Sigrid Ekran Age 28, Norway

REFLECTIONS OF A YOUNG EXLPLORER, by Sigrid Ekran

I grew up on the family farm in Norway. My family always enjoyed an active outdoor lifestyle. Now I live a subsistence lifestyle in Alaska, and I hunt, fish and trap most of the food that I need. I live in a cabin with no running water or electricity, and depend on fetching water from the creek that I heat on a wood-burning stove.

I was inspired to move to Alaska by famous Norwegian adventurer Helge Ingstad. During my first winter in Alaska when I was an exchange student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2003, I was asked to assist the Norwegian mushers in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Working with two-time Iditarod champion Robert Sørlie and his team members gave me valuable experience of the Iditarod trail.

After the 2005 race, I decided to start mushing dogs myself. Team Norway gave me four dogs, Helene, Sabena, Saesar and Othello. That is how I started building my sled dog team.

I found great inspiration in working for one of Alaska’s most famous female mushers, Susan Butcher. She won the Iditarod four times and was a great dog person. She is one of my mentors for racing sled dogs and living the subsistence lifestyle.

I spent the winter of 2006 working and training with Iditarod veteran Louis Nelson, Sr. at his Snowy River Kennels outside Kotzebue on the Alaskan west coast. Louis is an Inupiat Eskimo. I learned a lot about the subsistence lifestyle and about native knowledge from Louis and his family.

I ran my first Iditarod in 2007. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed the race. I broke my nose and got very sick, but I was very determined to continue racing as long as the dogs were having a good time. That got me all the way from Anchorage to Nome. I won the title of Rookie of the Year and finished the race as the best female musher.

This winter, I have been living with my 30 dogs in Eureka, Alaska, on Susan Butcher´s old training grounds. I think I am very fortunate to be able to live this close to the wilderness with my dogs. We are out on the trails every day, running and having fun with each other. I finished Iditarod 2008 in 24th place, with a faster race time than last year.

I enjoyed my time as an exchange student in Alaska so much that I decided to stay on for a Masters Degree in Northern Studies, and graduated in September 2007. These studies add to my undergraduate degree in forestry and conservation management and to the knowledge I gained studying wolf pack dynamics and malamute dog behavior after I graduated from high school.

I am very excited to be a team member of the 2008 Ellesmere Expedition. The expedition will be a life changing experience where I will learn a lot and be able to use my skills as a dog musher, as a wildlife biologist and as a subsistence hunter. I am very inspired by the expedition leader Will Steger and all the team members, and it will be fun to share all our knowledge and experiences on Ellesmere Island with everyone that will follow us on the expedition. I hope that I can help inspire young people to be interested in wildlife and environmental issues, and that you will all enjoy following us on the trail.

Thorleif Tobias (Toby) Thorleifsson, Age 28, Norway

REFLECTIONS OF A YOUNG EXPLORER by Toby Thorliefsson

My path to becoming an Explorer started early. In the early years of my life my parents were always good at getting me outside and never stopped me from doing activities that might be considered dangerous. I got my first skis when I was a year and a half old and since then I have spent as many days of the winter as possible on skis.

Growing up in Norway, the wilderness and the ocean were always close by. Through extensive trips in the Norwegian mountains and sailing voyages in the North Atlantic Ocean I gradually built a strong passion for nature and, perhaps most importantly, a passion for the protection of the natural wonders that surround us.

From an early age I understood that it was important to gain knowledge about nature if you want to protect it. If you want to get knowledge about nature it is important to study it.

Starting when I was 16, therefore, I chose to go to school and university at locations where nature was not far away. I first spent two years in South Wales on the Atlantic coast. I then did my naval service in the Norwegian Arctic before I started my University career in British Columbia, Canada. For almost ten years I studied, Environmental History, Politics, and Exploration History. I did my Master’s degree in Polar History focusing on the Great Norwegian Explorer Otto Sverdrup. While I did this I continued to ski and sail and went on trips in the mountains and voyages by sail on the oceans as often as I could. Every summer during my studies I would return to Norway to work as a mountain and glacier guide.

