It’s been a festive day in the Northwest Arctic community of Kivalina as residents celebrate the grand opening of a new store. It’s an end to eight months of struggle with limited supplies after Kivalina’s store burned to the ground Dec. 5.
Janet Mitchell is Kivalina’s city administrator. She says the village doesn’t have firefighting equipment so men cut a hole in the ice of the local lagoon and pumped water on the fire, mainly to keep it from spreading to nearby teacher housing. Mitchell says a temporary store was established but it was a very small space.
“They ran out of things very quick and that posed a difficulty for young babies or young families, families that need formula,” Mitchell says.
She says eggs cost more than $8 per dozen and pilot bread $7 because of limited supplies. Mitchell says the temporary store was in a storage structure built in the early 1900s and mainly sold staples of eggs, flour and rice.
Seattle-based Alaska Native Industries Cooperative Association, or ANICA, owns the store. The new store is two or three times bigger than the old structure, she says, and on Tuesday company officials flew in for the grand opening.
Kivalina’s population of 468 includes a high percentage of young people. Mitchell says close to half are 18-years-old or younger and many of them don’t care for traditional foods. Subsistence resources are also harder to get in a changing climate. Mitchell says the ice went out in early June and with it went the subsistence mainstay, ugruk, also known as bearded seal.
“It’s our winter food (and) we didn’t have an opportunity to hunt the bearded seal. So it’s going to be a very, very lean year in terms of Native foods,” she says.
Mitchell says her large extended family normally harvests between 15 and 20 large adult seals. This year they got one small seal. She says fewer than 20 have been harvested by the entire community and they haven’t seen many caribou either. She says even older Kivalina residents who normally rely heavily on subsistence hunting will have to include more Western food in their diet.
“The store is going to be very important to have if we don’t have the capability of hunting the foods we normally do.”
Although she prefers Native food, Mitchell says she buys supplies at places like Costco when she can get to Anchorage.
“But we have families that (include) up to 20 (people) in one household, so that can be quite a challenge to keep them fed, especially when they don’t hunt,” she says.
Mitchell says her community continues to fight development to protect subsistence food, but that the store will be increasingly important in the future.
