Shishmaref
12' 22"
Aerials. Flying into Shishmaref | Music | 00:00 |
| CLARKE: From the air, the precarious existence of this village is clear. The island is a narrow sand bank about five kilometres long, and half a kilometre wide. | 00:24 |
Ground shots of Shishmaref | But even that is being threatened, as strong winds and big waves hammer the coastline. The bluffs are crumbling, and the houses that have been occupied by hunters like Kim Ningeulook for generations are literally falling off the edge. | 00:40 |
Collapsed house | NINGEULOOK: They told us things would change, | 00:57 |
Kim | people would change, animals would change, everything would change. | 01:00 |
Snowy Shishmaref | Music | 01:04 |
| CLARKE: This is the warmest time of the year in Shishmaref, but the temperatures are still below zero. | 01:17 |
Melting snow | The snow has almost gone and the road is now visible. And as the ice melts, the extent of erosion becomes apparent. | 01:29 |
Super: BRICE ENINGOWUK Islander | BRICE ENINGOWUK: I am 26 years old and I've seen the shoreline out here, it was a lot farther out than what it is now. | 01:41 |
Coastline | CLARKE: Every year, the tide advances, and the sea swallows about three meters of land. | 01:53 |
Brice sorting garbage | Brice Eningowuk's family has lived here for generations. But in his lifetime, he's seen the beach disappear and the island shrink. Clarke: So Brice, how much coastline has been lost here? Brice: Roughly about | 02:01 |
Brice | 20 to 100 feet a year in one sport. More in others. | 02:15 |
Eroded cliff | On the cliff side that's were we lose most of our land, and here we don't have much vegetation other than this grass. And the roots don't go too deep. And all this loose ground gets blown, gets shifted, and it just - it's hard to control. | 02:20 |
Seawall under construction | CLARKE: A new seawall made of chicken wire and bricks is the only barrier between the land and the sea. | 02:39 |
| It's only half built, and it too is unlikely to withstand the storms. | 02:47 |
Costal shots | For seven months of the year, Shishmaref should be locked in by sea-ice stretching all the way to Russia. | 02:53 |
| Music | 02:59 |
| CLARKE: But the warmer temperatures are thinning the ice, leaving the village more vulnerable to violent weather. | 03:02 |
Amateur footage storm | Music | 03:08 |
| CLARKE: It was this severe storm in 2001 that village elders believe was the tipping point for Shishmaref. | 03:15 |
| For 24 hours, waves reaching up to four metres hammered the coastline, and washed away huge chunks of land. | 03:25 |
Abandoned houses | Today these houses are abandoned, and the villagers have moved to higher ground. | 03:36 |
| Clarke: How many houses have gone as a result? ALBERT: About 27 houses here. | 03:46 |
Albert shows photos | This was taken in about 1961. The main ground is about right here. This is all under water now. | 03:50 |
Albert walking | CLARKE: Shishmaref is a traditional Inuit village. Hunters like Albert Ningeulook spend several months every year out on the sea ice, | 04:03 |
| hunting for walrus, seals and polar bears. | 04:12 |
Polar bear pelt | Music | 04:15 |
| CLARKE: But just as the foundations of this village are being eroded, so too is their ability to hunt. | 04:20 |
Boat on ice | ALBERT: We've always been | 04:31 |
Albert. Super: | seal hunting by sleds and boats, but now due to the dangerous ice conditions, we have to be very careful. | 04:33 |
Boat on ice | CLARKE: While the ice has thinned, the channels still haven't broken enough to let the boats through. The days when the villagers could rely on hunting for food are disappearing. | 04:44 |
Kim carving ivory | Kim Ningeulook's catch from last season has already gone. | 05:02 |
| KIM: We're not catching as much; we're going further and further away. | 05:07 |
Kim | Clarke: Is this frustrating? | 05:14 |
Super: | KIM: Yes, especially when you have to pay for the gas -- everything get, get expensive. | 05:16 |
Kim walking on sea ice | Music | 05:23 |
| CLARKE: The changes in sea-ice are also creating travel hazards for the locals. Snow mobiles are the vehicle of choice, but they come at a price. During our visit, a 24-year-old man died after his snow mobile plunged through the unstable ice. | 05:30 |
| DONALD: A couple of people went out hunting. They were out egg hunting and bird hunting and they come through. | 05:53 |
Donald. Super: | And there was a part of the inlet that was open that nobody knew about, or hadn't been told about, and he didn't see it, and when he hit it he went through. | 05:58 |
