Sea ice may disappear, but native words linger
Polar bear on sea ice. (Photo: NOAA)
Arctic sea ice is changing – and so are traditional ways of knowing sea ice by the Eskimo or Inuit people of the far north.
Igor Krupnik: As the practices of using and knowing sea ice are to change, so will the knowledge about sea ice. Let’s say if multi-year ice disappears, the language will be perhaps the last resort of any knowledge about multi-year ice.
That’s Igor Krupnik, cultural anthropologist and principal investigator of SIKU, a project aimed to document and preserve traditional ways of observing environmental change.
SIKU is an acronym for Sea Ice Knowledge and Use. And ‘siku’ is also the most common indigenous word for sea ice. Krupnik said there are over 100 words in some far northern native languages to describe sea ice conditions and phenomena. Scientists are recording the terms in bilingual and illustrated sea ice dictionaries. And they’ve enlisted native people to make local observations of sea ice and weather – and to document the way they do it.
With projections of ice-free Arctic summers by 2050, Krupnik said it’s important to record these long-used methods now for future generations.
Igor Krupnik: Fifty years from now, all these practices will be absolutely different.
Krupnik said that more and more, people are combining their traditional knowledge with modern technology – using weather reports, satellite images, and the internet.
Our thanks today to NASA, in celebration of the International Polar Year.
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