Every winter we hope the ice will form.
We want it to be cold here.
We want the ice to form.
We want to have snow. Some years we don't have snow.
Sometimes it remains brown, and we have rain every single month of the year,
which is really, really strange and really, really sad.
When I was a little kid,
we always had snow.
It worries me for the plants that are out on the tundra, all the animals that rely on the snow,
and it makes it hard for us.
Ice fishing or hunting or just going out and enjoying ourselves,
there's no way to really do that if there isn't any snow.
My name is Laureli Ivanoff, and we are in my home in Unalakleet.
Here in Unalakleet, we have kept our food traditions.
We've lost our language. I can't speak much Inupiaq at all.
We've lost ceremony because the missionaries banned song and dance,
so what we have is our food traditions.
Ugruk is the bearded seal, I think the biggest seal out in our waters.
We harvest everything from it,
from the intestines, we call it kaak, to the liver, the kidneys the blubber.
The meat, we harvest all of it, and
it's such a fun and beautiful time because it starts the hunting season.
To be out there with family and to continue these traditions with them,
teaching these traditions to my son,
and doing it, all of it with my dad, like it's just such a rich time of family and nature.
There's nothing like it.
We're constantly like looking and looking at all the ice pans, and we have our binoculars,
and we're looking to see if there's any sleeping ugruk,
If there isn't any ocean ice or if the ice is too thin, the ugruk won't be here.
The ugruk needs thick ice.
That's its home.
Knowing the trends and seeing what's happening on the Earth, I just sense that
there's big changes coming,
and the science shows that, that there are big changes coming,
and knowing that already every year, we're wondering, is the ocean ice going to form?
How much longer are we going to have it?
It's all hung up, all the meat's up here.
I am raising a three-year-old kid, a son.
We want him to see this lifestyle and grow up appreciating this lifestyle.
To think maybe Henning won't
be able to harvest Ugruk when he's an older person, he won't be teaching this to his kids,
something that we enjoy so much and something that is important to us,
it sustains our family and gives us nourishment and connects us on these, in these beautiful ways,
like to think that he's not going to experience that with his own kids...
We are sitting at the office of the editor of the Nome Nugget Newspaper, Alaska's oldest newspaper,
and I am Diana Haecker, the editor and co-publisher of the newspaper.
My audience is the people here and I don't have to tell them
that we have climate change going on.
The Arctic, I think, was just an early front line as we saw more changes happening faster and more drastic.
Never before in human memory has Little Diomede seen open
water and surf battering its shores in February until last week,
and all of this should be a blanket of ice.
I don't go out to hunt walrus or seals, but for those who do, their world came crashing down.
In our history, we've had to adapt to all the different things that the Earth brings,
but I would say I think the changes to our culture will be very dramatic
and will be greater than we have seen in past generations.
As much as i'd like to, I can't change what's happening.
Climate change is this thing that's coming, and the world doesn't seem ready
or wanting to make any changes to keep it from happening.
To know that those in power can make changes to keep
real lives from being affected,
I don't get it.
I don't get how those in power can just ignore what's taking place.