Alaska Native people have inhabited this place for more than 10,000 years.Īs I’ve reported in Indigenous communities, people remind me that my sense of history is short and that the natural world moves in cycles. Some Alaskans’ connections go far deeper than mine. I grew up in Alaska, as my parents did before me, and I’ve been writing about the state’s culture for more than 20 years. Alaska news is full of climate elegies now - every one linked to wrenching changes caused by burning fossil fuels. Paul’s recent story has become a familiar one - so familiar, in fact, I couldn’t blame you if you missed it. I was traveling there to find out what the villagers might do next. Over the last few years, 10 billion snow crabs have unexpectedly vanished from the Bering Sea. Paul, about 800 miles west of Anchorage, where the local economy depends almost entirely on the commercial snow crab business.
Some 330 people, most of them Indigenous, live in the village of St. I saw a lone island village - a grid of houses, a small harbor, and a road that followed a black ribbon of coast.
Paul Island cut a golden, angular shape in the shadow-dark Bering Sea.
My small turboprop plane whirred low through thick clouds. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. It was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit news organization. This story was originally published by Grist.
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