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Climate Change Adaptation: Traditional Knowledge of
Indigenous Peoples Inhabiting the Arctic and Far North
Marine Hunters of Chukotka
rush to the shore to help docking and pulling out the whaleboats and to greet
the game. In the old days the wife of a hunter, who killed the whale, greeted
the killed animal as a guest. There was a special ritual for that. Afterwards
the game was divided up. Old single people, orphans, and poor people were
never forgotten. A good hunter not only fed his own family, but many other,
even unrelated people.
Chukotka Residents Talk about Climate Change
The indigenous people of the North get the most important information not from
the books but by watching and listening to other people. That is how they learn to
watch the sea and the tundra, to dress correctly, to safely move on the ice, to
survive in bad weather, and to provide for themselves and for their families. That
explains a lot about the character of the Eskimo and the Chukchi. They know how
to watch and to listen, are attentive to nature and its changes, and always ready to
share their knowledge to those who need it.
Marine hunters of the Bering Strait region have acquired a great deal of experience
in predicting the weather. The folk knowledge of the weather, the forecast of ice
and weather change can be local (for instance, for a certain settlement and the
nearby areas), or include a larger area. They can be short-term (a day, or a day and
a night), medium-term (from a week to a month), and long-term (from a year to
two or three years). This knowledge and skill in predicting the weather and the
state of the ice has been passed on from father to son and from the older generation
to the younger.
Certain conclusions about the nature of present-day climate changes and about
their influence on the natural systems of the Bering Strait region can be made on
the basis of thirty years of observations made by one of the authors of this work,
and on the basis of many years of monitoring done by the residents of several
settlements of eastern Chukotka.
1. From the end of the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s, the duration of seasons
started changing: the fall and spring seasons have expanded at the expense of
winter. Spring season in Chukotka now begins earlier by about twenty to thirty
days. In the middle of May the tundra along the inlets is already in bloom, and
the storms come in. Many birds arrive a month earlier, at the end of April or in
the beginning of May, instead of in June as in previous years. Fall continues
until the middle of November (the rivers do not freeze, and there is little ice in
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Climate Change Adaptation: Traditional Knowledge of
Indigenous Peoples Inhabiting the Arctic and Far North
Marine Hunters of Chukotka
the sea), although in the decades prior the freezing would come in the middle of
September. The solid winter ice now forms a month later. In the beginning of
the 1980s there would be strong shore-fast ice by the second half of October. In
general, fall now lasts a month or month and a half longer than before. In winter
many regions are hit with multiple warm days with rains, storms, and strong
winds. Rivers are more full-flowing, and some of them almost do not freeze
year-round. The difference in temperatures between settlements that are 60 to
120 km apart can reach up to 6–8°С. At the same time it should be noted that in
the last two or three years, there have been periods of bitter frosts in January and
February as well as periods of warmer weather.
2. The ice in the seas is diminishing. The amount of multi-year ice cover in the
basin of the Arctic Ocean, especially in Chukotka Sea has dramatically
decreased.
3. Due to the late formation of seasonal ice and the lack of pack ice (multi-year ice
that is no less than three meters thick) that would keep away fall storms, the
coastline of eastern Chukotka is rapidly changing. In certain areas, such as
around the town of Lorino, the fall and winter storms have completely washed
away some of the sandy beaches and destroyed many wave-built sand lines and
dunes. There are areas where erosion has driven the coastline by fifteen to fifty
meters back.
4. According to one of the most experienced sea mammal hunters, Pyotr
Typykhkak from Sireniki (1999), it has become much more difficult to predict
the weather. There have been a lot of changes, and now “the sea and the clouds
don’t match each other, and the weather is changing too fast”.
5. The permafrost is melting everywhere. Settlements built on lenses of
underground ice, such as in Lorino are in bad shape. The earth is sinking and
causes houses to fall in.
6. The Chukotka Peninsula, especially its eastern part, is a tectonically active zone.
The shores here are sinking into the sea which drastically increases the influence
of the fall and winter storms on the coastline. In the past thirty to forty years in
some places the shoreline has retreated from three to ten meters. Those areas
included the island of Yttygran (the area of the “Whale Alley”), the island of
Arakamchechen (Cape Kygynin), and several other sections of the coast.
7. Climate warming has led to the appearance of more southern types of plants and
animals. For instance, people have seen moose (elk) and lynx at the peninsula.
