Sea Ice Knowledge Studies in Shishmaref, AlaskaPart of IPY project 166: Sea Ice Knowledge and Use (SIKU)
by Josh Wisniewski, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, PhD Candidate Department of Anthropology
What do Iñupiaq hunters in the Northwest Alaska community of Shishmaref know about sea ice? How do they express knowledge in the context of hunting? And how can we come to know as directly as possible something of what people know about the environment and how they know it in relation to converging and diverging ontological and epistemological structures that shape local knowledge claims? To explore these questions I am conducting an ethnography of bearded seal hunting knowledge in Shishmaref as my dissertational project at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and also as a part of my contribution to the IPY SIKU initiative. Through the capacity of an active participant in a familial hunting crew and in array of events surrounding bearded seal hunting as a complex of social and perceptual activities as well as participating in a range of other subsistence hunting contexts I am exploring Inupiaq knowledge, as a way of knowing and being, as revealed through a phenomenology of my own hunting apprenticeship. In this capacity I have been able to come to know through direct experience and active engagement in sea ice hunting activities something of what Iñupiaq hunters in Shishmaref know about ice.
Travel and hunting on sea ice involves a complex array of technical, ecological and relational understandings expressed through people’s actions on the ice and represent a seamless integration and embodiment of what to an outsider might appear as separate dimensions of knowledge but which necessarily converge in the context of hunting. Therefore one must come to know that a temperamental outboard motor or ski-doo must be primed using a camp stove, just as one must also know what kind of ice bearded seal (ugzruk, in Bering Strait Inupiaq dialect) favor, or where a uyuktuaq or “whistler” (a bearded seal that whistles underwater) will surface after diving. One must know when to shield one’s face while stalking on ice, and when to grunt like a walrus in order for an ugzruk to look at you in order to shoot it in the neck. While these examples speak to some generalized dimensions of hunting that all hunters know during an actual hunt one must continuously act within the constantly changing circumstances of the moment. What may be generally true is not important, what one is experiencing at a given moment and their ability to respond to those circumstances is fundamental. The following ethnographic example from my own on-going process of coming to know about sea ice in Bering Strait further articulates the crucial ontological aspect of knowing as doing while hunting on the sea ice.
June 8, 2007 Clifford, Howard and I are traveling by Ski-doo back from the ice edge we are about 20 miles from Shishmaref. We had been looking for open water. We found one small kuuk (river, or open water flowing between large ice pans. We hunted for several hours at this spot but seeing no animals or indications of animals, and with heavy black clouds on the horizon we decided to head home. This is relatively late in the hunting season to be hunting with Ski-doo’s. Last year we were hunting with boats by this time, and the ice is getting more rotten every day. Harvey, an elder told me that only one other time in his life did he see ice this bad (thin, jumbled and rotten) that year only one person caught an ugzruk. That year families from Shishmaref had with families living at Cape Espenberg in order to acquire seal oil.
We were traveling on jumbled young ice, Clifford in the lead followed by me, and Howard. While the heavier pack ice is rapidly retreating up through Bering Strait, a persistent Northwest wind has been piling young ice up against the northwestern coast of the Seward Peninsula. Thus ice conditions and therefore travel conditions have been rapidly deteriorating, and animals are moving out of the area, while hunters have been effectively stuck in the village in respect to hunting. We had traveled about 20 miles south of Shishmaref. To avoid the young rotten flat ice (siguliaq) as much as possible while we traveled, we followed a rough trail by staying to the degree possible as close as possible to pressure ridges (iun?it) where the ice is thicker. Therefore we weave a constantly zigzagging trail as we worked our way back to the more solidly anchored shore ice. After two hours of rough trail we quickly crossed some siguliaq and came to stop to scout for more trail. “Don’t always do that” Clifford tells me in his characteristic pedagogical style of public scolding. “Don’t play follow me so close, you always want to follow to close, it’s dangerous if I need to stop and tell you guys to go a different way, you gotta learn this you gotta know, I told you before.”
This was probably one of the longest exchanges we had had throughout a long day of rough traveling, and despite my feelings of humiliation at my chastisement in front of Howard, Clifford’s point, that I have to come to know on my own, and with that I must not simply be able to pronounce and identify some ice characteristics, but for those terms to have any meaning, knowing and being must be synthesized in my capacity to act in the moment to know is to respond, (to not follow so close). Just as Clifford’s knowledge of ice conditions and of hunting developed through his years of experience equally it is continually emphasized to me by Clifford and the other Inupiaq hunters with whom I continue hunt and travel and learn with and from that ultimately knowing about animals, and environmental conditions must be situated in an individuals personal experience. My hunting partners tell me I can’t just follow them if I really want to know, I have to come to know though experience. In that capacity one never really knows in terms of possessing a finite amount of knowledge which is then applied, rather to know about sea ice is to continually come to know through personal experience. Sea ice knowledge and use are thus inseparable dimensions of a Iñupiaq hunting way of coming to know in which pedagogy, learning and knowing are intertwined in a continuous and creative unfolding process.
This process of continuously coming to know is realized out on the ice or on the land as one must continuously respond to specific place and situations with their own particular characterizations, which must be engaged and responded to directly. Hunting stories serve as an important mechanism whereby hunters exchange information. In exchanging hunting stories it is therefore what different hunters have personally experienced and how they responded to phenomena that are viewed as significant. A hunting story as “data” separate of the personal experience of the one telling it is not what is important; rather it is the personal experiential aspect of the story that renders it “locally objective”. Further as relates to understanding hunting strategies in response to dramatic changes in sea ice driven by climactic change there are other important regional considerations. Some characteristics of the sea ice environment in Bering Strait are viewed as annually consistent and reliable, for example in hunting ugzruk they favor clean white ice, and generally prefer somewhat low ice, while in contrast Walrus favor ice of a noticeably different character. These types of experiences are typically consistent. Equally there is often such variability on an annual basis, where ice begins to open up and when is dynamic and changes year to year. In the brief ethnographic account I provided I spoke of an elder’s recollection of a year he experienced when ice conditions were equally marginal. This same individual also spoke to me of a spring in his youth when the ice was so packed that he and other hunters spent two days traveling to the ice edge in search of open water. Responding to variability is continuous aspect of Bering Strait Hunting practices In thinking about sea ice knowledge and use in this period of dramatic climactic change it is important to note that in the context of preparing for and thinking about a seasonal hunt people are not replying just to climatic changes, but continually responding to annual variability in ice, in the presence of animals, and other local non-ecologically driven factors that directly and continuously influence hunting efforts and success rates. Though hunters are not dismissive of climate change, many hunters continually express to me that the environment they experience is constantly changing, and hunting is always about changing the way things are done, “this is hunting”.
My doctoral fieldwork in Shishmaref will continue though fall 2007 and winter 2008, culminating in a third season of ugzruk hunting in the spring 2008. It is out of this ongoing process of coming to know through my own first hand ugzruk hunting experiences, through local hunting pedagogical processes that I continue to explore sea ice knowledge and use by Arctic residents.
Photos:
Main figure: Cruising in boat in search for bearded seals and walruses among spring ice off Shishmaref, Alaska. Photo by Josh Wisniewski, Spring 2007
In story: Hunters butcher young bearded seals on rotten spring ice. Photo by Josh Wisniewski, Spring 2007