While in the Arctic I…

Looked into the eyes of an animal who’s kind may go extinct in the next hundred years.

Learned with and from people my age from all over world how global of an issue environmental destruction is.

Saw from a birds eye view a landscape that is thawing faster than those dependent on it can adapt.

Listened to elders remember a way of life that is maintained today by a ‘dieing breed’.

But was also equipped with the knowledge and leadership skills to combat this climate crisis.

After spending a week in a bubble of ‘save the polar bears’ energy and influence, I have finally come to a realization: If everyone took shorter showers, it might help. But it is not a solution. If everyone recycled their soda cans, it might help. But it is not a solution. We can all walk rather than drive two days a week, encourage our schools to buy biocompostable utensils, and plant a tree in our back yard, and it really might help. But these little changes are not solutions. They help, but they are not solutions. They are band-aids; and what our planet needs is surgery.

If there is one thing I have taken away from this experience, it is that ‘climate change’ is not a political, economic, or even an environmental fight. It is a spiritual fight. If any real change is going to be made, it will be made because people have the desire to preserve their planet, their one and only home. It will be made because people have the desire to stop compromising humanities for convenience. It will be made, because the population experienced a spiritual development.

It was brought up last night that changing a person’s cultural way of thinking was the hardest thing to do, that it can’t happen ‘tomorrow’. True, it is not easy. But it is not impossible. In only a week, students in this group, including myself, have ‘had their eyes opened’. In only a week, their direction of thinking on certain issues has been shifted. Let me reiterate, it only took a WEEK.

Some will. Some won’t. So what. Who’s next.

These types of capitalistic phrases are not acceptable. If there is ever going to be a ‘change’, if we are ever going to reverse this process of environmental disaster to environmental disaster, we must not approach the issue of climate change in a sales-person fashion. My ‘cultural mind set’ wasn’t changed from watching a ‘sales pitch’ on climate change (which we saw many of this week), but from listening to an elder tell a story about her life: the way she grew up, and her perceptions of the earth. An honest story from the heart.


As coal combustion and burning of fossil fuels becomes less and less popular, people are looking for ‘instant, solve all’ solutions. They don’t exist. As someone who has spent years studying the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, and hazards of radioactive waste, I have an overwhelming FEAR that people are going to turn to energy powered be nuclear reactors as the next solve all solutions. Yes, maybe it will help to slightly decrease CO2 emissions, but if we accept alternatives such as nuclear reactors as concrete ‘solve alls’, continue the process of not exploring the ‘what ifs’ and wondering ‘for how long’, my grandchildren's ‘environmental disaster’ will be tons of indisposable radioactive waste.


Now I ask myself: Are we a forward action in prevention of a climate crisis, or are we an inevitable reaction to a climate crisis? Are we both? or Does it even make a difference?

At the ‘near conclusion’ of this arctic adventure, all seventeen of us prepared ‘forward action plans’; what were we going to do to support polar bear conservation? As I mentioned in my biography, I have projects that I’m currently working on, such as organizing the Marshall Island’s first marathon, helping my school achieve an ‘Energy Star Rating’. But beyond these actions, I want to inspire spiritual change in audiences when I give presentations and tell my stories. Excluding that crucial aspect, or pretending that it is not important and that we simply need to encourage people to make ‘small lifestyle changes, no matter the motivation’, is like saying you are a secular state and putting phrase like ‘In God We Trust’ on your currency. So there we go, my forward action plan.

10/6/08

This journal entry was journal entry was written on the sixth, about the events of the 5th.

Six months ago a 62 year old Marshallese woman took a shell necklace off her neck and put it around mine; at that moment, I realized that my life had purpose. In that gesture, I promised to be her voice, even when she is no longer here to speak for her people and for herself. Last night, in a Buggy on the Arctic tundra, was the only other time I have experienced such a feeling of purpose.

Yesterday I relearned the meaning of ‘way of life’. I used to think it meant the methods you go through in the course of a day, and tools you used to do them, but I now realize a ‘way of life’ is truly determined by the beliefs behind those actions. At breakfast, I became involved in the discussion of whether indigenous people of northern Canada could really ‘preserve their way of life’ when they insisted on using ATVs to do so. To me, if you could abandon harpoons for rifles in order to hunt, then you deserved to lose hunting grounds due to receding ice pack. I thought, your way of life had already been destroyed when you decided leave behind loyal dogs whose ancestors had pulled yours across the ice, in exchange for the convenience of a snowmobile.

