Perspective Exchange with an Eskimo Elder

WLI’s Aron Chang took the Sunset Limited train from New Orleans to Los Angeles at the end of 2019. Amtrak assigned him a seat next to Ricky Ashby, an Iñupiak Eskimo elder and subsistence hunter on his way home to Noatak village in Alaska. An initial exchange about water management in New Orleans led to a running dialog on climate change, sea level rise, environmental policy, and different ways of thinking about and representing change over time. Ricky was particularly struck by the fact that so much of New Orleans is below sea level, and compared it to the plight of Alaskans who are being asked to rebuild their homes at 25’ above sea level. “Right now, you sound like you’re a victim already. Bottom line, if you’re under sea level, you’re a victim already.”  

Ricky and Aron exchanged drawings. In the two by Ricky, Ricky shared a diagram (left) of a 1930 prophecy showing how Noatak residents have predicted the movement of a sandbar down the Noatak River, and how that shifting sediment informs town planning. In the second drawing (right), Ricky used a representation of the planet and the moon to push for a worldview that encompasses the entire earth and the tides and currents that connect all of us across the oceans, even as we focus on our local challenges.