Then, a year and a half ago, when I finished my Graduate studies, I decided I would spend the next years of my life traveling in and working to protect the polar regions I had spent so long studying. I moved to Finse in the Norwegian mountains and started the long and difficult work to raise enough money to join an expedition to Antarctica. After six moths of work I succeeded and in February and March last year I assisted with the opening of the first educational base station in Antarctica. Three months later I went on an epic voyage by sailboat across the Bering Sea to Frans Josef Land in the Russian Arctic were I encountered my first Polar Bears and walrus. It was the combination of my education and my exploration experience that made Will Steger choose me as a member on the Ellesmere Expedition.

For me, therefore, the path to becoming and explorer has been a long one. If you would like to become an explorer I advise you to focus on your studies as well as spending as much time as possible in nature.

Ben Horton - Age 24, Unites States

BACKGROUND

Recipient of the National Geographic Society’s first Young Explorer award for research he recently completed on Cocos Island involving shark poachers, Ben is a budding photographer and adventurer. Ben is motivated by travel and extreme sports with a yearning to make a difference for his generation. At 17, he traveled around the world with his brother, visiting numerous countries and living the adventures he and his brother had dreamed of. Ben splits his time between Colorado and the rest of the world.

REFLECTIONS OF A YOUNG EXPLORER, by Ben Horton

Exploration is an exciting word for me. It involves so many different activities and challenges, waiting to be overcome. As a child, I remember walking into the kitchen and telling my mom with a touch of pride, that I was going “exploring.” I had no idea what I was going to find, or where I would end up. All I knew, was that I was going.

That feeling hasn’t changed much. Perhaps the only difference is that now my expeditions have a little bit more planning, but only a little bit more. In our modern world, most people are under the impression that there isn’t anywhere left to explore except perhaps for outer space. Even on our planet, there are regions that have seen fewer footprints than the moon. There are mountains in the Himalayas that have never been climbed, and mountains under the surface of the ocean, where no one has dived.

Our planet is full of secrets, waiting to be discovered. For a while, when I was a teenager, I explored rivers and mountains. I kayaked and snowboarded in places people had never been before. I was a professional athlete and I learned that sometimes 20 minutes from a city, a canyon can be cut off from people by something as simple as a waterfall, and a mountain, can be tucked away into a mountain range, invisible to us except from the air.

For me, the sad truth is that there is a good chance most of our world’s secrets will disappear before they are even discovered. Think of the animal species that are alive now, that may soon become extinct! Or the plant that is about to be wiped out in the Amazon by clear-cutting. For me this has shaped what it means to be an explorer in 2008. To be an explorer is no longer to be one of the first people to find a place or a thing. It is to be one of the last. This is why we need a new generation of explorers, to find these things and document them before they are gone.

Sometimes when I am in these remote regions of the planet, it is hard to pick out a single thing to focus on. On my trip to Cocos Island, there were flowers that nobody had ever seen before; trees that had no name. Just off shore, men in fishing boats where sneaking into the park to fish illegally for shark. To me the flowers and trees had an incredible beauty, but the story of what was happening to the sharks was more personal, because I grew up in the ocean. So that was what I decided to spend my time covering, and that experience has shaped my life.

It’s hard for me sometimes to write about these experiences, because as a photographer, I’ve focused all of my thoughts on getting an image that will explain the story. I consider my photography to be a journal of sorts. When I get home, I usually make a book of photographs that I can flip through and stories from the adventure will come back to me.

Sam Branson – Age 21, Great Britain

BACKGROUND

Sam joined Will Steger on the Global Warming 101 Baffin Island Expedition from Clyde River to Iglulik. Sam took to dogsledding and Arctic travel like a seasoned adventurer. Sam grew up in both England and the Caribbean and has a great respect for nature and all the elements within it. After school he trained as a chef at Le Cordon Bleu culinary school and then went on to do a year's diploma in music. His love for extreme sports began when he was young, and one of his favorite things to do is surf.

