WEBVTT

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My dear sir, Mr. E. H. Harriman,

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a wealthy New Yorker is going to Alaska.

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He desires to take a dozen or so
scientific men as his guests.

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Mr. Harriman requests me to ask
you to join the expedition.

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And I earnestly trust you\'ll do so.

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The opportunity is one in a lifetime.

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Very truly yours, C. Hart Merriam.

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[music]

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A question, I will ask gently,

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how many American people today
remember Edward Harriman,

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not so many. What was Harriman,
a great industrialist?

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What\'s his place in history?
Well, I\'m not so sure.

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Maybe Harriman the industrialist
greatest place in history is that

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he brought the naturalist to Alaska.

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The Harriman Boys never ever would
have been able to reconcile

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where we are today. I don\'t
think wildest imagination,

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anyone in America in 1900

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could have conceived of Alaska in 2000.

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[music]

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The original Harriman Alaska expedition

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took place in 1899. The Harriman Alaska
Expedition was a strange episode

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in… in American Science. It\'s an amazing
group of people who were on that boat.

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They wanted to categorize everything, they wanted to catalogue
everything, they wanted to write it down, they wanted to preserve it.

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There was a botanist onboard, a bird person
than that individual was expected to capture

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the biological diversity of… of
this massive expanse of coast.

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The Harriman Alaska Expedition
Retraced took place 102 years later.

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Whose jurisdiction is this? (inaudible)
forest. Well, there\'s a big difference

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between now and 100 years ago, isn\'t it? Hundred
years ago they could do what they wanted.

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The original trip was the brainchild
of Edward Henry Harriman.

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That\'s where the story starts. The man named Edward
Henry Harriman, who was the chairman of the board

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for the Union Pacific Railroad.
He had no background in science.

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He had an insatiable curiosity about almost
everything. The retracing was the brainchild of

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Tom (inaudible) of Clark Science Center, Smith
College. Are there limits on how many can land here?

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Yes. There are. So it\'s 20… No matter where we
are in here, its 25 at a time. Correct. Okay.

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Both expeditions follow the same route.

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They went along the entire coast of Alaska.
(inaudible). Cape Fox.

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Glacier Bay. (inaudible). Letisha Island. The (inaudible).
The Orca canoeing. (inaudible). (inaudible). (inaudible)

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The south end of Anga Island. Dutch Harbor. The
Bering Sea. Bogus Bogoslof Island. (inaudible).

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St. Paul. Little (inaudible). Gamble. Small
(inaudible) village called (inaudible).

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[music]

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Edward Harriman\'s purpose is still
debated today. Perhaps he came for bear.

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Harriman the sportsman very
much wanted to shoot one.

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Perhaps it was for minerals, fur or fish.

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Harriman the businessman knew that
fortunes could be made in Alaska.

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Or perhaps it was simply
love, love of nature.

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For Edward Harriman knew that
in the making of fortunes

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wilderness can often be destroyed.

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Alaska itself was in a very fragile state then.
It was one of the last great pristine wilderness

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is in North America, but it did
also recently been penetrated by

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the canning industry, the mining industry,
the gold rush. It was on the verge of losing

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that wilderness that most
people associated with it.

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The purpose of the Harriman Expedition
Retrace was to understand change

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to witness the differences that
a century has made in Alaska.

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We\'re seeing this landscape
at two moments in time.

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We\'re seeing it through the eyes
of that earlier expedition in 1899

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and we\'re seeing it now at the beginning of the
21st century, and we\'re asking what\'s the shift,

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what\'s the change. Harriman
was coming to take a look,

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to value, to test the opportunity

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and Harriman was sort of the ultimate
tourist. It\'s sort of the ultimate adventure.

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Let\'s go, take a look, but
let\'s do with some dignity,

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let\'s deal with some professionalism,
let\'s get the best… let\'s get the best.

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Harriman started with the best. C. Hart Merriam,
first Chief of the U.S. Biological Survey.

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Merriam jumped at the chance to go.
He even agree to recruit the others,

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selecting a veritable who\'s who of American science
and art. His first pick was John Burroughs,

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the best love nature writer in America.

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John Burroughs. Dr. Dall was our Alaska
specialist having previously visited

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the territory 13 times. And John Muir,
we had an authority on glaciers

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and a (inaudible) that he would not allow the rest
of the party to have an opinion on the subject.

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Dr. Fernow was our professor of forestry.
Then, my professors Emerson,

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Palache, and Gilbert could not tell us about
geology or Brewer and Gannett about geography,

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Merriam about the mammals, Ridgeway,
Fisher or Elliot about birds,

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Devereux about mines or Grinnell and Dellenbaugh
about Indians, it could hardly be worth of a while

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to try to find out. The two scientists here

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social scientist and a physical scientist

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(inaudible) from the area and we\'re talking about
a phenomenon that\'s in the headlines today…

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The modern expedition traveled on the cruise ship
the Clipper Odyssey. Once again the ship carried

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a distinguished team of scientists, writers and
artists. But this time the experts included

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women and Alaskan natives.
Harriman ship the George W. Elder

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steamed out of Seattle on May 31st, 1899.

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The Clipper Odyssey left British Columbia

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on July 22nd, 2001.

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(inaudible) turn off its light, 1899 Harriman
Alaska Expedition Retrace is underway.

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Neither expedition was a
bare bones operation.

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This trip, we have 118 passengers
uh… traveling with crew of 72.

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Our hour party, 126 persons in all

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included 14 Harriman Family members
and servants, two taxidermists,

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two stenographers, 11 hunters and packers.
Officers, engineers, deck hands,

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10 housekeepers, 4 gentlemen serving at 2
bars. Two physicians, one trained nurse,

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one doctor of divinity. Its expedition
travel with GPS and with satellite phones

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and with cell phones and with GPS mapping.

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Harriman too brought the latest in technology. He had an
enormous (inaudible) he had hauled onboard in Seattle.

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It had a six-foot speaker. Awesome Buko. Does
everybody know what Awesome Buko is? Yes.

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They take a long cattle for food,
they take a lot of chickens.

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There\'s a milk cow to provide milk.
There are cases of champagne,

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cases of cigars. They could
enjoy almost luxurious life.

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[music]

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Harriman was in 1899 familiar with luxury,
but this has not always been the case.

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Born in New Jersey in 1848,
he left school at age 14

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to become a Wall Street errand boy.
At 22, he was

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a full-fledged member of the New York Stock
Exchange. At 31 he married into a railroad family.

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Two years later, he bought
his first rail line,

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34 miles of track in upstate New York.
At 50 he seized

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control of the vast but ailing Union
Pacific Railroad and spent months

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inspecting every mile, station,
flat car and engine on the line.

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Harriman got his railroad running smoothly,
but in the process exhausted himself.

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When his doctor told him to rest, Harriman
decided to vacation in the wilds of Alaska,

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the last American frontier.
Alaska has been somewhat like

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a colony ever since white
people started coming here

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there has been a wave of exploitation
after wave of exploitation

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from whales, and sea otters,
and timber, and fishing

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and of course now oil is the big one
followed close after by industrial tourism.

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And so what Alaskans have seen is

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this constant process of outsiders
coming, making money and leaving,

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and often leaving the place much worse
than how it was when they came.

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The first leg of the 1899 expedition

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was along the inside passage. An
island studded coastal sea-lane

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stretching from British Columbia to the Gulf of
Alaska. Here, the expedition discovered gold.

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The gold rush now three years old.

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Thousands of men had gone into
the region on the wildest Vegas

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rumor of gold. Alaska is full of such
adventurers ransacking the land.

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Men hoping for new Klondike, hoping to
be the first in new and rich fields.

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Forty thousand people

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go into the Klondike Region for the
gold rush, but only 400 of those people

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find gold in quantities that you could go back
later and say, \'Well, they made their fortune.\'

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That\'s 1%. It\'s only the people like
Harriman who can make opportunity

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actually come to exist in Alaska because
it\'s going to take huge amounts of money

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and they\'re the people with the huge amounts
of money. At the mining Town of Skagway,

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Harriman took his scientists for a
ride on the White Pass Railroad.

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One of Alaska\'s first rail lines build
to carry miners into the goldfields.

