ALASKA Photo Reportage

Shaktoolik, Alaska

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Introduction Architecture and Extreme Environments

This project is a part of the Architecture and Extreme Environments master program at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. This master programme has a strong focus on site-specific design, achieving this through direct engagement and expeditions to environments which are out of balance. This year’s expedition was to Alaska, the United States which took place between 19th of November and 14th of December 2018.

2018/2019

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The aim of this study expedition is to respond to present and future global challenges through research by design and direct on-site involvement. The expedition and project focus on struggles with situations like extreme cold, difficulties with finding food, floods, lack of energy, isolation, security etc. During the first months of our academic year, we are investigating the current challenges of the chosen environment and we are searching for innovative solutions.

As a result, we are building 1:1 prototype which is being transported to the region and later tested and assessed.

Further investigation take place after the travel and finally it transformed into an architectural project during the second semester.

Mornings

You’re waking up. It’s hard to tell if a new day has begun. It’s still dark outside. You’re going upstairs and you eat breakfast with your hosts. You always stay late, listening to the stories about their tribes, the springtime when nature is awakening and everything is getting busy, about berries that are sweet and juicy and big like fists that you can find just one mile from the house. The stories about culture and religion, old traditions, nature and its health properties. You drink tea from plants that you picked up yesterday morning. You’re so enthralled that you don’t even notice that outside, it’s getting brighter.

The houses are rather small and simple, but unquestionably cosy. You want to feel as warm as you can when the air outside is so cold.

To go out is almost a mission. Woollen underwear, the first layer, second layer, and then a few more depending on how you cope with the cold. Then heavy shoes, caps, gloves and you almost ready, well, you’ll never be truly ready for that weather, not mentally. Then you open the door and you stop. You stop for a moment because you forgot that you are in Alaska. When you’re inside these four walls, this practical protection to separate ourselves from the environment, the building could be placed anywhere.

All that hustle and darkness of the house made you lose your way.

But there you are, in the door frame and the first thing you see is the ocean. The ocean

and nothing else. You stay there a moment, mostly to catch your breath, also because the view is just spectacular. This story repeats itself every day because it changes so quickly. Sometimes is so calm that it looks like a mirror and reflects the whole world on its surface. The next day is completely frozen and makes you feel like a fool, how it could be so different yesterday?

The next day creates ice sculptures like jewellery for a special occasion. Sometimes, the sun emerges from behind the clouds and dances on its surface, shimmering with oranges, pinks and purples and you run with your camera and tripod and all the unnecessary equipment, almost losing your legs. When you get there, even if it took just a few minutes, it’s gone. Everything is blue again, but you stand there anyway and you don’t think about pictures anymore, your things lying discarded on the ground and you look into the endless depth, hypnotized. You cannot get enough of it.

How I got there

The story begins a long time before the first flight. Long weeks of research and one article that made you make a decision - this is the place. An article about a small community located on a thin strip of land surrounded by water in the middle of nowhere in Alaska. The only way to get there is by air - no roads, no mountains, no place to run when the storm hits. When something happens, they are on their own.

Four planes, two delays and you end up

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in the wrong village in the middle of the night.

This is how you learn about the hospitality of the people in Alaska. They are going to take care of you, because if they don’t, well you are in the wild with notable low temperature - it’s only a guess to how many hours you will survive.

Next day, two more planes and you feel like you won a lottery. Alaska from the air, when the sun is rising from the horizon covering everything with a sharp orange light is breathtaking. Rays sliding gently on the slopes covered with the snow, sea ice making mesmerising patterns on the surface of the water and purple clouds gliding over your head. You are sitting next to the pilot with a smile on your lips and tears in your eyes. He’s smiling back because he knows what is happening in your mind. You haven’t seen such beautiful landscapes in your life yet. You don’t want to let that moment to end.

One hour of excitement and finally in the distance appears an image of something that is hard to describe as a village. One street, two rows of colourful houses and as far as the eye can see just water and lowlands coated with a white counterpane. This is Shaktoolik.

Life on one street

Imagine that you are standing in the middle of the street, your arms are wide open and it feels like you could touch the ocean with your one hand and the river with the other. In front of you placed in two rows are standing ho-

uses painted in different shades of blue, purple, green and yellow and that is it. The village that starts on one side of the street and ends on the other.

On the way from the airport which is a single landing strip located just a few minutes from the village, you pass by what they call sarcastically Shaktoolik’s „Walmart” - a cemetery of old devices; washing machines, cars, old fridges and anything that once was broken and couldn’t be repaired. This is where you go when you missing a part of something that you fixing at that moment and you can’t buy in the store.

On the left side, simple crosses form a single line, peeking out from under the snow. The first building that you can see is a newly built clinic one of the top priorities of the community that was lucky to be granted. Then houses on either side of the road. Right in the middle is the most important building - Shaktoolik School surrounded by facilities: the native store, post office, covenant church, water treatment plant and city office. Further along, more houses and at the end of the village, you can find the second store, fuel station and tank farm. The road doesn’t stop here. It goes further into the land to the old village and fishing areas.

