Alaska's Inuit link steady food supply to environment health
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska Inuit hunter John Goodwin for decades has hunted oogruk, the bearded seal, a marine mammal prized for its meat, oil and hide.
The largest of Alaska's ice seals uses sea ice to rest and birth pups, and after the long winter, when ice breaks into floes, there's a window of opportunity for Goodwin to leave his home in Kotzebue and motor his boat between ice panels, shoot seals and butcher them before they migrate north through the Bering Strait.
More than 90 percent of the food purchased with cash in Alaska comes in from elsewhere and a reliable food supply in more urban communities like Anchorage means affordable prices and uninterrupted service on groceries shipped north by barge or jet.
Over millennia, the capturing of caribou or seals, the gathering of salmonberries, how they were processed, stored and shared was incorporated into art, storytelling, dance, drumming, education and language.
The report, assembled through visits to 15 Inuit villages and with 146 listed authors, urges Arctic policy decisions through the lens of food.
The report notes the fragmented nature of land, ocean and wildlife management.
Federal officials oversee harvesting of marine mammals and industrial ocean fisheries whose by-catch affect returns to Inuit on shore.