Are there limits to human adaptability? Can the accumulated damage of historic woundings find healing before choking off the promise of future generations? These two questions of resilience and the threatened survival of rich cultural heritages lie beneath the current “shaking of the foundations.”
The experience of break-up in Selawik, an Iniupiaq (Eskimo) village ten miles north of the Arctic Circle along the northwest coast of Alaska, has long served as a moment of absolute awe in the resilience of the village’s subsistence lifestyle, and the continuing threats to its survival posed by a dominating culture that itself is fracturing under the pressures of its own internal conflicts.
So first, the awesome unfolding moments of the river ice breaking with the unrestrained flow of the river to the sea reshaping the landscape of everyday life.
The village spanned both sides of a river near sea level and across an island in the river’s midst; the primal role of river as life was a constant and literal reality.
The primal role of river as life was a constant and literal reality
The rhythm and patterns of life were delineated by freeze-up, break-up and the seasonal running of the Sheefish, for which both the village and the river were named, as well as the migratory patterns of caribou herds. And aside from the airstrip, frequently rendered useless by high cross-winds, the river provided the primary avenue of travel and transport, by boat during summer, by snowmachine in winter.
It was far easier to get around over ice and snow-covered tundra and river, and fresh water was readily available from the clear river ice, nearly three feet thick by mid-winter. Remove the surface snow and several inches of surface ice and chop away.
As the ice thinned, the more bold, or foolhardy, marked with twigs the dangerous areas to avoid, creating the odd illusion of young saplings randomly scattered from shore to shore. People carried pairs of pocket knives to pull themselves out in the event of breaking through, and for several days before break-up, all crossings ceased.
Those with upstream fish camps headed out days early so they could report back by CB radio on the progress of the breakup as they followed the open water in boats.
And when the day arrived, everything came to a stand still. The electricity was turned off before the movement of ice could potentially sever the power lines that stretched from bank to bank to bank, across the river bottom. All was silent as young and old gathered to sit along the banks to watch the season change right there, in the moment, before their eyes.
You hear it first, a subtle clinking and crunching. Then what had been firm enough to walk on just days before began to subtly shift and move, the sound of breaking ice growing in volume and breadth.
Teenagers scampered across still solid areas to retrieve the last of the clear ice; some mounting the floes as temporary rafts, others reaching out from boats that had been left through the winter at the riverbank. As the entire surface of the river heaved and advanced, several flotilla of tree trunks and branches, uprooted and carried down from the mountains by the rising spring flood, began to appear–and were quickly retrieved for firewood.
And sometimes days later, in more shallow reaches, ice sheets that had formed on the river bed before the surface froze over would abruptly release and bob to the surface, unpleasantly surprising unsuspecting boaters passing above.
Are there limits to human adaptability?
Some moments become almost mystical in experience and memory. In that moment, I became more deeply aware of the rhythm and flow of life in this village and the ongoing desperate struggle of reconciliation with other lifestyles and rhythms, just as objective and unyielding in their own way as the freezing and breakup of the river and the annual progression from 24-hour daylight to 24-hour night. Are there limits to human adaptability? Such a wealth of wisdom almost lost by the concerted attempts to “civilize” indigenous cultures.
Now, at some distance of time and place, what are we to make of the ground breaking up under our feet, with warning flags of dangerous ground appearing in every direction? Have we crossed a historic threshold in which long-frozen patterns of memory and tradition are beginning to break apart, where hard-won victories and unfulfilled promises alike are being swept up by a re-awakening, irresistibly flowing stream roaring back into the sea? Dislocation, by choice and circumstance, has become the norm.
Can the accumulated damage of historic woundings find healing before choking off the promise of future generations
What can, what should be preserved in this moment; how do we reclaim the uprooted remnants of earlier aspirations that have re-entered the stream? Can the accumulated damage of historic woundings find healing before choking off the promise of future generations?
For this is perhaps the challenge and promise of our times, an inescapable release of pent-up energy and conflicting passions that could, if guided by the “better angels of our nature,” propel our collective journey beyond ancient prejudices, enriched by the confluence of diverse cultural heritages.
The frozen misery of ages breaks, cracks, begins to move
The thunder is the thunder of the floes, the flood, the upstart spring
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere
Never to relent until we take
The longest stride of soul we’ve ever taken.
[A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Frye]