Wintergreen Expeditions
Ely, Minnesota
www.dogsledding.com

BACKGROUND

Paul Schurke first reached the North Pole with Will Steger in 1986. He has since completed six trips to the North Pole, crossed Northwestern Greenland, and traversed the Canadian Arctic territory of Nunavut. His expeditions have been covered by National Geographic, Outside Magazine, NBC’s Today Show, and Smithsonian Magazine. Paul’s fourteen-year-old son, Peter, joined him on his sixth trek to the North Pole.

Paul helped host a regional “Step It Up” rally for national action on climate change and won the National Wilderness Society’s “Environmental Hero” award for his conservation efforts.

INTERVIEW

Q (Will Steger Foundation): You’ve been exploring the Arctic since the 1980's. Have you seen any changes in the environment in the time that you’ve been traveling?
A (Paul Schurke): On our first dogsled and ski trip to the North Pole in 1986, the sea ice that we traveled across averaged 8-12 feet thick. On my 5 trips to the North Pole since then,, the steady thinning of the ice has been very apparent. On our most recent travels near the Pole, in 2005, we rarely found ice more than 4 feet thick.

Q (WSF): Have the changes affected your ability to travel on the Arctic Ocean?
A (PS): For the past 7 years, we have spent a few weeks most every spring dogsledding the coast of Northwestern Greenland with Polar Inuit hunters. In that time, the steadily diminishing sea ice has reduced the spring sledding season by nearly a month. We used to travel in May. Now we begin our trips in late March and are lucky if there is still sufficient coastal ice to continue our journeys into mid-April. Sadly, this means a much shorter hunting season for the Inuit, which is threatening their subsistence culture.

Q (WSF): What impacts or what effects would you imagine a trend that continued in this direction would have on polar exploration?
A (PS): The window of time for polar exploration – from when the sun returns to the high Arctic late each winter to when spring ice break-up occurs—is growing shorter and shorter. Surface exploration and research on the ice of the Arctic Ocean may soon be possible only during winter darkness.

Q (WSF): What concerns you most about warming in the Arctic?
A (PS): Arctic scientists agree that the rate of warming is accelerating. That means that the amount of time our civilization has available to adapt and adjust to global climate change may now be a matter of years rather than decades. The rapid changes in the Arctic underscore the extreme urgency of this matter.

Q (WSF): What influence or effect do you hope your expeditions will have?
A (PS): Arctic expeditions are our most immediate source of ‘ground truth’ about the portion of our planet that’s currently being most dramatically affected by climate change. These ‘ground truth’ reports from Arctic expeditions are clearly effective in generating public support for reinventing our world while we still have the chance.

Q (WSF): Are there lessons or inspirations individuals and communities can take from your experiences?
A (PS): Arctic explorers now have the opportunity and the responsibility to be messengers, to share with others the changes we are witnessing at the top of our world The innate human quest for adventure and exploration is helping us keep a finger on the pulse of our planet.

www.willsteger.com

BACKGROUND

Will Steger began exploring his neighborhood as a young child. When he was fifteen years old, he and his brother took a small boat from Minneapolis, down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and back. Will then began to explore even further from home, kayaking Arctic rivers and backpacking over Arctic tundra and mountain ranges.

In 1986 Will led the first confirmed unsupported dogsled expedition to the North Pole. In the years to follow, he completed the longest ever unresupplied dogsled expedition—a north to south traverse of Greenland. In 1991 he led an expedition crossing the continent of Antarctica, becoming the first to cross the continent.

In 2002 the Larsen Ice Shelf Will crossed during his Antarctic expedition collapsed into the ocean in an event that scientists link to global warming. This and other changes Will witnessed led him to create a not-for-profit foundation to help educate people about the rapid climate-related changes happening in polar regions.

