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 I upiaq 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.

Author: Elizabeth Marino
Publisher: University of Alaska Press
Published: 09/15/2015
Pages: 122
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.46lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.90w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9781602232662
ISBN10: 1602232660
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Human Geography
- Social Science | Anthropology | General

About the Author
Elizabeth Marino researches circumpolar issues from her home in Cascades, Oregon. She has lived in or visited Shishmaref since 2002.