Many of Alaska’s coastal villages are experiencing the existential threat posed by human-caused climate change more acutely than almost anywhere on the planet.
Researchers say parts of Alaska are warming up to four times faster than other places on Earth. And while intense storms, rapidly eroding coastlines and thawing permafrost wreak havoc on their homes, rural residents are grappling with the impacts to infrastructure.
That struggle is captured in a new documentary called “Alaska’s Vanishing Native Villages,” from the PBS program Frontline, out Tuesday for Earth Day.
It follows correspondent Patty Talahongva, as she examines the reality on the ground in some of Alaska’s most far flung and vulnerable villages.
Talahongva says some of the most meaningful conversations she had were with the kids in those villages, including Hooper Bay, one of many hit hard by Typhoon Merbok in the fall of 2022.
Below is the transcript of an interview with Talahongva on Alaska News Nightly. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Patty Talahongva: And they were telling me how stressful it was to experience Merbok. It turned their village into three islands, and they couldn't get across the water to their relatives' homes to check on them, to see how they were doing. You know, they saw houses being lifted up and turned around, and then, of course, damage to other houses. So that's a lot of stress to live under.
But I asked the kids, you know, "Think about, you're in high school today, in 50 years, where do you think you'll be living?" And some of them said, "Probably Anchorage," because they're seeing that, and what is their future?
Casey Grove: Yeah, no doubt. It's fair to say in some of those places, you know, either relocation efforts are already happening, like in Newtok and Mertarvik Some places are still just talking about that. And I thought one thing that was really interesting about the film was just that relocating is not just about moving the physical things of the village up to higher ground. There's like an emotional thing going on there, too, and this history of displacement. I wondered if you could talk about that.
PT: We do touch on that in the film, because as Native people — you know, and I'm Hopi — we understand the forced relocation by government policies. And that's what happened to one tribe that lives in Hooper Bay today, and that's the Native village of Paimiut. So in the film, it's explained how, when the government agents came in and said, "You have to move to Hooper Bay, there's a school there. Your kids have to go to school," what happened was it split up the village.
So we have that history of relocation, and that's hard for all of our tribes, because, again, our connection to the land, and it's very clear in the film, the connection to the land that the people in the different villages have. So they know their land, they know their water, they know the foods they need to harvest, you know, at any given time of the year, whether it's from the sea or whether it's from the land. And when you have to relocate there, that connection has that potential for being severed.
CG: There's a man that you talk to in the film, he was involved in relocation efforts, and he talks about how how difficult it is and how many different agencies have to be involved. And he mentions that there really is no central agency for this kind of complicated relocation effort. Did that surprise you, that there just really isn't any kind of central agency that deals with this?
PT: That was surprising, because you want to go and ask the people in charge, you know, "What's going on?" And there was no one agency. So we asked many agencies what's going on, and the man you're talking about is Max Neale, and he is with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. So he told us, I think we didn't use the exact number, but it's more than 80 different steps to relocation, and how each village that's in danger has to follow, you know, step one, step two, and the first step is identifying land, which another expert, Tom Ravens, explained that most of the interior there is marshy due to the permafrost and all the ponds of water. So it's not easy to find land to move to. And then, of course, then you have to look at who owns the land. So I think people would be surprised at that how marshy that area of Alaska is and why that is compounding the problem with finding locations to move to.
CG: Toward the end of the film, I think it is at the end of the film, we return to Kotzebue, which, of course, is kind of a larger hub community in that region, and we find out that a huge storm has breached the sea wall that cost millions and millions of dollars. And of course, this issue, this is happening in smaller communities that don't have sea walls, that don't have the resources for that sort of thing. And as the film ends on that, I wonder, is there any hope? I mean, is it just that we're left kind of wondering, like, what happens next?
PT: That's a question we asked the people, and the answer was, "We're resilient. We're going to figure it out." And, you know, they've lived there, they know their land, and now they're having to make changes. But that's one thing, you know, it's not "poor them," it's they're talking about how resilient they are. And for me to look at the situation and again, say, "Gosh, this is really stressful," that's my observation. And to talk to the people, they were very adamant that, "We know this land. We know who we are and we will we will survive and we will continue."
