Hope Butler
(Gabriel Bouys 2006)
Shishmaref, Alaska is an island in the Chukchi sea that is home to 563 people, most of them being Alaskan Native Inupiaqs (Sheppard 2017). The island is surrounded by the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, a large preserved area of natural land that holds preservation of ancient life (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2011). The Inupiaq people living on the island rely on hunting, fishing, and gathering berries for subsistence. They use as much of the animals that they hunt as possible, such as fur for gloves, and skin for shoes. In this way, their subsistence practices are very important to their way of life. But in the last couple of decades their way of life has been threatened by climate change. The Chukchi sea, which they cross in the winter for hunting, has begun to stay frozen for a shorter amount of time, shortening their time to hunt. In such a remote village, there are only two stores that sell food shipped from outside of Alaska, which means that they rely on hunting for their main food source Sheppard 2017). They also rely on rain and specifically snow for water, because they do not have plumbing; with shorter winters, that means less snow to use.
US Army Corps of Engineers 2009
The island, whose name was originally Kigiktaq in the native language, sits on permafrost, which is melting swiftly due to climate change (Sheppard 2017). Decades ago, the island was larger, with the shores extending out further, but due to melting permafrost, the land became weaker and more susceptible to storms. Every year the island loses between 2.7-8.9 feet on average (Sheppard 2017). As the island gets smaller and smaller, the villagers have been forced to move inwards to avoid losing their house into the ocean, but eventually there won’t be anymore room. The people of Shishmaref are faced with a difficult decision: to move to a new location and lose the land that is full of memories and history, or to stay on the island and risk being lost to the sea. Eventually, moving will be the only option, but many people are not so willing to leave behind their home.
In 2002 the island held a vote to decide whether to leave or not, and their choice was to move (Sheppard 2017). But it has been nearly two decades since then and the people of Shishmaref still remain on the island. They lack the funds and resources to move their entire village to a new location. Additionally, finding a suitable location to move to has proved to be a difficult task. Many of the locations that they tried were also on top of rapidly melting permafrost, and therefore would likely erode away as well (Sheppard 2017). With the realization that moving would not happen any time soon, a sea wall was constructed in 2004, and built longer through 2007 (Sheppard 2017). While the wall helped some, it only covered a very small area of the island, leaving every other spot vulnerable. Right now, the efforts to relocate Shishmaref have slowed and remain inactive.
Nick Mott 2018
When the vote to relocate Shishmaref occurred, the village suddenly became the big image of the impact of climate change. It was used in arguments as how climate change will effect the entire world in the future. “Shishmaref is everywhere!” are the words that one of author Elizabeth Marino’s students used to describe what was happening in the news (Marino 2015, 16). It is important that we learn from what is happening to Shishmaref and other Alaskan communities, and prepare ourselves to deal with those issues on a larger scale years from now.