Thawing permafrost brings new challenges to the Inuvialuit Settlement Region on the Yukon North Slope
In northern Yukon, 343 kilometres of coastline stretches between the Alaska border and the Northwest Territories (NWT). That coastline and the adjacent Yukon mainland, including Ivvavik National Park and Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), and a chunk of the Beaufort Sea, are all part of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. For centuries, Inuvialuit people have been living and thriving in the area.
“Being out on the land or at the coast is like a renewal, refreshing your spirit of yourself. That’s what I get out of it,” said one participant from an Inuvialuit Traditional Use Study released in 2018. “It doesn’t matter where I am or who I’m with, but when I’m out there it’s, by golly, you just let go of everything.”
Now the landscape on the Yukon North Slope is changing. The land is slumping and sliding into the sea, and what used to be open water is riddled with sandbars. And spots that once offered boats shelter from high winds and waves have disappeared. With that changing landscape comes the loss of cultural sites related to traditional Inuvialuit life.
“Those safe places we had and the generation before me, they’re not there today,” said Michelle Gruben, resource person for the Aklavik Hunters and Trappers Committee. Since 2009, she has worked with the roughly 280 Inuvialuit harvesters in the Aklavik area of the NWT.
The Inuvialuit’s connection to the land and water of the North Slope predates territorial borders. So, although the committee is based in N.W.T., it is involved in land management in the Yukon portion of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region.
Gruben’s experience on the land helps inform her work. “As a kid, I loved to go down on the land with my dad. I always went geese hunting in Tuktoyaktuk and along the coast,” she said. “I’m right in the mix of what these harvesters see on the land. I’m not a full-time harvester, but I’m still a harvester and I understand what they see.”
On the North Coast, weather can change quickly. Winds can kick up and storms can come in fast. That means boat pilots need to be experienced and know the landscape, but when that landscape is changing, staying safe while travelling is even more challenging.
“Now, if they ever had to go to a safe place along the ocean—say, from Shingle [Point] to Herschel [Island], somewhere in there—I don’t know if they would know where’s a safe place to park,” said Gruben. “There are certain ways to park your boat. You can’t just stop anywhere because you could get swamped.”
Despite the changes, the hunters, trappers and harvesters are pairing traditional knowledge with new technologies, such as weather and wind apps, to prepare for spending time on the land.
“Even with climate change, people are still going to find a way to harvest food because that’s what you need,” said Gruben. “You make your herring dry fish … you’re going to eat it middle of winter, or you’re going to eat it at carnival time. You’re going to eat it all year; it’s going to sustain you for the winter.”
While the changing landscape is affecting how people move along the coast and practice traditional harvesting, it’s also affecting heritage sites at an alarming rate. Many of the sites on the North Slope are important to the Inuvialuit. They’re campsites, housing sites and burial sites that help tell the story of the people’s ancestral connection to the land.
Coastal erosion is causing some heritage sites to become exposed to the surface and is making them more vulnerable to damage or loss. “Back in the day, people used to walk from Alaska to Qikiqtaruk [Herschel Island] or from Qikiqtaruk to Shingle [Point]. It was nothing for them to walk it, and sometimes people would pass away on the trail … so now you’re seeing skulls washing up,” said Gruben. “They have to do their due diligence to see if it’s a missing person, but after that, us Inuvialuit people just want that skull buried back where they found it. We know more is going to come to the surface with the erosion happening.”
As part of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, the Yukon government is responsible for monitoring these heritage sites and working with Inuvialuit groups to determine how the sites are handled: Are they left to nature or are they excavated to preserve artifacts? “The key is to find the sites, monitor them and give the community the information they need to make decisions about how they want things remediated,” said Yukon archaeologist Chris Thomas. “They face a lot of their own issues with the coastline changing all the time because they’re active mariners, whale hunters and fishers, so they’re always out there. They understand these issues.”
Over the past few years, Yukon archaeologists have been re-finding the archaeological and historic sites that were documented in the 1980s and ’90s. They found that some sites had been plotted in the wrong location, and they found some new sites and realized that some of the sites have been lost to coastal erosion or flooding. For example, a village and burial site at Kay Point, which was documented in the 1950s, has disappeared as summers warmed.
“Its former location is now half a kilometre out to sea, and the sand spit that it was on is completely reformed,” said Thomas. In fact, a recent research study found that about 25 per cent of the documented heritage sites in Ivvavik National Park have already been impacted or destroyed by coastal erosion. The same study predicted that up to 61 per cent of the documented sites could be destroyed by the year 2100.
Yukon government archaeologists and historic sites planners stay in contact with Inuvialuit governing organizations and committees. They hold community meetings in Aklavik to present updates on the monitoring efforts.
Innovative tools handcrafted from bone, such as needles, buoys and fishhooks, have been unearthed at these sites. Connecting with these objects can help current and future generations learn about their heritage.
“If we find archeological evidence related to fishing, hunting, trapping, whaling—that sort of stuff—the Inuvialuit want that to be brought back to the community because they’ve lost so much of it,” said Thomas. “They don’t want the impacts of climate change and the impacts of an archeologist digging it up—to be the same thing for them. “They want to see the results of heritage site management be a positive benefit to their community through improved access to cultural materials and education programs.” One way to do that is through digital documentation of the artifacts on-site.
“We have to be conscious to collect not only the artifacts and do the mapping; we also have to be conscious about collecting a digital legacy,” said Thomas. “That will give the people viewing this, in the future, a better sense of place.”
Find out more about the digital documentation efforts, happening on Qikiqtaruk (Herschel Island), in an upcoming story in this series.
-30-TAG: This series is brought to you by the Yukon government Historic Sites Unit, to explore how the Yukon’s changing landscape is impacting the territory’s heritage sites.
