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| Arctic Alert Mission |
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| What is the attraction to harsh frozen places where life is difficult to sustain? Is it the overpowering sense of solitude, or the reality of our insignificance on this frozen expanse? I came to the Arctic by accident but once I set foot on Baffin Island in 2001 -joining a kayak expedition through the Northwest Passage- and experienced that desolate, unforgiving terrain, I knew I contracted the polar virus. Over the years I sailed, skied and kayaked in arctic Norway, Alaska, Siberia, Greenland, Spitsbergen, and Baffin Island, romanticizing destitute landscapes with its drifting icebergs, admiring its animals and felt connected with the soul of the natives. During one of my trips -a home stay with an Inuit family in Pond Inlet- we were hunting for seal. We motored all the way across to Baylot Island because the straight had no ice. I did not think much of it then, but the Inuit were already worried: no ice means no seal, no narwhale, no polar bear and no food. The next day, this family completed their annual shopping list to be delivered by ship next year- and the list include new items such as beef and pork because they knew hunting could no longer sustain their families. If there is any ice, it will be too treacherous to hunt. |  |
Five years later during an expedition in East-Greenland I learned that the mild winters in the past forced the owners to shoot 800 dogs in the village of Kummiut; a heart wrenching reality as these Inuit can no longer find seals in an open ocean to feed an entire dogsled team. I witnessed them feeding a drowned polar bear to the dogs instead. The Inuit children ask their parents why their snow is yellow an event that happens when the wind blows from the East from Siberia. An Inuit boy points at a robin - the elder shake his head; there is no word for robin in their language. Stories like these are real and tangible and it is not their fault the environment that has supported their culture is letting them down. The Arctic is changing and much faster that it worries scientists. Through my expeditions I bring stories back from the people in the Arctic, through interviews and field work with scientists, my own observations on the ice and these stories make their way in the classroom, in lecture halls and in your car when you listen to NPR or when you pick up a magazine or newspaper.Today, the shopping list of the Inuit family in Baffin Island has no tomatos and cucumbers on it -next year they plan on growing it themselves. |
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