of Arctic Village are premature at best. While the Nets’aii Gwich’in people of today differ greatly from their ancestors, likely to spend more hours each day watching television or posting on Facebook than hunting caribou or moose, one thing remains consistent: the Nets’aii Gwich’in remain a proud community, able and willing to adjust to change over time and to overcome adversity.
Every fall, without exception, the call “Vadzaih!” (Caribou!) can be heard across Arctic Village; each year, men, women, and children continue to head up mountain on their four-wheelers to camp, hunt, eat, and sleep. Some then head back and forth (a minimum of ten miles round-trip)—sometimes more than once in a day—to get supplies and to visit those villagers down below who no longer go up mountain to hunt but who support and sustain their friends and relatives, as well as anticipate their success. It is the twenty-first century in North America, and still the hunt goes on. Animals are harvested across the Yukon Flats, and the village freezers are slowly but surely filled. The Caribou People of the Chandalar have lived in this region for some ten thousand years and continue to do so today. We have much to learn from their example.
Note
1. Alaska Natives are divided into tribes not only based on heritage (e.g., Athabascans) but also by community. In short, throughout, I will refer to the Arctic Village “tribe” and the Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government (NVVTG), which includes the Village of Venetie and Arctic Village.
SECTION I
At the turn of the new millennium, many felt it was time to stop and take stock of where humanity had been and, more importantly, where it was heading. From theoreticians like David Harvey and Francis Fukuyama to New York Times writer Thomas Friedman, from CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and every source in between—men and women of every political persuasion expressed the belief that the turn of the century and the millennium seemed to coincide with a major social, economic, and political paradigm shift. Such a shift signaled the end of something that could never be recovered and the beginning of something perhaps great, perhaps wonderful, but all the more likely frightening, sinister, and worthy of concern. Thus, in the early twenty-first century, we are repeatedly bombarded with cataclysmic images of melting icecaps, exploding buildings, and seemingly unprecedented levels of conflict, violence, and hatred that threaten every species on the planet, including us, and ultimately the planet itself.
Within this context of major global change, fear, and uncertainly is where the following case study must be situated. In an ever-globalizing world where overpopulation, scarcity, and social and economic injustice are common watchwords, the study of a small indigenous population living at the edge of the subarctic, in what was once total obscurity, can now take center-stage. No community large or small is immune today, if ever, from the powers that swirl around us. Indeed, that is what I hope to show in the following pages. While many politicians, academics and policymakers seem to be preoccupied with global change as if it is some new and distant process that only arrived on North America’s shores one sunny September 11th morning, there is nothing new here for the indigenous peoples of this continent. Imposed social and economic change is a given—ongoing, familiar, and to be expected. Moreover, as will be demonstrated in the following narrative, imposed change can be resisted, adapted to, accommodated, and, if need be, rebuffed altogether.
In this context then, it is only fair to begin here by asking some basic questions: who are (were) the Nets’aii Gwich’in of Arctic Village? Where did they come from? And, above all, why, in an age of globalization—when major social, economic, and political shifts seem to be overtaking the planet at astronomical speed—should an outsider even really care about such a small community of Alaska Natives living hundreds of miles from what many would even consider civilization? The chapters in this section will address these questions and more. These very forces demand that communities such as that under study now draw our attention, for they are to a great degree the canaries in the coal mine. What is happening in—and to—communities like Arctic Village, Alaska, is but a harbinger of things to come in neighborhoods, villages, towns, and communities large and small across the globe today.
This, in fact, is what this book will address: change. Whether that change is for good, bad, or otherwise is up for debate. But if nothing else is certain about the Nets’aii Gwich’in and Arctic Village, they, like everyone in the world today, are changing but in directions largely unpredictable and at such an accelerated rate that the dizzied outcome is at best an exciting new adventure and at worst a terrifying, out-of-control, brakeless ride over unknown, treacherous, and potential deadly terrain.
But is change new per se? The Nets’aii Gwich’in would of course tell us otherwise. Indeed, the Nets’aii Gwich’in’s story that follows should teach us that the perspective expressed of present events is largely Eurocentric. If globalization in the new millennium is to be viewed as a set of processes that, when combined, allow for increased socioeconomic integration as a result of improved communications and transportations systems that overcome the “friction of space” (Harvey 1996: 422), then one must reassess the whole conceptual framework as it applies to the Nets’aii Gwich’in. Truly, there is nothing new here under the midnight sun, as this popular story, told orally for generations, illustrates:
Many years ago the Kutchin [Gwich’in] Indians fought with their neighbors. The Kutchin were afraid of other people. When the people were fighting they hurt each other. Many people were killed. One Indian began to think about how it would be if there were no war. His name was Dacheltee.
“People can be happy if they don’t fight,” Dacheltee thought. “They will not be afraid anymore.”
Dacheltee thought and thought. At last he decided to talk to the other Indian chiefs. Sometimes Dacheltee went down the rivers in a boat made of caribou skin. In the winter he went in his sled pulled by dogs. He went across the mountains and talked to the Eskimos. He went a long way and talked to many people.
“I think we would be happy if we did not fight,” he told them.
The chiefs talked with Dacheltee about war. They talked about how people would live if there were no war. They would not be afraid if there were no war.
After Dacheltee talked with the chiefs, they decided there would be no more war. After that the Kutchin Indians did not fight with their neighbors. They traded with their neighbors for the things they needed. Dacheltee and the people were happy now.
Dacheltee helped the people in other ways too. He helped the people build a caribou fence. A caribou fence was made of logs. The logs were tied to trees. Snares made of thin pieces of skin were tied to the logs. The fence was made in a circle. There was a hole in one side of the fence. The men stood on the side that did not have a hole. They had bows and arrows ready. The women and the children drove the caribou through the fence. The men killed the caribou when they got caught in the snares. The people got many caribou this way. They had meat to eat and skins for houses and clothes.
One day Dacheltee and his family and friends were coming home from hunting. They were tired. When they got to the top of a hill they decided to rest. All the children sat down around Dacheltee.
They liked to hear him tell stories. Dacheltee liked to tell them about the sun, moon, and stars.
“Somebody must live on those things,” Dacheltee told the children. “Maybe someone made the sun and stars,” one little boy said.
The people were rested. They got their things and started on their way home.
“Maybe some day we will find out who made the world and all the things in it,” Dacheltee told the children.
The years
