When you are doing research in one of the most remote, least populated and largest wild areas left of the planet, it can help to take a baby or two along.
That is one of the discoveries, and part of her many adventures, that 糖心传媒 anthropology Professor and Chair Katherine Reedy has made after conducting research for more than 20 years in Aleut villages located along the nearly 1,200-mile-long chain of Aleutian Islands that stretch westward from mainland Alaska toward the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.
Reedy, an 糖心传媒 native who earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and her master鈥檚 and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, England, first started completing research in the Aleutians in 1995 as volunteer, and has been taking trips to the region annually ever since, 鈥渆xcept years when I was having babies.鈥
Those babies, Alex and Gus, now age 17 and 13 respectively, proved to be a boon in her interactions with indigenous Aleuts who she has interviewed for a variety of studies.
鈥淲hen I first went up there I didn鈥檛 have kids, and then when I started having kids it seemed like the people in the villages were more interested in my kids than what I was doing,鈥 Reedy said. 鈥淥ne time I was there without them and this woman said, 鈥榙on鈥檛 come back unless you bring your kids.鈥 They love kids.鈥
Her kids, in turn, have enjoyed their time in the Aleutians exploring, fishing and interacting with resident children.
When visiting, Reedy has benefitted from the generosity of the Aleuts.
鈥淲e try to eat what they are eating and they have been so generous,鈥 she said. 鈥淪ometimes we get whatever is in the freezer, because they鈥檒l be trying to fill their freezers for this year so they鈥檒l give us last year鈥檚 fish, or there have been cases when they give us a rod and reel and said 鈥榞o down here and you鈥檒l catch some pink salmon鈥 and we did. They are just so proud of their food that they want us to taste it and experience it.鈥
She has come home with gifts of dried fish, smoked fish, jars of salmon berry jam and other foods.
Aleuts eat a lot of salmon, cod and other fish. Hunters also harvest sea mammals such as sea lion or harbor seals and waterfowl. They also collect a lot of salmon berries and moss berries, the latter which Reedy described as 鈥渓ittle hard berries that are really so sour that you have to mix them with a lot of sugar.鈥 On some islands, the Aleuts hunt caribou and other land mammals.
The Aleutians are in an extreme environment and Reedy has had some unusual experiences completing her research, a few that are recounted in brief below.
鈥Volcano explosion. The Aleutian Islands and the Aleutian Range have more than 50 active volcanoes and once, in 2009 when flying in small plane from Anchorage to Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, Reedy witnessed Mount Redoubt erupt.
鈥淲e had to refuel in King Salmon to top of off the tank and when we took off, boom, it erupted,鈥 Reedy said. 鈥淲e had all been looking at it out the windows because it had been puffing. We didn鈥檛 really feel anything, but all of sudden, the plume was way up in the sky and we were just all, 鈥榦h my god,鈥 and were just freaking out.鈥
The passengers still managed to take photos, but it was 鈥渢oo close for comfort, and I didn鈥檛 feel like we should be there,鈥 she added.
鈥Scary boat ride. Once, when riding the ferry, Reedy got to experience what the locals call a 鈥渞oll.鈥
鈥淭hey warn you it is possible and you are praying it doesn鈥檛 happen and then it happens,鈥 she said. 鈥淪o we were coming from King Cove around the corner to the big dock in Cold Bay and just the way the water and current runs right there it can do this (holding up her hands, showing a wall and trough of water) so the boat just went on its side. That was terrifying. And I don鈥檛 swim.鈥
鈥Mobbed by Eagles, and not the Don Henley kind. Reedy was with a friend in Dutch Harbor and drove to the top of a hilltop offering fine views of the village and ocean and where a lot of immature bald eagles were roosting on the bluff. The two got out of the car to read an interpretive sign about the area鈥檚 World War II history.
鈥淭he juveniles just started dive-bombing us and we didn鈥檛 even know if we had time to even open the door and get into the truck or just dive under the truck,鈥 she said. 鈥淭he juveniles are the worst. It seems like they have something to prove.鈥
鈥The bear and the truck. The villages at the end of the Alaska Peninsula deal with coastal brown bears, which are subspecies of grizzly bears, but only larger. Reedy has had a couple close encounters with them, the most memorable was in King Cove when a person left garbage in truck parked in front of the house she was staying in.
鈥淎nd this bear came over and was snooping around and could smell the trash and finally figured out where it was 鈥 we were watching this whole thing through the window,鈥 Reedy said. 鈥淎nd it got into the trash and was making a mess, and eventually got up on the cab and starting jumping up and down and smashed the whole truck. That was hilarious.鈥
鈥Big wind. Once, while she was staying in King Cove, a big storm with 鈥渟ideways rains鈥 moved in that featured winds strong enough to blow over parked vans, tear the lights off of crabbing boats moored in the bay and blow the roofs off buildings, including the one Reedy had been renting.
