Relocation of Alaska's sinking Newtok village halted
Setback for tribal communities threatened by climate change as government freezes funding over local political dispute
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- theguardian.com, Monday 5 August 2013 08.00 EDT
An
aerial view of Newtok, Alaska where the eroding bank along the Ninglick
River has long been a problem for the village. Photograph: Al Grillo/AP
An Alaskan village's quest to move to higher ground and avoid being drowned by
climate change has sputtered to a halt, The Guardian has learned.
Newtok,
on the Bering Sea coast, is sinking and the highest point in the
village – the school which sits perched atop 20ft pilings - could be
underwater by 2017. But the village's relocation effort broke down this
summer because of an internal political conflict and a freeze on
government funds.
The Guardian wrote about the strains placed on
Newtok by the erosion which is tearing away at the land, and at the
villagers' efforts to move to a new site, known as Mertarvik,
in an interactive series in May.
Those
tensions fed a rebellion against the village leadership, the Newtok
Traditional Council, which had run the village for seven years without
facing an election, and the administrator overseeing the relocation
effort, Stanley Tom. His critics said he had botched the move to
Mertarvik, and neglected the existing village.
Since October,
Newtok residents voted repeatedly to elect a new roster of candidates to
the council. They also tried to remove Tom. But the council refused to
recognise the results, and Tom refused to step aside.
In July, the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) took the unusual step of intervening in
the internal dispute, and ruled the old council – which was working
closely with Tom – no longer represented the villagers of Newtok. In an
11 July letter, Eufrona O'Neill, acting regional director of the BIA,
noted the agency generally did not intervene in tribal political
conflicts.
But she said the stand-off put the village at risk:
"The continuation of a leadership vacuum would be detrimental to the
best interests of the tribe, particularly in the present circumstances,
where the community is in the midst of trying to physically relocate to a
new village site due to serious erosion occurring at the present site."
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