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Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref, Alaska
With three roads and a population of just over 500 people, Shishmaref, Alaska seems like an unlikely center of the climate change debate. But the island, home to Iñupiaq Eskimos who still live off subsistence harvesting, is falling into the sea, and climate change is, at least in part, to blame. While countries sputter and stall over taking environmental action, Shishmaref is out of time.
Publications from the New York Times to Esquire have covered this disappearing village, yet few have taken the time to truly show the community and the two millennia of traditions at risk. In Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground , Elizabeth Marino brings Shishmaref into sharp focus as a place where people in a close-knit, determined community are confronting the realities of our changing planet every day. She shows how physical dangers challenge lives, while the stress and uncertainty challenge culture and identity. Marino also draws on Shishmaref’s experiences to show how disasters and the outcomes of climate change often fall heaviest on those already burdened with other social risks and often to communities who have contributed least to the problem. Stirring and sobering, Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground proves that the consequences of unchecked climate change are anything but theoretical.
Publications from the New York Times to Esquire have covered this disappearing village, yet few have taken the time to truly show the community and the two millennia of traditions at risk. In Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground , Elizabeth Marino brings Shishmaref into sharp focus as a place where people in a close-knit, determined community are confronting the realities of our changing planet every day. She shows how physical dangers challenge lives, while the stress and uncertainty challenge culture and identity. Marino also draws on Shishmaref’s experiences to show how disasters and the outcomes of climate change often fall heaviest on those already burdened with other social risks and often to communities who have contributed least to the problem. Stirring and sobering, Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground proves that the consequences of unchecked climate change are anything but theoretical.
122 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2015
15 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Marino
2 books9 followersElizabeth Marino is the author of "Talking and Not Talking about Climate Change in Northwestern Alaska", a chapter in the anthology: Anthropology and Climate Change. Upcoming publications include an article in the multi-disciplinary journal Arctic and a future (in revisions) article in Human Organization.
She is super psyched about all of these things.
Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions is available on Amazon.com, and more importantly, soon to be available at Camalli Book Company in Bend, OR.
She is super psyched about all of these things.
Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions is available on Amazon.com, and more importantly, soon to be available at Camalli Book Company in Bend, OR.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 18, 2018
Marino isn’t from rural Alaska, nor does she live there. But she’s spent enough of the right kind of time in the community of Shishmaref to care deeply, and respectfully, and bring the best of her academic skills to advocate for climate justice for the people of Shishmaref. With this ethnography, she bridges some of the cultural gaps between the realities of rural Alaska on the edge of climate change, and the churning mill of urban bureaucratic decision-makers in Anchorage, Juneau, and Washington.
Marino begins and ends with a discussion of responsibility, and deftly brings the reader, layer by layer, to an understanding of the complexities surrounding the issues of ‘climate refugees’ in AK and the world. In discussing the significance of migration associated with climate change, she points out some pink elephants. First, she suggests that the thought of one in nine people on the planet becoming an environmental migrant is terrifying to wealthy nations (p. 7). Second, she clarifies that Shishmaref’s location virtually ensures the community’s current infrastructure will all eventually be washed into the sea, and that this is most likely due to a combination of natural causes, human development, and climate change. (Chapter 3). Third, she reminds us that flooding is not a disaster if a people have a socioecological relationship with the environment that is adaptive to that environment (p. 50-51). And fourth, she juxtaposes all of the above points with some history that might be a little uncomfortable for Westerners to acknowledge: Over the past 100 years, this community who traditionally moved to where the food was, has become rooted in a single place through a colonial combination of both incentives and coercion, and thus ‘moving,’ and adapting to changing conditions is no longer as simple as packing up one’s tent and floating up the river in a skin boat.
“Shishmaref is everywhere,” a student of Marino’s realizes: Whether you view the ‘settling’ of indigenous communities into fixed locations as a product of coercion or incentivization or the combination, settlement has been and continues to be a strategy of the U.S. and other nation states worldwide (p. 59). Selection of location depended primarily on the convenience and immediate economic interests of the governing agency, not necessarily the preferences and wisdom of locals as to where they could best sustain themselves.
Forced ‘Relocation’ is a Strategy of Genocide
I’ve heard people suggest, recently, I might add, that living in or near a rural Alaska community is a choice, just as living in New York City is a choice. Not so. Marino presents the voices of the people she is advocating for in explaining the interdependence between people, the land, and the animals that is the basis for life in the Shishmaref region and much of rural Alaska. Their knowledge is specific to this place, these plants and animals, and the region as a whole. For this community to move to a nearby town, or to a place with inadequate access to the ocean, would threaten ties to each other and the land. Thus, their input as to location is a critically important piece of the equation that tends to get overlooked by outsiders. She notes, “A real question is not whether climate change and flooding risks will be a catalyst forcing Alaska Native peoples to urbanize or to relocate out of traditional land but whether climate change and flooding risks will be the next catalyst for forcing Alaska Native people to urbanize and relocate out of traditional land.” (p. 96).
The book itself is a solidly good read, thoughtful, and sympathetic to the people of Shismaref. The layout feels like a thesis, and its academic feel may somewhat limit its audience. However, I hope this book is read by any outsider working with this community, or similar communities, on issues related to climate change. By developing a better understanding of the complex history, they will be more effective in contributing to solutions instead of reinventing the wheel.
