Word: inupiaq
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Chivian and Cizik also led a 10-person expedition to Alaska last August to witness firsthand the impact climate change has had on the lives of the Inupiaq, whose island is eroding into the Chukchi...
Shishmaref is melting into the ocean. Over the past 30 years, the Inupiaq Eskimo village, perched on a slender barrier island 625 miles north of Anchorage, has lost 100 ft. to 300 ft. of coastline--half of it since 1997. As Alaska's climate warms, the permafrost beneath the beaches is thawing and the sea ice is thinning, leaving its 600 residents increasingly vulnerable to violent storms. One house has collapsed, and 18 others had to be moved to higher ground, along with the town's bulk-fuel tanks...
...only a quarter-mile wide, is not the only ominous sign that large changes are afoot. The ice-fishing season that used to start in October has moved to December because the ocean freezes later each year. Berry picking begins in July instead of August. Most distressing for the Inupiaq is that thin ice makes it harder to hunt oogruk--the bearded seal that is a staple of their diet and culture. At the Nayokpuk Trading Co., where infant formula sells for $21 a package and the only eggs for sale, sent by bush plane, sit broken in their shells...
...Alaska's native villages, Shishmaref clings to its subsistence culture. The town supports 10 dog teams, and a local musher, Herbie Nayokpuk, is known statewide as the Shishmaref Cannonball for his top-place finishes in the Iditarod race. Walrus-tusk carving is taught in school, along with the Inupiaq language. And if the town itself is ugly, it is balanced by the desolate beauty of the slate-colored sea, the ducks flying in formation over the lagoon and the musk ox roaming in emerald meadows dotted with wild cotton. Some two-thirds of the local diet still derives from hunting...
...Association (NANA), one of 13 regional corporations created by the act to manage Alaskan native assets. Under his tenure, NANA has built rural schools, offices, rescue stations and even owns a reindeer herd of 4,200 head to provide meat to northwest natives. Hensley, who speaks English, Russian and Inupiaq (an Eskimo language in western Alaska), lost a bid for his state's sole House seat in 1974, but is often introduced by Alaskans as "our next Senator...
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