INTERVIEW

Q (Will Steger Foundation): You’ve been exploring the Arctic since the 1980’s. Have you seen any changes in the environment in the time that you’ve been traveling?
A (Will Steger): Yes, the changes have been dramatic. I’ve traveled on all the ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic and Antarctica. These ice shelves have disintegrated greatly. There has been a tremendous change in the sea ice on the Arctic Ocean. The pack ice has gone from being relatively stable to completely unreliable.

Q (WSF): Have the changes affected your ability to travel on the Arctic Ocean?
A (WS): Yes, the Arctic Ocean has totally changed; you almost need floatation to cross now. Within 10 years it will be impossible to cross the Arctic Ocean with a dog team.

Q (WSF): What impacts or what effects would you imagine a trend that continued in this direction would have on polar exploration?
A (WS): This changes everything. Ice on which we relied for travel is disappearing earlier and earlier each year; this makes it very difficult to travel.

Q (WSF): What concerns you most about warming in the Arctic?
A (WS): The biggest concern right now is the rise of sea level. We are just starting to see these changes now. Along with the warming Arctic we are now starting to see thaws on ice caps for Greenland and Western Antarctica.

Q (WSF): What influence or effect do you hope your expeditions will have?
A (WS): The biggest thing is to bring about awareness. These changes are going on without many witnesses. Many people don’t get to see these dramatic changes. We need to move people into action. Motivating people to make changes and take action is the biggest concern.

Q (WSF): Are there lessons or inspirations individuals and communities can take from your experiences?
A (WS): I hope that we are setting the example to take action. The key is to motivate people to take action around solutions. The changes that are happening will affect everyone. We all need to act.

Note: Many different groups of indigenous (native) people live in the circumpolar (Arctic) region. Climate change affects each area in unique ways. Because of this, people living in one region of the Arctic may experience different climate-related changes than people living in other regions or communities.

Native people from across Alaska and Canada delivered a petition to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. The petition seeks to draw attention to the climate change-related impacts to the lives of people living in the circumpolar (Arctic) region. The petition included observations from community members. Selections are reprinted below:

“One of my sons…was going to visit the next crew…and he fell right through the ice half-way out to that camp. I’ve seen my fellow whalers trying to go whaling break through the ice, because it’s melting from the bottom, and our snow machines have fallen through the ice.” Ronald Brower, Barrow, Alaska

“You need thick ice for the weight of the whale to bring it up. You need at least six feet of solid ice to bring up a whale. When it’s like three, four feet, especially if somebody got a bigger whale, it’s going to keep breaking up. And that reflects on the sizes of the whale that we catch, too. More so, we’re trying to catch smaller whales, which are much easier to pull op on the ice. That means that we’re getting a smaller share of the whales and with a quota of 22, the smaller the whale, the less [meat] the people get.” Roy Nageak, Barrow, Alaska

“When I was younger, there was more ice….The seals, you had time, you had the whole summer to hunt, you had June and July…” Roy, Nageak, Barrow, Alaska

“The snow is not the same anymore. The bottom of the snow is a lot softer than it used to be. It’s no good for igloos anymore. [Twenty years ago] we used to be able to stop anywhere we needed a place to sleep just to build an igloo and sleep in that igloo. And nowadays you can’t just find good snow anywhere. In [those] days we used to find them anywhere. The condition of the snow is not very good…not only on the bottom but on the top as well.” Lucas Ittulak, Nain, Newfoundland, Canada