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Although there\'s no real clear
evidence that he was here to scout out

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investments in mining or in a railroad. It\'s real
hard to believe that railroads weren\'t on his mind.

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People had immense difficulty getting
into that remote corner of Alaska

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and if only one could provide transportation into the
interior, think of the wealth that could be reaped

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from that landscape. When Harriman
solved a railroad across the White Pass

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or gold mines he saw the country live with
possibilities but also with forebodings.

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When he saw the horrendous
blighted landscape

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caused by the mining there\'s no doubt
that he saw the duality of this,

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that the progress carried this awful price
of destroying the landscape in the process.

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Onboard the elder were two men deeply
committed to protecting the landscape.

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One was John Muir, the founder of
the Sierra Club. He was at 59,

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a passionate Evangelist for the cause of
wilderness. He had spent months and even years

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on his own in wild places. This
was his eighth trip to Alaska.

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The other was John Burroughs, the
best-known nature writer of his day.

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The comfort loving Burroughs lived in
New York\'s bucolic Catskill region

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and had never traveled west of the
Mississippi. But if he did not travel,

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his writing did. He had sold over
two million copies of his 27 books.

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Their personalities could not have
been more different, Burroughs was

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quiet reclusive, introspective. He called
himself the dreamer aboard the ship.

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Muir was outgoing uh… aggressive.

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He was probably the most reluctant
guest that Edward Harriman had.

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He was suspicious of a millionaire railroad tycoon.
Harriman after all represented the class of business

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that Muir as Head of the Sierra Club
regarded as a threat to the wilderness.

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He agreed to go only because he would see
parts of Alaska that he had never seen before

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and probably at that point in his life, he thought
this was the last time to get to see them.

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John Burroughs.

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June 8th, 1899, finds us in Glacier
Bay on our way to the newer glacier.

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We were in the midst of strange
scenes hard to render in words.

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The miles upon miles of
moraines on either hand,

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gray loosely piled from
50 to 200 feet high,

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sparkling seawater dotted with
blue bergs and loops drift ice.

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Nothing we had read or heard prepared
us for the color of the eyes.

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Especially, the newly exposed parts.
It\'s deep almost indigo blue.

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[music]

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Glacier Bay was the first truly
wild stop on the voyage.

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For five days the company happily explored the
landscape, shooting and trapping animal specimens,

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mapping waterways, measuring the
glaciers that almost surrounded the bay.

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[music]

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In the time of Harriman, we knew about
glacier ice, we knew how it formed

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and how it flowed. How it made the kind of landscapes
that we see here. How it carves the mountains.

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Most of these glaciers are in what
is called Catastrophic Retreat,

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which means that they are
retreating very rapidly.

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John Muir was an authority on glaciers. Glacier
Bay was his old play land and homestead.

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He had lived for months by the massive
river of ice now called the Muir Glacier.

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In 1899, he was amazed to discover that
it had receded by a full two miles

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in just 20 years. Today,
scientists know that

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the entire width of Glacier Bay was once
covered by ice. A glacier that has receded

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70 miles in 150 years 150 year.

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What could be more dramatic about
150-year period than this.

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I don\'t think any of the global warming predictions
come close to this kind of environmental change

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in such a short period of time. Whatever
we are contributing to global warming

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and I\'m sure that\'s significant uh… it\'s
sitting on top of this larger trend.

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Global warming is… is a long steady process
that\'s been uh… going on at a rather rapid rate

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uh… for… for quite some time. Now ever
since the Industrial Revolution in fact

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and we can actually track it by looking at
the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere

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and correlate this with warming. There\'s
certainly some effect that humans have had

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to help produce this warming, but there
are probably other natural normal climate

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uh… cycles that are operating at the
same time. So I think the question

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for modern scientists today is whether the…

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whether the human impact is the whole story or
if the human impact is only part of the story.

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[music]

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One of the things I love about
the mountain, I just love

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is the way the mist weave
in and out and they create

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these little scenes that only lasts
for an instant and they\'re gone.

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The cloud it just floats… floats along.

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It\'s hard to know whether it was
Harriman\'s idea or Merriam\'s idea

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to include artists, and poets
and writers on this trip.

