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00:30Everything about our world is changing.
00:34We have to wake up before it becomes too late for us to adapt.
00:39Our ancestors said, one day we will come upon this day.
00:42I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime.
00:53In Alaska, the governor has declared a state of disaster
00:57after the remnants of Typhoon Murbach caused unprecedented flooding.
01:01A thousand miles of coastline was impacted by Typhoon Murbach.
01:04Hurricane-forced winds and over 50-foot waves.
01:07One of the most destructive storms to ever hit that region.
01:11Entire towns were completely submerged.
01:13A little over a year after that catastrophic storm hit Alaska,
01:29I flew up the western coast.
01:31I was headed for an area called the Waikee Delta,
01:40about 500 miles west of Anchorage,
01:43home to dozens of small native villages for the Chupik and Yupik people.
01:52They're some of the most vulnerable communities in the country to climate change.
01:56And the storm was the latest sign of the imminent dangers.
02:09We landed in Chivak, one of nearly 150 native villages
02:13that have been experiencing increasing flooding, erosion and warming temperatures.
02:19It was the dead of winter and everything was covered in thick layers of snow,
02:25making it hard to see what was water and what was land.
02:29But I could still make out the erosion caused by the storm.
02:33What you're looking at right now is actually a river that's frozen over,
02:38covered with snow and the debris left by Murbach.
02:42Then here you can see a little bit of a hill,
02:45and on the top of the hill are some homes,
02:48and that's where the village of Chivak actually starts.
02:51These are homes that are in the direct path of destruction.
02:57Around 60 houses, nearly a quarter of the village were badly damaged,
03:02and the situation was similar in other communities.
03:05We went an hour away by snow machine, heading to Hooper Bay,
03:12home to around 1,400 people, on the edge of the Bering Sea.
03:19When I got there, residents were arriving for a meeting
03:22to discuss the fate of the community.
03:25I know people see this picture.
03:27I know people see this picture.
03:28I know people see this picture.
03:30I know people see this picture.
03:32I know people see this picture.
03:34I know people see this picture.
03:35I know people see this picture.
03:36I know people see this picture.
03:37I know people see this picture.
03:39Estelle Thompson is a tribal president,
03:42and was leading the discussion.
03:44Haifu Murbach hit our community so hard,
03:47it did an entire lifetime's worth of erosion in one storm.
03:53The inundation from the sea came in through our town.
03:57It damaged infrastructure.
03:5937 people were permanently displaced from the village.
04:04So we had a huge disaster.
04:12Agatha Napoleon is the climate change coordinator
04:15for one of the tribes that lives in Hooper Bay.
04:18I'm a Hooper Bayer.
04:20This is where I grew up.
04:24My children grew up here.
04:27This is our land.
04:31We are his people.
04:33We've lived here for aeons.
04:35We've learned to live with the storms, the blizzards,
04:40and everything that the ocean has to bring.
04:42Good or bad, we have learned to adapt and live with it.
04:46Our way of life revolves around the cold
04:51and whatever little spring and summer that we have.
04:54This climate change thing is wreaking havoc.
04:58Experts who've been studying what's happening here
05:00say the threat is so severe because of changes
05:03to both the surrounding sea and the frozen ground known as permafrost.
05:07This big hunk of ice up here, which is most of Alaska,
05:13is slowly melting due to the very rapid warming
05:16up to four times faster than what we see globally.
05:19Tom Ravens is a civil engineer and an expert on the Arctic coast.
05:24Environmental warming is really doing a number on the permafrost.
05:28And, you know, permafrost is a natural way to protect against coastal erosion.
05:36Permafrost is absolutely the glue that's holding all the sediment
05:40along the coast in place.
05:42And, of course, as that permafrost thaws, the glue is essentially disappearing
05:46and it's just draining into the sea.
05:48And all of this left is this sort of muddy mush.
05:51Now that the permafrost is thawing, coastal erosion rates are higher.
05:57What's worse, Arctic waters aren't freezing the way they have in the past.
06:02And as the sea ice disappears, so does an important line of defense.
06:07The ice is almost like a seawall.
06:09And so when you've got 5, 10, 20 miles of ice that is anchored to the coast,
06:15those big waves and those big surges that are offshore, they stay offshore.
06:19But now when you've got no ice armoring the shoreline, those waves,
06:23there's nothing to stop it from just coming in and battering the coastline.
06:26That's what's happening in Hooper Bay.
06:28And efforts to strengthen the village's defenses haven't been able to keep up.
06:33The state has spent millions in federal grants trying to protect the airport road.
06:38The Department of Transportation in Hooper Bay elevated the airport access road.
06:44And we thought it was going to be good until 2050 according to our projections of sea level rise and flooding.