“We were driving our skidoo in the Spring—early Spring—normal, I mean we knew that some areas were dangerous. We know what spots to look out for, like black spots versus ice pans, or whatever…We stopped the skidoos and we waited for my brother and his wife to come up and join us. And as we were waiting, we no sooner stopped the skidoo and were just about to start our skidoos again when the ice just collapsed underneath the skidoo and the skidoo went through the ice. And so my son fell in the water. My husband jumped off and just missed going into the water. But he fell in the water. And it just crumbled all the way. So we hadn’t realized that it was a black area, because there was, well, a bit of snow on top which made it look white I guess. But, we hadn’t realized that it was soft underneath. Anyway, we got him out and he was alright. He just got pretty shook up because he couldn’t climb out. Every time he tried to climb out it would break off. And it would just crumble under his hands. So we managed to get him out But, we noticed that that area, which never is like that—[the ice] usually lasts quite awhile and just breaks up into pans and melts away.” Heather Angnatok, Nain, Newfoundland, Canada

“[On the ] overlapping of the ice packs is where polar bears normally have their hunting grounds. Because the sea ice isn’t formed the way it used to be that the polar bears are coming closer, This is why we now have polar bears in the community even before the dark season would start to come. It used to be that when it would start to get dark at night the polar bears would start to come this way, but now they’re always around.” Tsa Piubgituq, Clyde River, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada

“I can talk about the permafrost because I’ve got two ice cellars that I see where the changes are. They’re no longer cold like they used to be. It’s melting. The heat is going into the ground… So, natural ice cellars are warming up…the food you stored there is going to be no longer good to eat. They’re gong to get rancid, and they’re going to spoil….And that’s already happening….I had to go out and buy some chest freezers to try and protect [the meat] from rotting...” Eugene Brower, Barrow, Alaska

“[The ice] normally saved our beach from eroding so much more—the ice that buffers the waves. Nowadays…we don’t have ice to protect our beaches anymore. Waves and storms are becoming more frequent, sometimes [we lose] fifteen feet [of shore] at a time. So if there’s two or three storms, it could be fifteen feet three times. That’s how much land we would lose...” John Sinnok, Shishmaref, Alaska

“My mom, before she died, used to go picking greens with us girls. We used to fill up maybe four barrels to keep for the winter and she taught us how to pack them and keep them for the winter. I can now only fill up one barrel each summer…In late June, we waited for greens to be ready to be picked but I noticed that we are starting kind of early this year because they grow up and then from too much sun and heat, they wither very fast…” Rosemond Martin, Savoonga, Alaska

“The vegetation is different. Caribous are not getting fatter quicker than they used to be. Right now, when you go out here and get a caribou, they’re not fat anymore. It’s almost the end of August, but when you go back thirty years by this time they should be well-fed and well fat.” Ben Kovic, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada

“Things have changed so much it is hard to rely on what you knew traditionally anymore. What happened years ago is different than what it is today…You may ask an expert what his knowledge is but his knowledge is not going to apply to what is happening today. For example an elder might say by November 1 you are able to cross this area, it is now safe to cross this lake, but according to the way things are today, it may not be the case.” Inuit elder from Baker Lake, Nunavut, Canada

“Traditionally when we do the caribou caching—this is where we would put away the meat to pick up later in the winter—we would start our caribou caching in August—the middle of August. It was safe to start your caribou caching, but now it is just too warm. Either the meat is just going to rot, or the maggots are there…[T]he month of August is very important traditionally. It has always been an important part of the summer. This is when they collect skins for clothing, and at the same time they do their caribou caching. Now people do most of their caribou caching in September. Even by the second week of September they are dong their caribou caching. Inuit were very selective of when to cache the meat, because of the taste and the whole thing...” Baker Lake, Nunavut, Canada

“The skins that we do prepare are sometimes too dry now because of the climate change. In the old days, it never used to be like so. We even have to dry them now in the shade away from the sun because when you dry them out in the sun, they become too dry or very easy to tear, especially the seal skins.” Annie Napayok, Whale Cove, Nunavut, Canada

“Lakes that have never dried, especially by our drying racks, that lake I don’t remember ever drying up, but it’s been drying up every year the last few years. The lakes around our camp, which we used to use for waste water, there’s hardly any water, and the water is so brown now, we don’t use it for drinking and hardly even for waste water.” John Sinnok of Shishmaref, Alaska

