The Atlantic Article on Climate Change and Yup’ik Fishing

Here.

“Subsistence is living from the land,” said Flynn. “It’s what we’ve always done. We go hunt ducks and seals in the ocean in the springtime. Ptarmigan. Salmon. My great-grandfather and grandfather told us we have to be very careful what we catch. God made them for everyone. I was living subsistence even when I was in the military. My whole life. I make a fish camp every year and dry 30, 40 kings. I set a net last summer but there was too much closure. Things have been rough.”

“And how did it feel not to be able to catch enough?” Davis asked him.

“I have a grandchild, 2 years old—” He paused and rubbed his eyes. Several other men in the gallery also began to cry. “My grandson said to me, ‘When we gonna go check the net?’ And I couldn’t say anything.”

Michael Cresswell, a state trooper, leaned over and whispered in my ear: “This is momentous. This is climate change on trial.”

Via J.S.

One thought on “The Atlantic Article on Climate Change and Yup’ik Fishing

  1. Barbra & Jack Donachy March 18, 2015 / 8:36 am

    Thanks much for the post and the link to the Atlantic article. All of this is very complicated, and the perspectives of the people who live on the land up there – up in the far north of Alaska – are often ignored. We spent four years up there. Things are changing, and not for the better. As a Point Hope elder who was 72 years old at the time said to me a year ago during several consecutive days of rain in January (this is 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle), “Growing up, and all my life, we’ve had warm spells from time to time, of course. You know, Pineapple winds from Hawaii now and then. But I’ve lived here all my life, and I’ve never seen anything like this.” Red foxes are crowding out Arctic foxes in some places, plants that never used to grow that far north are finding purchase, and the ice is changing…
    Jack

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