Marino begins and ends with a discussion of responsibility, and deftly brings the reader, layer by layer, to an understanding of the complexities surrounding the issues of ‘climate refugees’ in AK and the world. In discussing the significance of migration associated with climate change, she points out some pink elephants. First, she suggests that the thought of one in nine people on the planet becoming an environmental migrant is terrifying to wealthy nations (p. 7). Second, she clarifies that Shishmaref’s location virtually ensures the community’s current infrastructure will all eventually be washed into the sea, and that this is most likely due to a combination of natural causes, human development, and climate change. (Chapter 3). Third, she reminds us that flooding is not a disaster if a people have a socioecological relationship with the environment that is adaptive to that environment (p. 50-51). And fourth, she juxtaposes all of the above points with some history that might be a little uncomfortable for Westerners to acknowledge: Over the past 100 years, this community who traditionally moved to where the food was, has become rooted in a single place through a colonial combination of both incentives and coercion, and thus ‘moving,’ and adapting to changing conditions is no longer as simple as packing up one’s tent and floating up the river in a skin boat.
“Shishmaref is everywhere,” a student of Marino’s realizes: Whether you view the ‘settling’ of indigenous communities into fixed locations as a product of coercion or incentivization or the combination, settlement has been and continues to be a strategy of the U.S. and other nation states worldwide (p. 59). Selection of location depended primarily on the convenience and immediate economic interests of the governing agency, not necessarily the preferences and wisdom of locals as to where they could best sustain themselves.
Forced ‘Relocation’ is a Strategy of Genocide
I’ve heard people suggest, recently, I might add, that living in or near a rural Alaska community is a choice, just as living in New York City is a choice. Not so. Marino presents the voices of the people she is advocating for in explaining the interdependence between people, the land, and the animals that is the basis for life in the Shishmaref region and much of rural Alaska. Their knowledge is specific to this place, these plants and animals, and the region as a whole. For this community to move to a nearby town, or to a place with inadequate access to the ocean, would threaten ties to each other and the land. Thus, their input as to location is a critically important piece of the equation that tends to get overlooked by outsiders. She notes, “A real question is not whether climate change and flooding risks will be a catalyst forcing Alaska Native peoples to urbanize or to relocate out of traditional land but whether climate change and flooding risks will be the next catalyst for forcing Alaska Native people to urbanize and relocate out of traditional land.” (p. 96).
The book itself is a solidly good read, thoughtful, and sympathetic to the people of Shismaref. The layout feels like a thesis, and its academic feel may somewhat limit its audience. However, I hope this book is read by any outsider working with this community, or similar communities, on issues related to climate change. By developing a better understanding of the complex history, they will be more effective in contributing to solutions instead of reinventing the wheel.
Want to read
January 27, 2017COCC GF71 .M37 2015
June 11, 2025
Tackles the critically important topic of pathways to climate resilience for Alaskan Native communities, and aims to do it through the perspective of an ethnography in the AK village of Shishmaref.
The short volume, which reads like an early, very lightly edited draft of a Master's thesis, however, falls way short on both the promise of ethnography, and on addressing the larger question of community struggle for resilience in any thorough and coherent way
Chapter 5 is the best part of the volume, and closest to delivering on its promise of insight on Alaskan Native struggles and perspectives on coping with climate change.
I picked this up in the hope I can assign it in my interdisciplinary introductory college class on climate change, but it will definitely not work for that purpose...
The short volume, which reads like an early, very lightly edited draft of a Master's thesis, however, falls way short on both the promise of ethnography, and on addressing the larger question of community struggle for resilience in any thorough and coherent way
Chapter 5 is the best part of the volume, and closest to delivering on its promise of insight on Alaskan Native struggles and perspectives on coping with climate change.
I picked this up in the hope I can assign it in my interdisciplinary introductory college class on climate change, but it will definitely not work for that purpose...
April 5, 2023
A welcome contrast to the sensationalist attention given to Shishmaref--and other climate refugee poster children a la Tuvalu--Marino delves into local conceptions of climactic change, risk, subsistence, and "place" in this brief narrative. Reads much like a Ph.D. dissertation for better and for worse.
Most important, probably, are the areas where she approaches questions like "Why stay?", or "Is it economically worth it to relocate rather than co-locate?" from the Kigiqtaamiut as opposed to the colonial gaze.
To colonize, staple down the community with BIA and HUD monies, and then abdicate responsibility when the colonial project fails--in an area that has been continuously inhabited since at least 2000 BC--is an absolute moral failing of the federal gov't.
Most important, probably, are the areas where she approaches questions like "Why stay?", or "Is it economically worth it to relocate rather than co-locate?" from the Kigiqtaamiut as opposed to the colonial gaze.
To colonize, staple down the community with BIA and HUD monies, and then abdicate responsibility when the colonial project fails--in an area that has been continuously inhabited since at least 2000 BC--is an absolute moral failing of the federal gov't.
March 24, 2024
I think I finished this, might have still needed to read the epilogue, but we've moved on in class, so I'm going to count it as finished. Very moving material that contributed to different thought processes about what it means to be a climate refugee and how social structures contribute to the resilience of a group of people.
March 4, 2022
"We deserve it" is a mantra I've seen people toss around when discussing climate change, but they never seem to consider marginalized people around the globe who will suffer more, and suffer first.
November 6, 2023
Read for class.
February 8, 2024
ok, this one was for school too but i actually liked it and its points quite a bit
June 10, 2025
Summer classsss
October 26, 2021
Love this book. The information, the writing, the comprehensive coverage of Shishmaref & other coastal Arctic communities facing outmigration and relocation. Highly recommend.
February 26, 2016
Exceptional book about the social aspects of climate change and the effects it has on people and their way of life. Dr. Marino IS the expert in this field. The book is well written and is not mired in technical minutia.
August 19, 2024
This is a really important book that analyzes the relationship between natural disaster, climate change, diaspora, and how it impacts the Indigenous groups of Shishmaref, Alaska. It really is something that is not discussed and I really learned a lot. Please read it if you haven't!
October 9, 2016
This book was fascinating! It was very accessible, and I benefited greatly from Marino's studies and explanations.
April 3, 2024
i hate the US government
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews