Day 9

Five days ago, I woke up at 4am for a 6am flight from Anchorage to Kotzebue (or Qikiqtagruk).  Kotzebue is small, less than 4,000 people live in it. It is in Northwest of the state, and according to my telephone network I was officially roaming. I was in Kotzebue to attend a conference on issues concerning rural Alaska. After conference hours, I got to see a lot of rural Alaska. I sampled a few more foods- herring eggs, caribou meat, Muktuk (frozen whale skin and blubber) and Akutaq (also known as “Eskimo ice cream” which is a mix of sweet blueberries and whipped fat). “Whipped fat” as an ingredient isn’t the most encouraging, but Akutaq was actually my favorite of the foods sampled on the trip- it just tastes like candied blueberries. I also tried ptarmigan eggs, which tasted like normal eggs but with a more pasty yolk, and a very thin shell.

Footage by the Kotzebue shoreline, detached ice chunks drifting along,
Chris explaining the formation of black ice in the background.

Kotzebue shoreline.

En route to hillside, Kotzebue.

Walking back from hillside, clouds above, Kotzebue.

En route to hillside, Kotzebue.

Graveyard, on top of the hill, Kotzebue.

Rods injected into ground to release heat from
overlying structures and ensuring permafrost protection, Kotzebue.

Air carrier to Red Dog and Noatak.

From Kotzebue, I “got off the road system” and took a small plane to Red Dog Mine; a zinc mine that had an astounding level of commitment to environmental standards. It was very strange travelling in small plane. I usually find myself twisting my fingers and praying for smooth sailing whenever I’m on a plane. I start to envision the worst things possible and try to distract myself, but the only thoughts that come to mind are worse than the ones I tried to get rid off. Well, this happened a lot at first in this tiny plane (بدأت بقراءة الأدعية) . After a few trips on it throughout the day though, the trips were starting to become adrenalin-inducing in a good way.

There were several things I liked about Red Dog Mine. To start off, the machines were so big and so awesome. I got to see a lot of the machines and processes I encountered on paper in Water Quality Control at Yale. The first machine we saw was a giant grinding machine called a Semi-Autogenous Grinding (SAG) mill. It breaks the ores from big rocks to little pieces around the size of a nickel. I liked the SAG because it was ginormous. The mechanical flotation cells were not as ginormous but still pretty splendid. The stirring tanks had lots of air blowing into them, bubbling through giant amounts of slurry. This allows for the zinc to be collected at the top. The aerated zinc is scooped up and collected in bins as fluffy, aerated metal (which looks like a metallic bubble bath- very shiny). The zinc then goes through a filter press, which gives us the concentrate. I also went to their water treatment plant, and walked right above a very, very big settling tank.

Aside from the sheer size of everything, the mine’s environmental performance is top-notch. When I heard them speak of “land reclamation”, I stood on my toes, ready to have at least one criticism. But, they were talking about literally restoring the land to the way it was (pre-digging) after excavation. This was not the euphemism of “land reclamation” for sea burial that I was familiar with; they actually had plans of completely restoring one of the mine sites by 2031, with vegetation, ore mineral, and all. This whole activity also does not affect the water table level much, as permafrost in the ground doesn’t make for much of a water table. There were also rivers around the mine that are doing better post-mine activities. The only question that remains is whether a more prolific man-made world is better than the origin of the land, the Pristine. This is an ethical spiral that dug my brains out.

Glazed caribou shoulder blade, soot and water (India ink),
drawing by Walter Wilson, Noatak.

After the mine, the little plane took me to the rural village of Noatak (pronounced like "no attack"). Noatak is also only reached by air, as there are no roads to it. In Noatak, I met several locals at a community event, visited the local school, and saw native dancing. I asked a few people what they thought about the mine I had visited earlier, and how long they had been living in Noatak.

 Footage of native dancing, Noatak.

At the conference itself, dialogue started with acknowledging Alaskan native environmental history and discussing its progression. Colonial issues, racism, segregation, and power, were at the forefront of every conversation.

Wolf skull, Noatak.

Alaska’s economy is pretty unique (but I can think of a few other comparable places). It is heavily reliant on oil, it has high ethnic diversity, high unemployment, and no income taxes. Citizens receive grants from oil money occasionally, but the fruit of land utilization is not shared equitably. The discussions, for me, were mostly informational, but a lot of what I saw presented and discussed was thought provoking on a larger scale. For instance, if citizens receive, but do not give the government money, to what degree do they feel like they have a say in how state money is spent? I do think that contributing monetarily gives people more of a right to demand where their money is spent, and what their government does. Being thankful for what the Alaskan governing body gives you is one thing, knowing that this body is politically accountable to you- it is there to serve you, is another. But then, how do you introduce to the culture of taxation to people that have mostly been receiving, not giving, in their lifetimes?

Another thought I struggled with was the major difference between ‘equality’ and ‘equity’. I think I decided that ‘equality’ might have the connotation of “being the same”, which causes societies to try to converge, which may be uncomfortable if it requires relinquishing prized differences. Ensuring equity and dignity of life and choice is a better way to think of fairness.

Just a few more small thoughts…

On economies of scale- what is our ethical responsibility to invest in small populations where economies of scale do not exist? Does it make sense economically? Will economically superior groups force groups to urbanize or “catch-up” in order for them to survive? How do I not know a word for this concept? At the conference, a businessman stood up and said, “The ‘right thing to do’ does not always make sense”. Here, I am implying that our ethical responsibility is to invest in places where economies of scale do not exist, except I don’t know yet.

Sustainable development is a misnomer; any “development” should be, by definition, sustainable. This isn’t just semantics, it’s a pretty straight-forward ideology.

One more. Starting with a talk on demographics, carrying capacities, and changes in the land, I was reminded very much of “tipping points”- one of Professor Nordhaus’ favorite concepts. Everything about Alaska seems to be a tipping point. A tipping point is a certain, delicate equilibrium (X), where a big shock can drive us to a “good equilibrium” (Y) or a “bad equilibrium” (Z).  This categorizing of good and bad may in an environmental, social, or economic scope. When you are at Y or Z, it will take another big, giant shock to move you, and depending on which one a society has landed on, the effects can be either dire or great.  Now moving from tipping points, a Crimsonite (Harvard grad) discussed Hegelian cycles with me. He pulled out a napkin and drew a graph with a curve that looked like a slightly uncoiled spring- a successively loopy line. The proper name of this concept is something-geist, but I have forgotten it. He said that history moved in cycles, shaped by major episodes. These episodes are the result of collective action, belief, or goals. Every episode allows people to attain a communal spiritual freedom through their own actions. Each cycle contains struggle, decisions, collective action, and change. Each cycle changes the state of things to what the “ultimate ideal” during that cycle is. I think Hegel thought that every cycle would bring us closer to flawlessness as a human community. If I believe in Hegelian cycles then I will hope that this is true. It would be awfully cynical to believe otherwise. If human beings change with time, the eventual ideal world we envision during our cycle will be differently envisioned in the next cycle. If movement through every cycle is a just big pushes from tipping points, from X to Z to X to Y, then is just human being struggling in every generation for a consensus on their betterment. In the spirit of pure idealism, this means that if I raise my children to not see racism, they will only see positive categories and informational groupings. If I raise them to think that leadership is not a title, it is not a position, nor a display of power, they will learn that leadership is service to their people. If I make sure my children know that they belong to an ecosystem, they will learn that it does not belong to them. This will be one cycle, and I have no idea what my children will teach their children.