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Perhaps a little bit of both. But it was a stroke of
genius because he made this trip something different.

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It took it that next step above a… a
strict scientific exploring expedition.

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Frederick Dellenbaugh and R. Swain
Gifford, the artists who accompanied

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the original Harriman Expedition did
work that\'s documentary. Their work is

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very observational. Prior to
the invention of photography

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and especially to the invention of cameras that
could be easily used on expeditions of this sort,

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the role of the artist was really to
document, to record and to be as dispassion

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and a recorder as possible. What I\'m hoping
to do is something that\'s more reflective of

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the beginning of the 21st century
than the end of the 19th century.

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In 1899, there was also a
photographer aboard the Elder.

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He was there largely by coincidence. The
year before the Harriman Expedition

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George Bird Grinnell and C. Hart Merriam were
hiking together on Mount Rainier in Washington

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and they became totally lost.
By sheer chance,

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a young photographer found them and
help them home. This was Edward Curtis.

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The chance meeting would shape Curtis\' career
and alter the future of American photography.

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When Merriam needed a photographer to take
to Alaska, he remembered the young Curtis

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and asked him to come. Curtis had
been given a specific assignment

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which was to document the geology and geography of the
area, so we have wonderful photographs of landscapes

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that they passed. But
Curtis\' budding career

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was very nearly cut-short in Glacier Bay.
Expedition members left the ship in small boats

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to get a better look at their surroundings
as they would often do throughout the trip.

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In Glacier Bay, these outings were
far riskier than they realized.

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It\'s quite dangerous to approach the face of the
glaciers not knowing, the potential hazard.

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When you first came in here up to the face of the glacier,
it might be quiet, but there\'s a lot of icebergs around.

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The face of these glaciers can be up
to 300 feet tall, the calving face

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which actually breaking off, you know, on a normal day
pieces of ice falling off the size of most people\'s homes,

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sometimes the size of very large buildings.

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[music]

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Edward Curtis and his assistant sat in a
canoe near Muir Glacier, the face of the ice

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suddenly cracked and crumbled. The rest
of the expedition watched in horror

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
as a massive iceberg crashed into the water, a
wave 30 feet high swept over the tiny canoe.

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
I thought they would doomed as the
great wave bore down upon them.

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
The wave rolled on like a mighty earthquake
sweeping dozens of smaller birds before it,

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
but both men are splendid canoe
man and as the wave came

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
they paddled bravely right into its space
and to my amazement rose up over it.

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
As successive waves came, they were met in the same
way. Finally, the boys got ashore with their canoe.

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
The site was one never to be forgotten.

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
C. Hart Merriam.

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
[sil.]

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
John Burroughs.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
We\'re lingered in Glacier Bay and in an
adjacent water five or six days sending out

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
botanical, zoological and glacial
expeditions in various directions.

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
Yes, and one hunting party to stir
up the bears in Howling Valley.

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
John Muir told Edward Harriman about a
valley some miles away, so full of big game

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
but it was called Howling Valley. The
maps titled it simply (inaudible).

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
Muir neglected to mention that his own
journey there had nearly cost him his life

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
and Harriman eager to bag an
Alaskan brown bear set right off.

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
There was almost impossible to get to.
They had to hike

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
24 miles across the treacherous edge
of a glacier through very thick snow

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
and very foul weather. And when they
got about 16 miles into the trip,

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
their guide, a man who had had
once scouted for George Custer,

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
said, \'That\'s enough for me. I\'m going
back to the boat.\' Harriman trudged on

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
and it was so tough they had to rope themselves
together to keep up in the… in the deep snow.

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
They finally made it to the valley.
No animals

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
and all they could do was turn around and
trudged the 24 miles back through the storm

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
and come home empty-handed.
Frederick Dellenbaugh.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
Dr. Merriam got rheumatism in his knees
and he came back pretty well crippled.

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
Harriman looked used up, but seem to
standard well or better than any of them.

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
There might not be any bears in Howling
Valley after all Burroughs wrote,

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
Muir\'s imagination may
have done all the howling.

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
June 14th, 1899, we came into Sitka Island

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
studied in mountain (inaudible)
harbor under drooping skies.