Cemetery | Music | 06:08 |
Donald checking conditions | CLARKE: Donald Webb is the only policeman on the island. He checks the conditions every day to warn villagers of the increasing danger. | 06:21 |
| DONALD: With the thinning ice, it causes me to think more about safety. Trying to get more safety out to the students of the school and to keep people more informed about the ice conditions. | 06:39 |
Artic Research Center | CLARKE: Scientists from around the world have been examining the Alaskan climate, trying to establish the cause of these rapid changes. | 06:54 |
Atkinson with colleague | David Atkinson from the University of Fairbanks is one of the leading academics in the study of the arctic conditions. | 07:08 |
| ATKINSON: Their ability to read the ice is being diminished. | 07:18 |
Atkinson. Super: | What has served previous generations in understanding ice conditions simply by looking at it, is changing. And they're having a lot of accidents as a result. | 07:22 |
Eroded coastline | CLARKE: This region is naturally unstable and the Alaskan coastline has always been vulnerable. | 07:35 |
| ATKINSON: A lot of the areas of the arctic coast, like Shishmaref, and this includes large areas in Russia, and areas throughout the north slope of the Alaskan arctic as well, | 07:43 |
Atkinson | are susceptible to eroding, no matter what. | 07:54 |
General Store | CLARKE: For the people of Shishmaref, the crunch has been coming for a while -- stay and face an environmental disaster or move. In the end, they realised they have no choice. | 08:02 |
Luci eating breakfast | Community elder, Luci Eningowuk took on the challenge and went to Washington seeking help. | 08:23 |
| LUCI: I went to Congress. I think it helped our community, make them more aware of what our plight is. We're | 08:30 |
Luci. Super: | undergoing a battle that can't be won, you know. We have to move. | 08:40 |
Mollie with school children | CLARKE: The people of Shishmaref have been told they have no more than 10 to 15 years before they must leave their eroding island. | 08:51 |
| MOLLIE: A lot of kids are not sure how to deal with it because they're not sure if they're going to move away from their culture, hunting, and doing their camping, boating, these things they do with their parents and their family. They kind of panic I think, because when they | 09:10 |
Mollie | say the word move they think we're going to be gone forever, move away forever, and not do the things they do here. | 09:30 |
Boys play basketball | Music | 09:38 |
| CLARKE: A move to the mainland might not be all bad news for the 650 isolated islanders. | 09:45 |
| Music | 09:51 |
Dennis and Gwen loading trailer | CLARKE: Dennis Davis and his fiancé Gwen Nayokpuk have six children and are looking forward to some things changing. | 09:56 |
| DENNIS: You'd have fresh drinking water. You would have showers, bathtubs. It's | 10:09 |
Dennis. Super: DENNIS DAVIS | the whole principle of having running water and drinking water instead of spending you know 8, 7 or 8 bucks a gallon on water. It's really bad. | 10:15 |
Boys playing basketball | CLARKE: And a move would also give their community a chance to grow. | 10:26 |
| LUCI: We don't have any more real space for our children, our grand children mostly to build new homes. We're running out of space here. | 10:32 |
Luci | We need to grow and not have so many families in one house. | 10:45 |
Aerials over Shishmaref | Music | 10:54 |
| CLARKE: They know that by leaving the island, their connection with the sea may be lost. But not, they hope, their connection with each other. | 11:02 |
Community shots | DENNIS: If they're going to move us all out, it's got to be the whole community moving to one place, not everybody just splitting up. ‘Cos if you really think about it, our village is almost like a family, you know. | 11:15 |
Dennis | When something happens everybody pulls together, you know, it's one big effort. | 11:25 |
| Music | 11:31 |
| LUCI : We want to remain as Shishmaref, we don't want to disperse our community members to other larger communities. | 11:37 |
Luci | We want to remain together as a whole in a village, a new village, hopefully. | 11:45 |
| Music | 11:52 |
Dogs | CLARKE: Shishmaref is at a crossroads. But wherever its people end up, they remain determined their Inuit culture will not fade away. | 11:59 |
| Music | 12:10 |
| Reporter: Sarah Clarke Camera: Dan Sweetapple Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen Research: Bronwen Reed | 12:22 |