06:50But it turns out, Murbach came in and flooded this road.
06:53So for some here, the conversation is changing from protecting Hooper Bay to leaving it behind.
07:02We've learned that within 15 years, the permafrost in the YK Delta around Hooper Bay, Gamma Bay, and Chevak is going to be melted.
07:12And at the end of the century, the Bering Sea is going to be subsuming that entire area.
07:19So it's become a priority for us to resettle our village in order for us to have a place to escape to.
07:28She and her tribal council have been working on a plan to move to higher ground around 15 miles away to a tribal area called Paimute.
07:37It's a lone mountain, it's part of the Yaskanaq range.
07:41Its Yup'ik name is Qigatakuk, meaning island.
07:45It's safer, and definitely water will not reach us.
07:49While everything is changing, we're just making sure that we take care of ourselves, our grandkids,
07:54and that we adapt as easily as we possibly can, even though it is difficult.
08:00This plan to move to the native village of Paimute, is everybody 100% ready to do that?
08:06No.
08:07As with any other relocation, there are going to be people that will want to stay in Hooper Bay as long as they possibly can.
08:17And we can respect that.
08:20It's been our home for quite a long time.
08:23In fact, several Hooper Bay families are originally from Paimute,
08:28but they were relocated here decades ago as part of a U.S. government effort to assimilate Alaska's native people.
08:35I think it was in the 1940s when people from the Bureau of Indian Affairs came to my village of Paimute, my settlement,
08:45and told the people there that you need to move to another community that has a school,
08:51because our settlement was pretty small.
08:53And one of the things that happened was that it split up our people between three villages, Hooper Bay, Skammon Bay, and T-Rack,
09:02with the majority of our tribal membership living in Hooper Bay or from Hooper Bay.
09:08In the schools, the Yup'ik children were taught English and Western culture instead of their own.
09:16Going from fluently speaking our language every day, all day long, entering school and not knowing very many words in English,
09:28maybe yes, no, please, and thank you.
09:31In 1953, Walt Disney Productions released a film about the Alaska natives in Hooper Bay.
09:38That's Agatha's mother as a young girl reaching for a tool.
09:42She was helping sew skins for the outside of a boat.
09:47Members of the tribe were still holding their ceremonies in a traditional setting.
09:53The Qay'ik was a place of learning.
09:56My father always let us know to go down to the Qay'ik and listen,
10:00because this is our first and foremost way of life, our teachings.
10:06And then the Catholic Church came in, the Covenant Church came in, and then we learned about God.
10:13The story resonated with me.
10:16My family moved from our Hopi reservation in Arizona to Denver, where I was born.
10:22Growing up in the city, it was hard to hold on to our traditions,
10:26as it's been for the Alaska native people, too.
10:31I think that it's important to keep what you can, just like any society, any culture.
10:39One of the things that I've noticed with most cultures around the world,
10:42regardless of how much they've assimilated or changed over time,
10:46is the fact that they've been able to keep their food.
10:49It's extremely important to us.
10:52I got two blackfish traps here.
10:57There's elders' favorite delicacy out there.
11:02They love blackfish.
11:05Oh, you hear that?
11:07It's not even that thick.
11:10Many of the native people here still practice subsistence living, living off the land.
11:16In the winter, they get fish from the ice-covered rivers and sea.
11:22It's a small, little one.
11:29In the school at Hooper Bay, I met a group of students who told me how important it is to them
11:35to practice their traditional way of harvesting.
11:38We talk about subsistence living. What do you eat?
11:42Birds, seal, goose, whale, fish.
11:47Clams.
11:48Clams?
11:49Yeah.
11:50You guys hunt walrus out here, too?
11:51Yeah.
11:52Yeah, we go up to them slowly.
11:53Mm-hmm.
11:54So we don't scare them.
11:56And they'll get pissed off and come after us.
11:58And we produce our seal oil from seals from when we catch them.
12:03And they have a nice layer of fat.
12:06So your food is not something you can buy in the grocery stores?
12:09No.
12:10No.
12:11We get them from the land.
12:12Land provides.
12:13Stores here are full of junk.
12:16So we'd rather go out and go get our own food, which is more healthier.
12:23I can't imagine not living with and eating the foods that we have lived with all our lives.
12:29It would be, it would be like a fish out of the water.
12:35I know eventually my grandchildren, they're going to have to find other ways.
12:46But right now, it hurts.
12:50We have no other choice.
12:51We have to make changes.
12:53We have to do something.
12:54Otherwise we'll just be part of the ocean, too.
12:58The challenges facing Alaskan native villages have been growing for decades.
