"People just feel lost in the system." + + + DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWS + + +
DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED
A school bus rolls across an evacuation bridge in the Native Village of Kivalina, Alaska, the climate-ravaged barrier reef island that
will eventually succumb to rising sea levels. Jenni Monet
MAGIC BUS | 11.13.22
The day after Election Day, a bright yellow school bus with red and gold flashing lights rolled across a bridge afoot an airstrip in the Iñupiat village of Kivalina, Alaska. Wind waves spilled across the icy beach a few feet from where kids in snowsuits with backpacks began lining up – many for the first school bus ride of their lives. Giddy parents and grandparents stood back, Facebooking the historic event. Some children even hugged one
another at the center of so much attention. “I want a seat in the back,” one nearly squealed. The bus, a novel sight at the edge of an Arctic island slipping into the sea, was a milestone moment. For all the decades Kivalina leaders had pursued relocation, here was one step among many that would take at least a decade more to materialize – what tribal leaders, engineers and bureaucrats had been imagining: a new townsite eight miles into untouched tundra where the
bus was now headed to a brand new school.
In the year or so before it opened, the school construction at Kisimġiugtuq Hill gave villagers something to talk
about. They drank coffee at kitchen tables near windows overlooking the lagoon as bulldozers and utility trucks crawled back and forth. The crew of laborers were mostly from some other place and had set up a makeshift community they called Ruby Camp. Cargo containers called conexes had been used to create a long dormitory of sorts with sleeping pods, bathrooms, a few offices, and a cafeteria. On the weekends, and some evenings, curious villagers would drive their ATVS
up the mostly straight stretch of gravel road to inspect the school. And as they kept tabs, they started to complain.
Kisimġiugtuq Hill School under construction in August. Storm Swan / Facebook
“It’s too far,” someone said.
“There’s bears,” said another.
“Reeeaaal windy,” complained one Elder who also voiced concerns about wolves.
“I hear the gym is going to be smaller than the one we have now,” scoffed a mother. “Only one side for the bleachers. Why not both sides, like Noatak’s gym?” she asked, referencing a K-12 school in a village about thirty miles
away.
But now that the day was here – the first classes to be held at Kisimġiugtuq Hill School – somehow it had erased these gripes. All of a sudden,
kids who had to be dragged out of bed to make it to school now couldn’t wait to board their new magic bus.
“My son even went to bed early,” said
Rhonda Norton, a mother of seven with two enrolled students. It was a whole, new something – a place that made Kivalina’s children perhaps feel worthy. And they seized the moment, riding the bus back to the snowy tarmac at the north end of the village, beaming; their parents who once lamented the replacement school, now threw their support mostly behind it.
The excitement would at least hold for a few days. But even the principle, Jeremy Millard, knew that a day would come when school would just be school again. Though, he was somewhat amazed that absenteeism was at an all-time low. This helped ease the fact that he
was sleeping in a classroom day after day ever since the water pipes froze and busted in his assigned trailer down in the village.
Eleanor Swan records her daughter exiting the school bus at the end of a historic day at Kisimġiugtuq Hill School via Facebook Live. Jenni Monet
The $50 million school spotlights how Kivalina has managed to get this far. For longer than a century, villagers knew their summer fishing island was a lousy place to build. Floods formed from fall storms and finding a good source of drinking water was difficult. But missionary-forced settlement and
cyclical colonization set in motion a chain of events that were altogether un-Iñupiaq. First, there was overcrowding, then river pollution from the nearby zinc mine, and now a shrinking shoreline. Decade after decade, agency support was sought for relocation, but the answer was some variation of the same: no.
By 2011, tribal leaders felt they had run out of options. No federal or state agency had stepped up to help move Kivalina’s 500 or so residents. And suing the world’s energy giants for the accelerated erosion of their homeland — a novel idea — failed to reach the Supreme Court. But in their pursuit of relief, Kivalina had gained international notoriety as one of the most imperiled places on the planet. Such attention may have influenced an Alaska District judge who, that year,
ordered state lawmakers to build a new school for Kivalina, long-"discriminated" over its relocation conundrum: Why invest in infrastructure on an island that’s disappearing? But it would take years before a new site was
selected and funding was secured. The effort got a boost when President Barack Obama saw the frontline climate community with his own eyes. In August 2015, he flew Air Force One over Kivalina’s eight miles of fragile coastline above the Arctic Circle. By the following year, his administration had earmarked roughly $40 million for an evacuation road — what today leads to Kivalina’s new replacement school. The escape route is the literal and figurative bridge that finally puts what seemed impossible — relocation — within reach. But hundreds of other coastal communities remain in harm’s way.
Cari Knox and classmates at the end of the first day of classes at Kisimġiugtuq Hill School on Wednesday, November 9, 2022. Jenni Monet
ADDITIONAL READING
In May, the Government Accounting Office repeated its call urging Congress and federal agencies to improve funding application programs for frontline climate communities across Indian Country.
Please pardon
my absence last weekend and thank you to those of you who sent concerning emails asking after my safety. You were not far-fetched to do so. For five days, I was weathered-in on the Kotzebue Sound from a wonderful wind storm that knocked out my Internet long enough to set me back. It was perhaps for the best - I was in throes of writing about that recent flap over the late Sacheen Littlefeather and her alleged ethnic fraud. The entire "investigation" into her Indigenous claims leaves you feeling like you need a shower.
At some point I'll write about it, but after my Alaska focus which is transcending into a body of work. What I've shared with you here is deserving of so much more treatment. Can't wait to give more when it's time.
As the gales died down across the Kotzebue Sound, my
Internet resumed just in time for me to hop on a Zoom with members of the Alaska Tribal Resilience Learning Network. I came across the TRLN last month upon learning about a conference helping tribes navigate the dizzying maze of bureaucracy when faced with
coastal and riverside erosion.
The project is offered through the University of Alaska - Fairbank's Climate Adaptation Science Center, and formed through a cooperative agreement with the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society. I'm new to the community and was grateful to see that they have a newsletter to make it easier to follow along. You can too.
“As a displaced Alaska Native, love reading your articles.”
Christine, The
Internet
Thank you, Christine. I'm so glad my focus on Alaska is filling a void. A quick update from my last
dispatch out of Golovin, Alaska: The Elder featured in my piece who was rescued from ex-Typhoon Merbok died from complications of living in his flood-ravaged home. The cost of climate change is real 💔
Indigenously is like a slow-eroding village: resilient and unsure of where its funding will come from. Please give.
