The village of Kivalina sits on the tip of a six- to eight-mile-long barrier island – a quarter-mile at its widest – some 80 to 120 miles above the Arctic Circle between the Chukchi Sea and the … [Read More]
Kivalina is the only village in Alaska's Northwest Arctic Borough region where people hunt the bowhead whale, a cultural tradition and dietary mainstay that has been severely hampered by the thinning … [Read More]
Subsistence living, feeding themselves from plants and animals taken from the land and sea, forms a large part of the Inupiat people's diet, which is high in protein and fat. Depending on the season, … [Read More]
The Inupiat people have made use of the Kivalina area for more than 1,000 years. Known as the Kivalliñigmiut, they were semi-nomadic, traveling to the coast in the spring to hunt sea mammals and … [Read More]
In the 200 native coastal communities in Alaska, varying degrees of erosion are affecting around 180 of them, according to the federal government's General Accounting Office. As early as the 1950s, … [Read More]
Some years ago, Enoch Adams Jr. preached a sermon about God speaking to his people in a way they could understand. Over time some Inupiat people have come to understand indigenous beliefs and … [Read More]
In 1905, the federal government’s Bureau of Indian Affairs built a school at a former seasonal hunting camp on the island and told the people living nearby they could be imprisoned if they did not … [Read More]
It is through dance that the Inupiat people tell their traditional stories. There was no motion dancing in Kivalina for 50 years. After Christina Swan's daughter started dancing in their home one … [Read More]
Soon after the Red Dog Mine – the world’s largest zinc mine, located 50 miles up the Wulik River – became operational in 1989, dead fish started showing up in the river, the primary freshwater … [Read More]
Forget canned and processed foods, the garden group at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Manhattanville, a tiny, New York City neighborhood bordering west Harlem, hopes to provide between 600 and 1,000 pounds of fresh produce to the 200 households that rely on the church’s food pantry to meet their dietary needs. In envisioning what they call “St. Mary’s Urban Farm,” the garden group didn’t let the fact that the soil underneath the … [Read More...]
Volunteers and members of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem didn't let contaminated soils stop them from turning their parish grounds into an urban farm. While they work with soil remediation experts to rid the soil of heavy metals and other contaminants, they've installed raised wooden beds, filled them 60 cubic yards of "clean," uncontaminated soil and have planted the season's first crop. Carrots, kale, bell peppers, eggplant, … [Read More...]