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Climate Change Adaptation: Traditional Knowledge of
Indigenous Peoples Inhabiting the Arctic and Far North
Marine Hunters of Chukotka
8. Climate changes have led to a noticeable worsening of living conditions for
cold-loving sea animals, primarily for pinnepeds and the polar bear. Due to the
decrease of ice in the Bering Sea, there has been a massive migration of
walruses to the Arctic Ocean basin. There is not enough thick ice even in the
Chukchi Sea, so that walruses, which always prefer to stay on the ice, are forced
to come out onto the shore even in winter. The fate of the polar bears is taking a
tragic turn for the worse. The decrease in the area of sea ice has led to a drastic
reduction of the ringed seal population, which is the main food source for polar
bears. The bears now have to swim great distances on the brink of exhaustion in
order to find food and places to rest. They are also forced to come out onto the
mainland shore and feed more often at the garbage dumps at the edges of local
settlements.
9. Changes in climate directly influence traditional Eskimo and Chukchi
approaches to the use of natural resources. The changed conditions of ice in the
coastal zone makes it more difficult to take the whaleboats and boats out to sea
in winter and complicates hunter's movement across the coast and drifting ice.
What did the indigenous residents do during climate warming in the past? For
instance, during the 1930s when for several years the climate was warmer than it is
now? This problem was addressed differently in each settlement, although
neighboring settlements often chose similar tactics and even joined together.
The hunters of the eastern and southeastern part of the Chukotka Peninsula
followed the sea mammals further north into the Arctic basin. Thus, in 1970-1972
Eskimo marine hunters from Sireniki made an agreement with the Chukchi
community of Yanrakynnot so that they could hunt walrus in their waters. In
addition, they also went hunting as far north as Uelen on the Arctic coast. The
residents left behind at home took care of other subsistence resources. Fishing, bird
hunting, egg gathering at the bird colonies and other types of foraging became the
main activities and the basis for preparing provisions for the winter season.
In especially hard years the coastal communities of eastern Chukotka would
change their place of residence. At the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of
the twentieth centuries, during the periods of starvation, many Eskimo moved to
St. Lawrence Island and now their descendants are American citizens, who share
culture and language with the Asiatic Eskimo, especially with Chaplino Eskimo.
Finally, some Chukchi families of sea mammal hunters would move to the tundra
and join their reindeer herding relatives. The reindeer herders would generously
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Climate Change Adaptation: Traditional Knowledge of
Indigenous Peoples Inhabiting the Arctic and Far North
Marine Hunters of Chukotka
help out the starving residents of the coast. Lyudmila Ainana, a Yupik elder,
remembers that once for a long while there was no hunting and the members of her
family couldn’t even walk. They just lay still and sucked on bearded seal belts and
pieces of walrus hide from the cover of their tent. Then they heard someone
speaking Chukchi language. The reindeer herders had driven their reindeer to her
village and killed the animals there to feed them. At first they would feed the
starving with thick broth, and then with meat. That’s how they saved their
neighbors.
In conclusion we would like to emphasize that indigenous people of the Bering
Strait region have created effective ways of sustaining the high quality of their
environment. Because of their knowledge and cultural traditions, they have been
able not only to successfully provide for themselves for thousands of years, but
also to pass on to us the richest and most diverse ecosystems in the Arctic.
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About Authors
Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya, Head of the Sector of Traditional Subsistence and
Resource Use at the Russian Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage named after
D.S. Likhachev (Moscow)
Igor Krupnik, Curator of Arctic and Northern Collections at the National
Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, USA)
Photographs are courtesy of A. Apalyu, L. Aronova, Beringia Natural Ethnic Park,
S. Bogoslovsky, A. Borovik, A. Chubarkin, V. Golbtseva, N. Kalyuzhina,
S. Kavry, S. Khalansky, N. Khokhlov, A. Kochnev, N. Kondakov, K. Kondratyev,
N. Konyukhov, A. Kutsky, A Lemberg, A. Ottoy, N. Perov, Peter the Great
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences,
K. Porsild, K. Savva, O. Smoly, The State Museum of Oriental Art, I. Zagrebin,
V. Zvonov.
Pictures are courtesy of V. Aronov, S. Bogoslovsky, S. Isakova-Tagyok,
D. Vasyukov.
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