Shunning virus and Big Oil, Alaska tribe revives traditions

June 2, 2020

By DAYSHA EATON, Religion News Service 6/2/2020

ARCTIC VILLAGE, Alaska (RNS) — Arriving home on one of the last regular flights before pandemic restrictions went into effect in mid-February, Sarah James got to her house to find two caribous worth of meat in her freezer.

Since flights have become intermittent to this indigenous village 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, said James, a leader of the Gwich’in Athabascan people, the store periodically runs out of basics like meat and sugar. Subsistence hunting, fishing and gathering have been more critical than ever.

To ensure that Arctic Village’s population of fewer than 200 have enough to eat, the village council has designated several members to hunt caribou, the Gwich’in’s traditional staple. Someone had also taken time to make sure that James’ freezer was well stocked.

If the pandemic has deepened the sense of isolation for the 8,000 or so Gwich’in, sprinkled across northeastern Alaska into Canada, it has also emphasized the importance of the tribe’s traditions and its profound spiritual connection to the homelands that sustain the caribou and other wildlife on which they depend.

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