Later that day, three guests came to speak about their ‘way of life’. Parker, Betty, and Jim were expert trappers, and brought with them a bag of furs. They all had interesting things to say; Parker was not indigenous, but possessed an understanding and connection to the land that would make you believe he was; Jim was Parker’s ‘teacher of trapping’ and told stories that were both funny and moving; but it was Betty who really seemed to command attention. Perhaps it was because she reminded me so much of my friend Lijon, the Marshallese woman, who I miss dearly.

Every time a fur was passed to her, be it martin, beaver, wolverine, or wolf, she laid it out over her legs and stroked the back, put her hands on the underside and touched the skin, and really seemed to enjoy herself. She loved the arctic animals, and truly appreciated their beauty. “I love animals. I feed them; I speak to them. He thinks I’m crazy,” she gestured to Jim, who nodded and laughed, then continued, “I need them.”

For her, and for most indigenous people of the arctic, ‘hunting’ or ‘trapping’ is more than survival, and it is spiritual. And I don’t use that word lightly. It really is spiritual; it is purposeful, it is responsible, and it inspires goodness. The tools she uses to trap don’t change her respect for the animals, or connection to her arctic. She uses ‘modern technologies’ with same sense of responsibility as she would use traditionally hand-made snares. “The earth is our mother and when you grow up, you take care of your mother.”

After the presentation, I had one brief moment with her alone, outside between the lodge’s cars. She asked me where I was from, if I liked the landscape of the tundra. Then she turned her head and looked out at the endless horizon. Belonging. It is a moment I will savor forever.

But the day didn’t end when those speakers left. Another speaker promptly arrived; he was one of the original drivers for ‘Tundra Buggy Adventures’. While I didn’t feel such a personal connection with him, as I had with Betty, the stories he had to tell were equally thought provoking. He told a ‘nightmare story’ from his days as an ice-road trucker. While in capitalistic terms he is no superman, he has been confronted with situations that you wouldn’t believe a human could physically surmount. Listening to him made me realize we really are defined me the obstacles we overcome and that human potential is nearly unlimited.

After all the guest speakers had come and gone, three other students and myself did a presentation for the rest of the group on the topics “The opening of shipping lanes and access to oil reserves created by global warming” and “The impact of climate change on the lives of the indigenous people of the arctic”. In a ‘mock debate’ format, each of us four students assumed a different persona: CEO of an oil corporation, Mayor of an Eskimo village, employee of the grain storage facility in Churchill Manitoba, and marine biologist that assisted in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. I played the Alaskan Inupiaq from Barrow.

Dinner followed. It was a fun, relaxing dinner (we dimmed the lights and everything) with chocolate brownies and ice cream for desert. Just when we were all full and content, we were invited into the lounge car to watch Robert Buchanan give a presentation. I’m now fully convinced now that you could hand anything in the world to Robert Buchanan, and he could sell it. The photos, the facts, the rise and fall of his voice simply defined ‘persuasion’. Photos of drowned polar bear carcasses washed onto the beach could evoke empathy from any audience. This presentation left us with a mission: overcome the obstacle of climate change. I fell asleep more than simply ‘aware’ of the affects of climate change, but truly inspired to do something about it.

“The activist is not the one who says the river is dirty, the activist is the one who cleans the river up.”— H. Ross Perot

“OH what a beautiful morning! OH what a beautiful day!”

And the ever-enthusiastic (but slightly tone-deaf) Robert Buchanan was right. A morning on the tundra is like nowhere else. Having grown up in a valley, squeezed between huge mountains and spruce trees, I’m a little uneasy on such flat ground; I’m not used to seeing a horizon in any direction I look.

Nor am I used to taking a shower and watching the grey water fall through the drain and onto the tundra. Which brings me to the discussion of the Tundra Buggy Lodge’s facilities. Yesterday was such a busy day, I didn’t get a chance to describe our incredible lodge. It is the polar (pun intended) opposite of what I expected. First of all, I didn’t expect it to have wheels. The Tundra Buggy Lodge is similar to a train in the sense that it is a series of cars (i.e. dorm cars, diner car) parked end to end. Everything (including water) must be driven in. And everything (expect the grey water) must then be driven out.

