how that one fell. So the Army Corps built on top of that this rock revetment, which is a real fine gravel on the bottom, on top of that a medium coarse layer, and on top of that is bigger coarse rocks. And it’s designed so that when a section fails the rocks will fall down and fill in that void.
Shearer: Your village wants to relocate. How is that going?
Eningowuk: Right now we’re looking at a site near Shishmaref, about 18 miles to the south, on the mainland. That also gives us a rock source – right now we are bringing in rocks from other areas in the state and that gets very expensive, with the shipping issue. So if we have a local rock source we can use that rock and protect our community, and potentially build up our local roads and have a better infrastructure. And then we will have access to the chosen relocation site. Right now we are waiting for the final report. We had an initial report from the Department of Transportation that did the reconnaissance study for that road and we’re finding that it’ll be pretty expensive to build out there. Right now the city has a grant application to the state to look for other potential sites and look at sustainability both as a community and as far as water sources, to try to keep our culture intact.
Now the reason Shishmaref is where it is, in the early 1900s the first school and post office were built on this little island, and everything coalesced around these two little buildings, and now we have what you see here. Shishmaref is very close to the ocean, and that is important because our staple right now is bearded seal. To buy meat and produce from the local store here is very expensive. For example, a gallon of water here would cost $9.25. One bearded seal can potentially feed a family of three for a long time. Like I said, that is our staple: the bearded seal, the walrus, the fish. We get subsistence hunting out of caribou in the mainland.
Shearer: So access to these animals is important in where you relocate?
Eningowuk: Correct. I can give you an example: the way we live is pretty close to how the farmers lived in the lower 48 [colloquial term for continental United States]. They lived off their land, we live off ours.
Shearer: I heard there has been a reduction in funding from the ACOE for your relocation?
Eningowuk: Yes. What the Army Corps had was Section 117, which said that the relocation or revetment projects in these rural communities in Alaska are eligible for full federal funding. That was enacted by Congress in 2006. And in the stimulus package that Obama put out, I’m not sure who put this in there, but the Omnibus bill repealed that law so now for these projects the Corps will pay 65 per cent if we produce 35 per cent, which has to come from the local community. And for these projects that’s estimated at about $9 million dollars for that 35 per cent match. And that’s funding that we don’t have.
Shearer: Has the state helped out?
recent budget cuts took out $3 million dollars for Shishmaref, just a couple weeks ago
Eningowuk: In the state’s budget for Shishmaref and other communities, we’ve had some money appropriated for revetment, but recent budget cuts took out $3 million dollars for Shishmaref, just a couple weeks ago.
Shearer: So where do you go from here? Fighting not to have the ACOE funding cut, and in the meantime raising money on your own?
Eningowuk: Correct. The Corps is looking to other sources of funding. They did award a contractor for the rock wall and that is being compiled right now in the state for this summer’s project. Shishmaref’s rock revetment is up in four phases. They completed phase one and are finishing off phase two – 750 feet that will protect one of our sewage buildings. Most of Shishmaref is not piped, only five to ten per cent have running water. So those are being maintained right now.
Shearer: Do you feel the government has been supportive in where you want to relocate, or has there been pressure to move you to an already established community?
Eningowuk: The state and federal agencies have come together and created the Alaska Climate Change Immediate Action Work Group. And they do realize that we want to keep our culture alive. It is more expensive to relocate our community to a new site rather than relocate to a community area already in place such as Nome, one of our regional hubs here, or the city of Kotzebue. That is cheaper, but those estimates do not take cultural or social values into their estimations, and the Action Group understands that we want to keep our culture alive. A lot of their documents have community profiles that respect what the communities want to do, and they understand we are looking at relocation and want to relocate. So they’re not really pushing for co-location because they know that’s not what we want. That’s a “dire strait,” last option. Last-minute. Because the way we’ve hunted our areas is very different from Kotzebue.
But it’s not only a land issue, it’s also a native issue. Shishmaref are shareholders in the Bering Straits [Native Corporation] in Nome. If we co-locate we will still be shareholders of Bering Straits and the lands we have here but we will be in other areas, and that will raise issues with voting rights and tribal representation. That’s a growing trend we see nowadays, people moving out of their communities to larger hubs, and they have voting rights, but it’s an issue and will always be an issue.
it’s been thousands of years since the Shishmaref people have been using this island as a pasture point for the ocean
Shearer: Could you help people understand, why it’s so important to relocate as a community?
Eningowuk: Our community is who we are. Take Louisiana, when they had to evacuate because of Katrina. They were viewed as deportees in other communities like Texas, some of them even came up here to Alaska. This is our home, this is where we live, where I grew up. Over 100 years we have been at this site as Shishmaref, starting with the school and everything, but it’s been thousands of years since the Shishmaref people have been using this island as a pasture point for the ocean, and there are old [ancestral] sites on the east side of town and the west side of town.
Shearer: Anything you’d like to say?
Eningowuk: Shishmaref needs help.
Brice Eningowuk provides technical support to the Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Committee and works with the Kawerak Transportation Program. He is 28 years old and has spent most of his life in Shishmaref.Christine Shearer is Conducive’s Managing Editor. She is a PhD candidate at the University of California at Santa Barbara researching climate changes and law.
If you’d like to learn more about Shishmaref, or help out the village relocation with a donation, please visit http://www.shishmarefrelocation.com/
The villages of Kivalina, Newtok, and Koyukuk are also in need of relocation.
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