How looks life on one street? It can be very busy. People riding on four wheelers or in cars if they are the lucky ones. If you can choose anything else than walking as a transportation method, you will definitely do that, it’s bitterly cold and windy. This is probably one of the biggest surprises when you’re arriving there. You wouldn’t expect much traffic on one street. The

Shaktoolik people are very open, it is not difficult to feel like a part of the community, even if you are just a traveller staying there for a few days. The only thing you have to do is to take a small walk on the street and you can meet people that are smiling, greeting you and stopping for a small conversation. You don’t have to wait too long until somebody invites you for a coffee. The invitation most of the time comes with a story of life in the package. People in small communities are open, there is not a lot of opportunities to tell their life to someone from the other side of the world. Here, loneliness plays the main role.

Evenings

It’s getting dark pretty early during the winter season, the last rays of the sun disappear over the horizon and you can already feel the street getting busy once again. People returning from work and kids are finishing school.

The sun is gone, but you can feel that life just started here, in Shaktoolik. You can hear children’s loud laughs and screams, noisy squeaks of tires - somebody is having a four wheeler race on the street. There is not much to do and no other place than a school to go and play, so the kids remain outside. Every day in the late evening around 8 pm, half the village gather in the school gym to watch running children - the only entertainment that Shaktoolik offers to its residents. After, you go back home to watch tv and eat dinner. For us, it was another exciting part of a day, it means more stories from our hosts.

The irony, next generation and lost culture

Two miles from Shaktoolik you can encounter remains of the old village. Left, destroyed houses, half damaged by waves and wind. The real representation of the power of nature and the memorial of forgotten years. Shaktoolik was forced to move in the past several times from the same reasons - erosion and flooding. Storms are one of the biggest concerns and the fear of confronting them is very present in the everyday life of residents. „In the dream, a storm came and Betsy Bekoalok watched the river rise on one side of the village and the ocean on the other, the water swallowing up the brightly coloured houses, the fishing boats and the four-wheelers, the school and the clinic.

She dived into the floodwaters, frantically searching for her son. Bodies drifted past her in the half-darkness. When she finally found the boy, he, too, was lifeless.

“I picked him up and brought him back from the ocean’s bottom,” Ms Bekoalok remembered”1

The same fate awaits a new village. For centuries the water of the ocean has been giving Alaskan people the perfect condition for hunting and fishing, now the same power is their main enemy. The same thing that gives them a chance to survive is the same that threatens their lives.

Alaska’s name comes from the Aleut

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word meaning: „The object toward the action of the sea is directed”. Water is inherent to their culture, moving higher up the land means losing a part of their heritage and cultural identity and at the same time depriving them of their source of food, the source of sustenance. This and many other reasons were the main determinants in the decision to stay and defend.

The first thing which comes to mind when you think about small communities is that they will probably disappear soon. Like in many places in the world we can encounter a significant migration of population from small towns to bigger cities. Villages are getting old and slowly dying. In contradiction, something opposite is happening with small communities in Alaska, their numbers have plateaued, even grown ever so slightly. Young people want to stay where they were raised and continue their parents’ traditions.

The life in Alaska is not the same anymore, it’s American life. Now connected to the world, they want the same standards. Priorities change, and precious knowledge of their ancestors is slowly going into oblivion. It’s the last call to save it from disappearance. What future waits for the next generation?

Alice

Alice was our host together with Josh.

She was raised in the Mountain Village located at the foot of a small hill near to Yukon River.

The first time she came to Shaktoolik she was terrified. She said: „I was so scared to see the surrounding lowlands, there is no place to run and no place to hide when the storm occurs.

Every day I’m praying that nothing bad will happen.” Her eyes were like small sparkles which shone every time she laughed. It felt like her every word, her every breath was a confirmation of relief, but the tone of her voice betrayed the lived years and gathered experience. Her good heart instantly made you believe that there is still kindness in this world. She made you feel a part of the family, from the first step that you took into her house.

One day she was sitting in the armchair with embroidery in her hands. She looked so small and fragile at that moment. Her smile that normally makes you feel the warmth, paled away. She told me the story of her life, filled with masked pain and fear, frustration, rejection and loneliness. Tears ran down her cheeks, her arms were shaking. She told me about early years in the school when she was punished every time she spoke in the native language, about her parents and twelve siblings, her marriage and kids, about a lost son. Years of despair and solitude and the first meeting with Josh in whom she found her peace.

Life in such a small community, so remote and cut off from the real world is very often a life sentence. A sentence for those who experienced some traumatic incidents. There are nobody and no pla

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ce where you can go and find help. Very often you have to live on right next to your oppressors, being exposed to your fears each day. You want to run away but it is not easy to leave the village, not everybody can afford it and even if, leaving dark memories very often means losing everything else - family, close friends, culture and identity. Most of the times being raised in such extreme conditions it can lead to difficulties in finding yourself in a different environment.

Very often people return even if it means facing your past.

1. Goode, Text Erica. „A Wrenching Choice for Alaska Towns in the Path of Climate Change.� The New York Times. November 29, 2016. Accessed March 19, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/29/science/alaska-global-warming.html.

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Created by Gosia Grzesikowska 2018/2019 Copenhagen DEMNARK as a part of expedition to Alaska from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts text and photos by the author

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