“There’s a lot of anxieties and angers that are being felt by some of the hunters that no longer can go and hunt, We see the change, but we can’t stop it, we can’t explain why it’s changing it…our way of life is changing up here, our ocean is changing….I think it is widely felt, because you can feel it further from the folks that live in the villages outside of Barrow, where they do a lot of subsistence hunting.” Eugene Brower, Barrow, Alaska

Source: Watt-Coultier, S., & The Inuit Circumpolar Conference, et al. (2005) Petition to the Inter American Commission on Human Rights Seeking Relief from Violations Resulting from Global Warming…. http://www.inuitcircumpolar.com/index.php?ID=316&Lang=En

Note: Many different groups of indigenous (native) people live in the circumpolar (Arctic) region. Although their cultures share some similar traits, each region and community has its own variations. One trait, however, that seems to be shared by all indigenous Arctic peoples is adaptability and resourcefulness. These traits are part of what made it possible for these people to survive for thousands of years in one of the harshest environments on the planet.

Below is an excerpt from The Last of the Gentlemen Adventurers, a book published from the diaries of Edward Beauclerk Maurice, who at the age of 16 left England to become a fur trader and live among the Inuit (formerly called Eskimos) on Baffin Island. This particular passage refers to a hunting trip Edward took with two of his Inuit friends:

That evening was pretty cold so Kilabuk decided we would put up a snowhouse instead of using the tent we had brought with us for the milder nights….

When the Inuit built snowhouses for winter homes, they were often more elaborate than these trail snowhouses. Sometimes they even had two rooms, and invariably a porch, where harnesses, dog food and hunting gear could be kept, the harpoons and spears being stuck in the snow outside the house.

The inside surface of the snow was often lined with sealskin or canvas, which was held in place by thongs (leather straps) passed through the wall and fastened to toggles. This meant that the inside temperature could be kept at a higher level, since the lining intended to hold the heat, while allowing the cool air to circulate from the vent over the surface of the snow. For living purposes, one home would last a whole winter, though by the end of the season it would be getting rather dirty and smelly. If it got too bad, all the Eskimo had to do was to collect everything together and move to a fresh spot.

When our house was complete, we unloaded the sledge, spread the deerskins over the floor and stacked our gear near the door (which consisted simply of a block removed from the wall)…our little home soon warmed up.

In fact the temperature rose rather rapidly as the cooking got under way. Without any lining, walls soon started to drip, but our companion showed us that by smoothing over a handful of loose snow the water could be conducted down far enough for the drops to fall harmlessly round the edges of the house.

(2005, Harper Perennial Publishing, pp. 107 – 109)

Paul Tiulana, an Inupiat (formerly called Eskimo) was born in 1921 on Ooq-Vok Island (also called King Island) in the Bering Sea off the Alaskan Coast. His story was written by a biographer, Vivian Senungetuk, who edited his original words only slightly.

Note: Many different groups of indigenous (native) people live in the circumpolar (Arctic) region. Although their cultures share some similar traits, each region and community has its own variations. One trait, however, that seems to be shared by all indigenous Arctic peoples is adaptability and resourcefulness. These traits are part of what made it possible for these people to survive for thousands of years in one of the harshest environments on the planet.

This is an excerpt from the book Wise Words of Paul Tiulana: An Inupiat Alaskan’s Life (Vivian Senungetuk,1998. pp 14 - 27):

At King Island we lived by the weather. We had certain activities every month, and we named the months according to the activities and the weather.

I will start with October. The name for October in the King Island dialect of the Eskimo language means “icy month.” We call it icy month because ice starts to form among the rocks below the village at this time…

We call November “going up to the back of the island to hunt there.” November is the month when the wind starts blowing really hard from the north, blowing ice up against the island on the north side and away from the island on the south side. The ice around the south side can move, so it is not safe to try to walk there. The ones who have walked there have drifted out on the young ice and never come back. They drowned out in the water when the wind started blowing hard from the north and waves crushed the ice out in the Bering Sea.