13:08As far back as the 1980s, there were warnings that dozens of communities were in danger from erosion and flooding.
13:17A federal agency called the Denali Commission was created to work with rural Alaskan communities.
13:24And one of its missions has been to help protect native villages from the impacts of climate change.
13:30But only one village so far has actually gone through the dramatic process of relocating.
13:38Newtok, a community of around 300 people that built a new town nine miles away.
13:45The move has cost about $160 million, taken around 30 years, and it's still not complete.
13:53Relocation is an extremely complex, difficult process that takes a huge team to work through over many years.
14:01Many, many dozens of organizations are involved in the process.
14:05It's a very messy problem, and we need some strategic, kind of top-down guidance to agencies and organizations to kind of streamline it, to transform it, to make it a more efficient system.
14:17Right now, there's no one to support a community with relocation officially.
14:21There's no lead agency.
14:23There's no lead technical assistance provider at the federal or state level to help communities address the impacts of climate change.
14:29PHONE RINGS
14:32Sorry, Senator Murkowski Anchorage Main Line is not available.
14:37Over the past several months, I have tried to interview many state and federal officials.
14:42I wanted to understand their roles in relocating the native villages, but no one would agree to go on camera.
14:52And since President Trump took office, the outlook has grown more uncertain for the villages, with the focus being shifted away from climate change and funding cuts to federal agencies.
15:11As the situation has been worsening, people from various Alaska native villages have been searching for help, even far from home.
15:24Can I get a show of hands of all the people from Alaska?
15:31We are experiencing climate change at a rate that's four times faster than the rest of the world.
15:38In the spring of 2024, Agatha Napoleon and Estelle Thompson traveled to a climate change preparedness conference in Las Vegas.
15:47Among the attendees were members of tribes from the lower 48.
15:51For our villages and stuff, for those of us that are faced with relocation, you know, we've had a lot of difficulty with relocation.
16:02It can be really easy to get discouraged.
16:05And I'm sure that those of you that are working for your tribes or for your people, it is discouraging to think about our way of life, our life way changing.
16:15Many of us that are going through relocation, we don't know the ins and outs.
16:19And so for us to be able to work with other indigenous communities that are facing the same thing, it's extremely helpful.
16:26We can learn from each other.
16:28The shared struggle underscores the broader impacts of climate change for indigenous coastal communities.
16:34Capacity and funding are two of the biggest challenges.
16:37You have to cut through all this red tape.
16:39You have all these strict regulations and rules to follow that really aren't in the best interests of anyone.
16:45Their plan to move to Pymute has run up against these bureaucratic challenges.
16:50For example, some federal grant money can't be used until families inhabit Pymute.
16:55But to make Pymute habitable, they say they need financial assistance.
17:00Until we have a family living up there, we won't be able to get certain things.
17:07A school, power, water, a sewer, all the stuff that human beings need.
17:18Good afternoon, my name is Agatha Napoleon.
17:20I am with the Native Village of Pymute Traditional Council.
17:23We live literally on the coast of the Bering Sea.
17:27And we have seen so much destruction, but hopefully we'll be able to do a little remediating
17:37so that we can live in Hooper Bay for a little bit longer.
17:40We need to make a move.
17:47The accounts of Hooper Bay's situation struck a chord with people at the conference.
17:52After hearing Agatha Napoleon speak, another Native woman gifted her a pair of beaded earrings and a necklace.
18:02I'll be praying for you guys, okay?
18:06We do have to acknowledge the fact that there is a lot of historical and intergenerational trauma around relocation for all sorts of Indigenous peoples.
18:19Relocation does come with harm, but it also comes with an opportunity for healing, for rebuilding, for creating a community that is going to serve us in the ways that we want it to.
18:37After Vegas, we traveled to the far north of the Alaskan coast to see how other Native communities were faring.
18:52We arrived in Kotzebue, an Inupia town above the Arctic Circle.
19:01Rather than relocating, they have been focused on fortifying their defenses.
19:05Alex Whiting, the tribe's Environmental Program Director, took me for a walk on the frozen Kotzebue Sound.
19:15It's very important for people to continue to, yeah, that's excellent water.
19:20But I'm trusting that I'm not gonna sink into the water, right?
19:24Another month for sure, you'll be swimming right here.
19:27In 2012, they built a $34 million seawall, funded mostly by federal dollars, to protect against the rising waters.
19:37Honestly, I had imagined this huge wall, like 20 feet tall, but it's not that big.
19:44It's not that tall.
19:45It's more than the height of it all, it's just having a buffer.
19:49Because we'll get west wind this way, we'll get high water from the west wind, and then we'll get waves too.