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
Sitka is one of the most beautiful
places anywhere in North America.

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
I know very few places that are as beautiful
and yet it is also a human community

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
that has been on that site for centuries
now. That has a very rich culture.

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
Russian heritage, Scandinavian
heritage, Tlingit heritage.

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
My name is (inaudible) which means big
mountaineer of Mount Fairweather.

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
I am a raven of the (inaudible) House,

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
the (inaudible) clan. Farmers
living here back in 1899

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
Mr. Harriman came in with a big yacht. He
probably impressed the heck out of me.

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
I\'d look at their yacht and say, \'Oh, boy! White
man lived pretty good, I want some of that.\'

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
I probably would. When Harriman was here a hundred
years ago native people were living off the land,

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
but there were these two forces
wanting to assimilate native people.

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
Native people entering the cash economy

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
and also the repression of native culture
and languages by Western forces,

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
teachers and missionaries. When the
European people first came here

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
they immediately assumed
we were (inaudible)

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
and no one asked us about our religion.

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
We were a very spiritual people and
we were always taught to respect

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
another man\'s religion and his right
to communicate with his creator,

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
but no one asked us that. What the government
wanted to do, what the missionaries wanted to do,

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
what compassionate Americans wanted
to do was to assimilate those people

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
to acculturate them to American values, so that they
could survive. And I think that the Harriman Expedition

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
virtually to a person saw the
native population in that way.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
[sil.]

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
In Sitka, Harriman holds ashore his enormous
graphophone. He used this primitive tape recorder

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
to record a group of Tlingit men and
preserved a sample of a language

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
that seemed about to disappear. Since Tlingit
were required to speak English in church,

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
in school and at work.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
Certainly, when Harriman came through

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
uh… that was a tough time to be
a native a hundred years ago.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
Today, it\'s a lot better and at least
part of the reason that\'s better is

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
because we have an economic foothold
because of native corporations

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
and because of our participation in the
political and economic future of this country.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
Edward Harriman in fact almost
all Americans of his day

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
would be surprised by the reversal of fortunes
that has taken place over the last century.

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
But the status of native peoples
in Alaska is quite different

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
than it is in the lower 48. The United
States Congress halted treaty-making

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
with Native Americans right after the Civil War. In
other words, right at the time of the Alaska purchase,

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
so there were no treaties
with Alaska Natives.

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
The practical effect of that was that there
weren\'t any Indian reservations in Alaska.

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
Since they were not restricted to reservations, Alaskan
Natives continued to live on the land and claim it

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
as their own. In the 1960s, when oil
companies drew up plans for a pipeline

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
across Alaska, the natives
asserted their rights to the land.

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
They went to Congress, they rejected uh… going through
the quarter claims because they wanted to have land.

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
They didn\'t want to have just money.
We want to control of land.

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
In 1971, Congress passed

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act
Annex which turned over 44 million acres

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
and nearly a billion dollars to Alaska
Natives. A network of Native Corporations

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
was established to administer
the money and oversee the land.

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
The Alaskan Natives are in a position to sit down and say,
\'Okay, here are the areas that we traditionally utilized

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
and we weren\'t entitled to these areas,
\' and they get title to those areas.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
For the Harriman Expedition,

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
the native people were never the main focus. The
scientists had come to study glaciers and mountains,

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
flora and fauna. In Sitka, what was
most striking to them was the obvious.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
They could see the trees.
For much of the forest

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
of the Continental United States had already been logged
to devastation, but the expeditions chief expert on trees

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:58.000
surprisingly did not see Alaska\'s trees as a gold
mine. A sombre mixed forest of hemlock and spruce

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
covers the Alaskan shore westward.
The even temperate moist climate

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
accounts for the luxuriance forest cover of
conifers. Luxuriance is a relative term here

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
since the larger portion of the area
does not contain trees fit for lumber.

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
Bernhard Fernow. Bernhard Fernow was

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
the Elders resident forester, an elegant
impression with musical talents.

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
He was also chair of the ship\'s entertainment committee.
Bernhard Fernow played the piano on the original expedition

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
and so I\'m going to try to emulate
this and… and play a few pieces.