In the fall of the year we did not walk too far out on the ice in any direction unless we carried kayaks with us. November was “going up to the back of the island to hunt there” because it was safer to hunt on the back, or north, side of King Island then. We worked on our furs in the fall, so that we could have new mukluks, or boots, new seal pants, and new parkas, or coats…

December we call “dancing month.” We started to dance in December because everything on King Island was ready for winter. Our houses were ready. We had put our skin boats up in racks…

The older men hunted seal and polar bear in January. When a hunter got a polar bear, an old person would tell a story while the women cleaned the skin. We cooked and ate the meat and saved the skin. We cut a hole in the ice and pushed the skin down into it. The little shrimps in the water ate the blood and excess fat from the skin. We would leave the skin down in the water for a couple of days. Then we pulled it out, cleaned it off with snow, and squeezed the salt water from the hair…

The older persons also hunted seals in January. When they got a one-year-old seal, they would use the skin for sealskin pants. The fur is a bit longer on a young seal and so the pants last longer. The skin of a female seal was used for mukluks and mittens because it is lighter. When they killed an older male seal, they…used it to make parkas…
The month of March we call “fixing our kayaks for springtime.” During this month we repaired everything on our kayaks…If we did not want to change the skin on our kayaks, we applied blubber over the skins…

April is “the month for going out hunting with our kayaks.” When the seals are born in the first part of April, the ice stops forming around the island…When that happened we went out [hunting] with our kayaks…

Toward the end of April we began to see some walruses on top of the ice, coming from the south. It was an exciting time. The men hardly slept—only about two or three hours at night before they woke up to go hunting. The days started to get longer in April as the sun rose earlier in the morning and set later at night…
The month of May we call “the ice starts to melt from the island.” The first part of May we still tried to hunt for oogruks, the big bearded seals, with our kayaks. It is easier to get the seals with kayaks, not walking…

We call the month of June “unnoticed moon.” In June everything was so busy we did not have time to think what day it was. We worked on preparing our walrus meat—putting it into caves for preservation—so that we could have more meat for the next year…

July is “the month of going over the mainland.” We went over to the mainland in our skin boats to see our friends there, to trade with them, and to dance…
Before we left for the mainland, we picked the wild greens and preserved them for wintr use. We put our plants in seal oil; they were preserved in tht oil and did not spoil. We made Eskimo ice cream with one plant. It was done like this: We made a container out of walrus hide. Then while the plant was still frozen, we pounded it with a walrus tusk. Then we mixed it with reindeer fat and seal oil. We used it when we were eating seal or oogruk. Delicious!

We do not have a name for the month of August. We were still visiting on the mainland then. We could pick berries there—blackberries, blueberries, salmonberries. I call August “berry-picking month.”

September we call “ready to go back to the island.” We planned to go back to the island in the early fall, while the weather was good, because by October, the Bering Sea gets really rough. Also we tried to go back to the island in the month of September so that we would have time to winterize our houses…

Arctic Peoples - More Resources

Unikkaaqatigiit: Putting the human face on climate change—Perspectives from Inuit in Canada, a 129-page book from Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the National Inuit Organization, chronicles Native Inuit observations of climate change collected from across the Arctic. Concept maps and other visuals make the information accessible to learners as young as middle school. The book is available as a free PDF from here

Inuit Observations on Climate Change, a 42-minuite film produced by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, documents the impacts of climate change from an Inuvialuit perspective. In addition to the full-length version, a 14-minute summary film is also available. Both versions can be watched for free or ordered as a DVD from here

The Inuit Way: A Guide to Inuit Culture, a 50-page book from Pauktuutit, an Inuit Women’s Organization, is an enjoyable and easily-readable introduction to modern Inuit culture. It’s purpose, according to the Forward, is to “provide the reader a starting point for understanding the cultural underpinnings of modern Inuit”. The book, along with other publications is available as a free PDF from here