After breakfast and some discussions, we took our first ‘buggy adventure’ in search of polar bears. It was a long, long drive. The sky was grey, and the tundra looked empty, save for the flocks of Snow Buntings (little white birds). We didn’t see any bears the day before, so my hopes weren’t very high for seeing them today. Churchill is the polar bear capital of the world, so where the heck are they?!

Well, we did eventually found not one, but three bears! A mom and two beautiful cubs. The sun came out and we were able to get quite close in the Buggy to watch the mother and cubs nap. For me it seemed unreal. Over 6 feet from the ground, behind windows, I felt like I was watching a movie through my camera lens. I got a few nice photos, but I’m still waiting for that face to face contact with a bear that Robert insists will happen.

We came home for lunch and then began working on creating group presentations of different chapters of the “Artic Climate Impact Assessment” book. Following that, we had a workshop on how to give a good presentation. And then,chores. My group was on ‘cleaning duty’, which means cleaning the dorm cars and Buggy that we went out on this morning. While cleaning the Buggy we realized that we were faced with the dilemma of taking out the ‘Honey Bucket’. We played rock paper scissors and I lost, so was prepared to take care of it when our group leader (who is pregnant) stepped in and said it was a joke and she would do it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to let pregnant woman get near any ‘Honey Buckets’ so I took care of it. Apparently, I’m the first arctic ambassador to do so. Yay, me!

Now, the northern lights are out so I’m going to go take a look!

Driving out across the tundra today, watching the massive tires of our tractor/school-bus hybrid rip into the flesh of the ground, leaving deep tracks where small tundra brush and flowers once grew, I had to ask myself, 'what is a Leadership Camp doing out here?'

Today, our first day ‘in action’ and arrival in Churchill, definitely exceeds five hundred words, but hopefully I can give it justice in this brief blog entry, and begin coming to a conclusion for the question posed above.

We arrived in Churchill sometime before noon (I wasn’t keeping track of time at all today), and this is where things really started to get crazy. In short (and by short I mean ‘as briefly as possible) we (inhale…), visited a Parks Canada information center, ate lunch at the local restaurant (Gypsys), swarmed over the town in our mobbish appearance (all of us wearing identical jackets and staying close together to avoid being attacked by stray polar bears), touched the Artic ocean, saw the D-20 detention center (otherwise known as the 'Polar Bear Jail'), went inside the now abandoned and destroyed laboratory of Nils Orowitz, drove past a Canadian Husky breeding ground (attractive to both people and bears), saw the location of the old open pit dump that was infamous for the meals it provided hungry polar bears, arrived at the Tundra Buggy Launching area, loaded onto our first Tundra Buggy, and headed for our new ‘home’. Phew, okay, take another breath.

Now, as I said I was keeping this brief, I can only focus on one aspect of the day. For me, the most impressive experience thus far, was walking through the building where a scientist chose to doom a few select polar bears to their death. I had read a little bit about the expirements of Dr. Orowtiz before coming to Churchill, but I was never expecting to have the chance to walk into the building which they had been conducted. The experiments were conducted in the 60’s with modern technology, and when very little information on polar bears existed. How long could they hold their breath? What sort of weather conditions could they withstand? Was oil toxic to them? Orowtiz wanted to know. So, he exposed polar bears to extreme conditions and recorded the results. Three polar bears died from ingesting oil.

Today, broken glass and saw dust litter the floor. A rusted polar bear trap lays in the middle of an empty room. How could he possibly have gotten a hold of so many bears, let alone killed them? According to Mr. Buchanan, the data collected during these experiments is now used in court against oil companies as evidence of oil impact on bears. So, the question was asked: Can the lives of a few individuals be sacrificed to potentially save a population? And: Was Orowitz evil or was he conducting beneficial science?

I myself cannot come to any clear or definite answers for these questions. But gathering on the bus, listening to everyone share their insights and reactions, discussing and provoking thoughts, but not arguing, I began to understand the power of Polar Bears International. So back to the initial question. What are we doing here? Well, I think those discussions were the first and probably most important step to understanding.