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A Sense of Home Across the Arctic Through Wild Foods

Shared Voices 2021 A Sense Of Home Across The Arctic Through Wild Foods

By Harmony Jade Wayner, Student, University Centre of the Westfjords

Today, on January 25, 2021, the sun returns to Ísafjörður, a town in the Westfjords of Iceland. We celebrate with sunshine crepes and a deep sigh of relief, knowing that the sun’s short days of not rising above the mountains and long cold winter nights are over.

I am from Naknek, Alaska, but am currently attending graduate school in Ísafjörður at the University Centre of the Westfjords, in the Coastal and Marine Management Program. My experiences of growing up in Alaska and previously studying in Turku, Finland, I thought, had adequately prepared me for the shock of living abroad in a northern climate. However, with the darker days and COVID lockdowns resulting in online classes, it has been a challenging year resounding across the Arctic and the world.

Throughout my various experiences across the Arctic region, I am amazed at the shared mental attitude derived from coping with nature’s extremes and the cycles of light and dark in northerners’ collective experience. We know how to hunker down in a crisis like a winter storm or pandemic. We know how to emerge with fresh energy once the sun returns, making full use of every hour, and like the cloudberry, maximizing this period of light to produce a delicious product. I think this attitude towards the light cycles also applies to our shared wild foods.

In this period of lockdown and uncertainty, I have contemplated how best to find belonging while in Iceland. I encountered that feeling first while on a hike as I stumbled into a large patch of bláber, Icelandic blueberries, similar to the species that grow in the Aleutian Islands where I lived as a child. At that very first taste, I knew that I felt at home here. Regardless of the uncertainty, I would be okay, as I was gently taken care of by the comforting taste of northern wild foods.

As an indigenous woman from the Arctic, I often feel there are so many boxes that others expect me to fill. Indigenous people in the media are often portrayed as stuck in the past or with anthropologists’ photos from pre-1950. The question for me now, focusing on Indigenous food systems for my thesis work, is “How can we communicate our sense of place, our home here, to others in a modern way?” Also, it sparks the concept of “What inspires a sense of belonging to a place?” In Alaska, my sense of place is found in the family, the food, the familiar smells of tundra, picking blueberries and cloudberries, as well as harvesting wild salmon.

This food, culture, and nature are what we are trying to protect. This is what is valuable and worth fighting for. In a rapidly changing Arctic, how do we inspire connection and belonging? How do we communicate that what may be a novel extreme environment for others is our home? Possibly, the answer lies in further exploration and participation in these collaborative networks, north2north exchanges, and sharing of our experiences and unique challenges facing us across the Arctic region.

Table of Contents

  1. Letter from the President

    By Lars Kullerud

  2. Editorial

    By Outi Snellman

  3. UArctic – an Indispensable Arctic Actor

    By Annika Saarikko

  4. Growing Connections Between Scotland and UArctic

    By Richard Lochhead

  5. Canada’s Vision for Arctic Youth Empowerment

    By David Sproule

  6. In Memoriam: Oliver William (Bill) Heal, 1934-2021

  7. Arctic Philanthropist: Interview with Frederik Paulsen

    By Hannele Palviainen

  8. Interviews of UArctic Board members: Anne Husebekk

    By Arne O. Holm

  9. Interviews of UArctic Board members: Evon Peter

    By Arne O. Holm

  10. Interviews of UArctic Board members: Mikhail Pogodaev

    By Arne O. Holm

  11. Becoming Circumpolar: Reflections on Origins and Outcomes

    By Amanda Graham

  12. New Directions in Circumpolar Studies: Launching the Læra Institute

    By Anthony Speca, Anthony Speca, Heather Nicol and Gary Wilson

  13. UArctic at a Glance

  14. Arena for the Gap Analysis of the Existing Arctic Science Co-Operations

    By Hanna Lappalainen and Stephany Mazon

  15. North-Eastern Federal University: Sustainable Development & Bridging the Arctic and Asia

    By Vladimir Suzdalov

  16. UArctic-HIT Training Centre: A Bridge Between Arctic and Chinese Universities

    By Yi-Fan Li

  17. 14 Years of Arctic Indigenous Collaboration with BEBO – How Has It Been?

    By Marina Falevitch and Mika Aromäki

  18. Collecting Knowledge from Finnmark’s Plateau to Japan

    By Amanda Åsberg

  19. Arctic Makes: Observations, Lessons, and Solutions from the Geographic Periphery

    By Svetlana Usenyuk-Kravchuk and Timo Jokela

  20. CHARTER – Towards a Broader Understanding of Arctic Complexity

    By Philip Burgess

  21. Eating Plants to Mitigate the Impacts of Climate Change on Tundra?

    By Isabel C. Barrio et al

  22. Improved Water Access and Sanitary Conditions in Rural Arctic Settlements

    By Pernille Erland Jensen and Aaron Dotson

  23. The Arctic Yearbook: An Open Access Platform for Arctic Studies and Research

    By Lassi Heininen and Heather Exner-Pirot

  24. The Battle of the Arctic: To Drill or Not to Drill?

    By Angelina Giordano

  25. 6G as a Universal Connectivity Provider in the 2030s

    By Harri Saarnisaari, Hanna Saarela and Marja-Matinmikko-Blue

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