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.
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.
While you can't drive to Nunam Iqua, the Internet is making it possible to spread the message to people in other states, in Canada, and across the world that they can arrange have food boxes delivered directly to needy families' doorsteps, according to Strongheart.
By blog and by e-mail, Strongheart's plea is making the rounds. She's inventoried each household to find out how many people live there, their ages and specific food needs, and is asking for people who can help to adopt a family for the entire winter.
Strongheart said she realizes living off of donations isn't a viable long-term survival plan for any community. But for now, more immediate needs have her attention.
"I am far more concerned with making sure that people go to bed with full tummies and warm homes than with any issues or stigma of asking for help," she said.
More than ten months after Tucker's plea for help ignited an outpouring of support, and outrage and praise alike for Palin's response, the state knows more now than it did then about life in rural Alaska.
"I learned from last winter that it would be helpful to have a more coordinated effort, be it food or fuel," said John Moller, Rural Advisor for the governor's office.
Moller took the position as rural advisor just as the Emmonak crisis was unfolding. Since then, state task forces have monitored fuel supplies in the villages and launched "listening tours" on which villagers told officials how life could be improved in rural Alaska.
When he learned of Strongheart's plea, Moller said, he started working the phones, calling the Food Bank of Alaska, education and health departments and others, to find out what they might know about Nunam Iqua's situation. Of 156 people "in the system" for state-based food assistance, he says records show 116 have now received it.
An organized list of what resources are available and outreach to connect people to the right programs were part of last year's effort by the state, as was monitoring communities' fuel supplies as winter approached.
A rural winter preparedness task force with commissioners from the Departments of Community and Regional Affairs, Health and Social Services, Public Safety, Fish and Game, and Education, was assembled to make sure people were ready for winter. It focused heavily on making sure fuel made it to communities, but also reached out to thousands of rural Alaskans to get people signed up for food stamps and heating assistance, according to Moller. The state has also made sure it has open lines of communications with other food providers, like Samaritan's Purse and the Food Bank of Alaska.
Where the winter preparedness task force focused on immediate needs for the coming winter, the Governor's Subcabinet on Rural Affairs is focused on longer term goals to improve life in the Bush.
Moller thinks both approaches are important.
"The state has the welfare and the health of its residents as a responsibility," Moller said, but added that the way relief is delivered will vary by community and by situation. "There is no silver bullet."
Strongheart,the Nunam Iqua mother who last year found her voice as a blogger after working to get food to needy families, would like to see Alaska's villages have futures they can rely on. But it's not an easy task. People need work. Transportation and energy must be affordable. Core services -- roads, airstrips, health clinics, schools -- are costly.
One solution is to move away and seek refuge in a larger community with more resources and jobs to offer. But for Strongheart, it comes at a price she feels no one should be asked to pay.
"Asking us to move off of our lands, and away from our traditions and our culture, is wrong," she said.
Contact Jill Burke at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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