19:55And if you didn't have something like the seawall, and we have more massive storms that are becoming more common because of climate change,
20:02then there would sort of be no hope for a lot of these structures that are facing the ocean right here.
20:08But the seawall took something critical away from Kotzebue, its beachfront.
20:19From time immemorial, people in Kotzebue that lived in this area utilized the beach for, you know, all their many activities.
20:28It's necessary that we have the seawall, but it's really bad that that relationship has been sort of torn asunder by this cement and steel structure,
20:43and that future generations will never have the opportunity to have that same kind of relationship with that beachfront.
20:50Kotzebue is surrounded by water on three sides.
20:54And while the seawall has so far protected the west side of Kotzebue, the east side remains unprotected.
21:01Three rivers drain into the Kotzebue Sound near here, making this area especially vulnerable to flooding.
21:09It's definitely a battle fighting the coastal flooding on the front and then the lagoon flooding on the back.
21:17This is the flood zone in Kotzebue. My home is actually in the flood zone as well.
21:22The flooding happens because when all the snow melts, the water levels rise a little bit and then it'll go into town and all these homes right here are impacted from that.
21:30Even in the past five years, we've seen significant changes, especially with the amount of snow.
21:37Last year, we had a very large snowstorm, and in some parts of town, we had 20 feet of snow, which is an incredible amount of snow.
21:44And then afterwards, that brings in flooding.
21:47Every single year, we're impacted by the ice breakup.
21:53This breakup, it tends to come further and further into town, which is pretty impactful for a lot of families.
22:07Because Kotzebue is on a spit of land and we're surrounded on all sides by water, if we were to start building up, we would be building up in these hills up here.
22:16A lot of elders and a lot of people are starting to talk about what that might look like.
22:21But right now, we're just trying to make sure that our current community could withstand any type of storm or flood or another typhoon possibly.
22:37It's August when we return to Hooper Bay.
22:40Now that ice and snow aren't covering everything, you can see ponds of water everywhere.
22:45It's almost like the village is floating on the spongy tundra.
22:49The waves of the Bering Sea are breaking close to people's homes.
23:05Edgar Tall is the chief of the native village of Hooper Bay.
23:08Do you ever get tired of here in the ocean?
23:12No, I like to stay. It's the only place where I like to be.
23:17Chief Tall takes me out to the only set of dunes left that protect Hooper Bay.
23:23You see here, you see the cloud bears. This is what we're picking right now.
23:29Oh, wow. And can you eat these?
23:32Yes. Right now they're soft.
23:36Oh my gosh, that's so good.
23:38With relocation still years away, Chief Tall tells me he's focused on short-term planning.
23:47Right now our plan is to protection in place before we move because we can't move any faster.
23:53There's still process to do and paperwork, a lot of paperwork and stuff.
23:57And the protection in place, we are helping each others do that.
24:03We do have some grants that were approved, but those are little grants.
24:07When you say little grants, what kind of amount are we talking about?
24:10Like $4 to $5 million. We got $1.5 to fix up the landfill.
24:17That's not even going to make a dent. You know, hard to get grants,
24:22but those were earmarked to us from our senate from Murkowski.
24:31These guys here, they're getting ready to go berry camp, go get some cloud berries.
24:37How long do they go for it?
24:39Till they fill their berries. If not, they don't get lucky.
24:43So this is what it's like all summer long. People are headed out to...
24:47Yeah, first you got your egg hunting, then you got your fishing.
24:51And then you're going to go berry camp and get some berries.
24:56In a few weeks, they're going to go moose hunt or bird hunt.
25:00A subsistence is a must always, always.
25:06As long as we're able to continue to practice our traditions,
25:10tell our stories, we will always have the basic building blocks
25:14to maintain the culture and to continue to grow it.
25:18I love the people. I love what the land has to provide.
25:22I love what the water has to provide. I love this land.
25:27Before we leave Hooper Bay, we watch Agatha Napoleon making care packages
25:33to send to her daughters, who moved away years ago.
25:37My children grew up on these, like me, so they crave it.
25:44All the foods that I pack them, their little souls, their little hearts, need it.
25:50Even if they have moved, they have to eat it.
25:54There have been families that have moved away,
25:59because they're afraid that the next big storm, we could be all under water.
26:04And it's scary.
26:06And yeah, we are talking about relocating.
26:11But there is no place like home.
26:14I am a Hooper Bayer.
26:16I am from...
26:17I am from Hooper Bayer.
26:18I am from Hooper Bayer.
26:19I am from Hooper Bayer.
26:23I am from Hooper Bayer.
26:29Wow, this is the highest I've ever seen a water in Katzimu ever.
26:48There's a road here which looks like you don't know.
27:18For more on this and other Frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org slash Frontline.
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