Hungry on the edge of the continent

Photos courtesy Ann Strongheart

Food boxes were delivered to Nunam Iqua by the Civil Air Patrol last winter as part of a food drive organized by Rep. Jay Ramras.

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While many Americans stuffed shopping carts during the traditional day-after-Thanksgiving buying binge this year, Yup'ik villagers who live in the distant, northwestern corner of the United States near the Bering Sea, where not even a grocery store exists, are worried about feeding their families as the Arctic winter settles in.

Nunam Iqua is a small, isolated village of about 200 people in western Alaska near the mouth of the Yukon River, where jobs are scarce and people live off the land. Its name -- which means "end of the tundra" -- reveals its remoteness, and it's just one of Alaska's many far flung communities facing economic problems for which there are no easy answers. And this year, as with last, a community activist is appealing to the generosity of strangers to make sure people have what they need to get by.

The plea for help is a familiar refrain.

Last winter, Ann Strongheart mobilized a food donation program for Nunam Iqua after another Yukon River village, Emmonak, made an impassioned plea for food and fuel assistance in January. Summer 2008 had also been a terrible fishing year, and a severe winter cold snap compounded the struggle. Deeply concerned about the situation, Emmonak's Nick Tucker Sr. wrote an open letter detailing how families were suffering, coping with bare cupboards, high fuel costs, and not enough money to go around.

The severity of the plight brought in significant donations, and eventaully gained the attention of the administration of then-Gov. Sarah Palin. A state plane was used to haul in donations from the faith-based group Samaritan's Purse, and state employees were sent to help make sure communities knew how to connect with assistance programs. Job fairs were conducted in the spring, and a rural subcabinet, assembled in late 2008 by Palin to study conditions in the Bush, continued its work. [Note: a previous version of this story indicated the rural subcabinet formed after Emmonak's hunger and heating plight.] To many, Palin's initial response seemed slow, and her choice to overlook Emmonak -- "ground zero" for the plight -- during her travels to Western Alaska to help deliver aid offended Tucker enough that he demanded an apology.

Second grade students at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, sent nine boxes of food, letters, toys and postcards to students in Nunam Iqua last winter.

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This year, the community suffered two major blows. In the summer, there was no profitable work for fishermen looking to earn cash, as the river closed at peak times to protect Canadian-bound king salmon during the upriver migration. Protection efforts also affected residents fishing for their own food, as windows for subsistence harvest were curtailed as well.

Then, in November, a winter flood hit, pushing ice to shore, damaging boats and ruining nets. Each year before the river freezes over, fishermen punch holes through the developing ice to line their nets below in hopes of catching bottom-dwelling whitefish to help fill their freezers for the winter. It's hard, tiring work, and with winter pushing in, the window to bring fish in is closing.

After conducting an informal, house-to-house phone poll, Strongheart says two thirds of the community's 36 homes already need food, and that worries her because it's early in the season.