鈥淪o that day I had gone up to a friend鈥檚 house to stay with her daughter while she was traveling and that night the storm hit and blew the roof off the house I鈥檇 been staying in,鈥 she said. 鈥淧eople had gone to look for me and they didn鈥檛 know I had gone to say with this friend. And I went back to the house, it was just a living room and sky.鈥
Research Highlights
For the past 24 years while completing both academic and applied research in the Aleutian Islands, 糖心传媒鈥檚 Katherine Reedy, chair and professor of anthropology, has experienced changing insights into the Aleuts she has worked with. The focus of her research is community sustainability.
There are 13 major Aleut villages on different islands and Reedy has done research in 11 of them. Every village is different, some have small populations, such as Nikolski, which has about 25 residents, to the largest, Unalaska/Dutch Harbor, what has more than 4,000 residents, although at the latter only about 250 are indigenous Aleuts.
鈥淢y visits are usually for weeks, but it depends on the project, depends on who is with me, and depends on the weather,鈥 Reedy said. 鈥淚 think for Atka it took us two days to get there and four days to get home. That was more than spring break allowed so we had to explain ourselves when we got back.鈥
Most of the research has been funded by subsistence organizations, like the federal government that sets aside money for doing baseline studies of subsistence activity in these communities. For example, since 2016 she has been funded by a three-year, $331,126 grant from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and the Office of Subsistence Management to study subsistence in communities on the lower Alaska Peninsula.
鈥淏ut I use those projects to address bigger questions about community sustainability, about in-and-out migration, future fisheries, their engagement with commercial fishing, which is so volatile that you just can鈥檛 predict from one year to the next, and now with the climatic effects throwing things off, it makes it even more challenging,鈥 she said.
She also looks at the health of the communities, getting a sense of the overall economic and social well-being of the residents.
鈥淚鈥檝e been doing household interviews in every community and in some cases 100 percent of the households have been interviewed and that鈥檚 pretty remarkable for this kind of work and the logistics for doing it,鈥 she said.
These subsistence surveys ask about everything from what kinds of animals households are harvesting annually, from salmon, other fish and sea mammals, to berries, land mammals, birds and eggs.
鈥淲e ask about sharing,鈥 she said. 鈥淚f you get 100 sockeye salmon, what do you do with it? Do you keep it all to yourself? Do you smoke it, jar it, give it away? Where does it go? We ask who do you share it with and how far so that includes people outside the community, outside in Anchorage or even outside the state and try to track those connections and who is really taking care of who.鈥
Survey also asks about income, expenses and vocations other than subsistence activities.
鈥淭hese are very expensive communities in which to live,鈥 she said. 鈥淎 lot of tourists go to Anchorage and get sticker shock, but that is the cheapest part of the whole state. The cost of a gallon of milk and gallon of gas can be about $12 each the further out the chain you go.鈥
The span of time she has been visiting the Aleutians gives her a special perspective.
鈥淩eturning as often as I do I see a lot of changes,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 see kids grow up and consider their futures. Some of them I knew when they were little kids and now they are parents.鈥
She has found that the Aleut villages and people are more interconnected than she originally thought, something that may have been helped by the Internet and cell phones that are now available.
鈥淚nitially I had a sense of isolation, working in the eastern communities, but broadening out in those other communities I do see the connections,鈥 Reedy said. 鈥淧eople are sharing food long, long distances, they are starting relationships long distances and, in some cases, sending their kids into another village because they want them to have different opportunities. There is more of a community rather than an eastern and western difference.鈥
Reedy has also become aware of some of the effect of climate change on this region. She serves North Pacific Fishery Management Council鈥檚 Scientific and Statistical Committee, where climate science is regularly presented and discussed. Among those issues is the 鈥渨arm blob,鈥 the scientific term describing a huge warming body of water within the North Pacific that is wide and deep in the water column 鈥渢hat is affecting everything,鈥 from salmon returns and cod and pollock fish populations, to a wide array of subsistence activities.
She has also observed a changing weather pattern. It is 鈥渄efinitely鈥 warmer and there is more storminess in the last 15 or 20 years, Reedy said. She has had multiple summers in recent years in these villages when the weather was 鈥済orgeous the whole time.鈥
鈥淚 took a crew to Sand Point a couple of years ago for spring break and it was sunny and gorgeous the whole time we were there. We didn鈥檛 see a drop of rain,鈥 she said. 鈥淭hat is really unusual,鈥 she continued. 鈥淚t is good for tourists and maybe for people not working there, but for the Aleuts it was nerve wracking. It shouldn鈥檛 be so calm and nice at that time of year.鈥