58 TIME May 23/May 30, 2022
words,” says Mellisa Maktuayaq Johnson, a former
executive director of the Bering Sea Elders Group
from Nome who is now working to promote Inu-
piaq heritage and language. “The other day, some-
one asked me the Yup’ik word for octopus. We don’t
have one, because octopus wasn’t here before.”
Even the old canard about Eskimos having a
hundred words for snow needs to be updated in a
grim vocabulary for a warming world. Some Alaska
Natives have started using the Yup’ik neologism
usteq to refer to rapid climate- driven erosion and
ground collapse caused by permafrost melt. Perma-
frost researchers are adopting it as well. “It kind
of encapsulates everything we are seeing right
now, how the cause and the effect are related,”
says Sue Natali, a permafrost specialist who leads
the Woodwell Climate Research Center’s Arctic
Program.
ADAPTATION IS the climate world’s anodyne word
for the wrenching decisions that must be made
as threatened communities face the realities of
irrevocable change. Dictionaries will have to be
updated, communities will have to craft new tra-
ditions, and diets will change. Shishmaref, an is-
land community not far from Nome, lost several
buildings and a burial ground to usteq. In 2016,
a majority of residents voted to permanently re-
locate to the mainland. Nome may yet be able to
surf the looming disruption with minimal loss if
it can get ahead of the change. When the Crys-
tal Serenity became the first large cruise ship to
traverse the Arctic in 2016, Nome was one of
its first stops on the 32-day voyage, bringing in
more than 1,000 day- trippers eager to spend
money at its cash-strapped businesses. Now, fol-
lowing a COVID-19 pandemic pause, 27 cruise
liners are scheduled to stop at the frontier town
this summer. During my visit, boats had to an-
chor offshore and ferry in tourists or goods by
smaller craft; when the port is lengthened and
deepened, they will be able to park alongside the
jetty. “This is a real opportunity for Alaska and
for Nome and for those travelers coming over the
Northwest Passage,” said Alaska Governor Mike
Dunleavy on a visit to Nome in August. “Hope-
fully it means more jobs for the area.”
A study undertaken by the Nome Visitors Cen-
ter estimates that each cruise-line tourist brings in
several hundreds of dollars to local shops and tour
companies. But bigger boats also mean that the
cost of bringing in goods, from construction ma-
terials to fuel, watermelons, and frozen turkeys,
would go down, making life more affordable for
residents. To Nome Harbormaster Lucas Stotts,
the port extension can’t be built fast enough.
“Thinking ahead 10 years, much less 20 or 30,
there will be even more traffic and we will be even
further behind the curve. We have some catching
up to do.” Indeed, U.S. investment in Arctic ports
and waterways already lags behind that of the
other Arctic nations.
But a deepwater port in Nome could bring
problems as well. More traffic means an increased
risk of introducing invasive species hitching rides
in the hulls of foreign vessels, which could dev-
astate a Bering Strait ecosystem already under
pressure from climate change. Maktuayaq John-
son says increased noise from the recent uptick in
shipping is already disturbing the ocean ecosys-
tem, driving fish and marine mammals away and
disrupting the Native subsistence lifestyle. More
ships mean more exhaust fumes that blacken what
sea ice remains, accelerating the melting process.
By and large, she says, Nome’s Native community
has not been involved enough in the planning pro-
cess. “Development is important. But it can’t just
be about economic gain. You’ve got to incorporate
how this will impact our culture, our language,
and our way of life. Right now the port expansion
feels like one more opportunity for outsiders to
come in and get that monetary gain.”
To Denise Michels, a Native Alaskan and, as
Nome’s former mayor, an early supporter of the
port expansion, the project is more about pro-
tecting the community than profiting from cli-
mate change. The more the Arctic warms, the
more boats will come through the Bering Strait.
Nome has to be prepared for that and prepared
for the consequences as well; she envisions a
search-and-rescue station that could help mari-
ners in distress or send out emergency contain-
ment efforts in the case of an oil spill or other en-
vironmental crisis. A port expansion, done right,
should include the authority to direct traffic away
from fish- spawning grounds or nurseries at cer-
tain times of the year. “We can’t stop the traffic.
What we can do is try to benefit from it. That’s
how we adapt to climate change.”
Alaska’s earliest residents not only survived
but thrived in one of the harshest environments
on earth through a process of continuous adap-
tation. Resisting change was not possible, not
then and certainly not now, when even if global
greenhouse emissions were to stop tomorrow,
the Arctic would continue to warm for decades
more because of climatic processes already set in
place. Seeking opportunities in a rapidly chang-
ing region, whether it’s better access to min-
eral resources, more efficient shipping routes,
or new fishing grounds, is simply the newest—
and, some would say, the most practical—form
of adaptation. As long as those opportunities
don’t just make the problem worse, for the cli-
mate, for the region, and for the people who live
in it. — With reporting by ELOISE BARRY ‘We can’t
stop the
traffic.
What we
can do
is try to
benefit
from it.’
—DENISE MICHELS,
FORMER MAYOR
OF NOME