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
[music]

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
In addition to the small value of these
woods, the conditions under which

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
lumbering would have to be carried out and the distance
from markets means this forest we\'d be left untouched.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
[music]

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
Fernow was talking at the turn of the century about
practices when… when everybody expected to harvest

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
large clear logs and didn\'t expect that
any lumber would have knots in it.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
What he saw as a very complex forest.
He saw it was very patchy, very uneven.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
He was concerned about what is the wood quality,
how can you make money off of logging that forest.

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
Bernhard Fernow\'s prediction that the
Alaskan forest would not be logged,

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
actually proved correct
all the way until 1947.

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
When the federal government began to
subsidize pulp mills, thousands of acres

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
in the Tongass National Forest and southeast Alaska
were cut and the woods sold a dirt cheap prices.

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
Many Alaskan welcome the
jobs, but to others

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
that clear cutting was an outrage.

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
I\'m also a David Camp of Sitka Police
Department, I am notifying you

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
that you\'re required by law to leave at this
time, did you understand that? There came about

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
a very… very deep and destructive
conflict in Southeast Alaska

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
between people who said, \'We don\'t want our
forest treated this way, \' and people who said,

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
\'Whatever we have to do to have jobs is
okay.\' (inaudible) because your chain here.

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
How did you get chained here? (inaudible).
You chained yourself here?

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Two things happened.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
The economics of pulp mills didn\'t pan out.
They were losing money

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
and people in Southeast Alaska and all over
the country said, \'We will not countenance

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
what\'s being done to the forest in
order to sustain these industries.\'

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
This forest has been continuously a
forest for hundreds of years basically.

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
You could see that large hemlock in
the background here. That tree is

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
I\'m sure at least 250 to 300 years old and
that grew under the canopy of old forest.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
And beside you can see trees of many
different size and shape, and you can see

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
layer upon… layer upon layer of leaves.
Now let\'s look at this forest over here.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
You see all we\'ve got is this
is a forest that was clear cut

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
approximately 50 years ago. They\'re about the same size
here and really there\'s only one layer canopy above us,

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
so it\'s a very simple forest. So difficult
for plants to grow under this forest,

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
and it\'s strictly a timber forest.
The decision to clear cut forest

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
is a very long-term one. By the 1990s,

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
the pulp mills had closed their doors, but clear
cutting still continues in Southeast Alaska.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
[music]

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
When I fly over Hoonah I normally will take a book and
read because I can\'t stand look out the window and see it,

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
I mean, for miles and… miles and miles in every direction,
there is nothing but clear-cut. Hoonah Indian Association

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
uh… for the past 10 years has spoken out
against any clear-cut logging in the region

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
and the unfortunate part of it is, is that it\'s
our cooperation who are doing the logging.

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
[sil.]

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
On native titled land which is
private land. The natives are free

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
to do anything they want to with the land and one of
the ways that they have attempted to generate profit

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
for the corporation is to clear-cut the trees
and ship them wherever there\'s a market.

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
Now I don\'t have anything against logging, don\'t get me wrong.
I\'ve lived along logging all my life, little (inaudible)

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
caretaking 10-year to log two acres,
you know, I mean, it wasn\'t noticeable

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
and it did uh… supply jobs for people
who want to live work in woods.

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
We got along fine with logs. What
you see here is mass destruction.

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
This is disrespect. This is against culture

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
and on the long run the economy. But we\'re
trying to do is address a lot of objectives.

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
Umm… Some people believe that we should just
preserve the forest. Native should not harvest

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
or extract resources. But we have a
responsibility to advance the again

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
the… the… the social, cultural, economic
welfare of our shareholders. We cannot submit

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
resolution after resolution, stage protest
after protest and we had no recourse.

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
And we\'ve been able to slow the harvesting umm…
volume down with the umm… U.S. Forest Service

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
because we have a process. We can take
it to… through the court systems.

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
With our own corporations we have no recourse. They say, \'They
need to provide this income for all of the shareholders.\'

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
One could believe that

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
all of the things about (inaudible)
are caring native people apart.

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
The notion of… of corporations having
nothing to do with cultural values

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
and who we are as native
people, but if you look at

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
(inaudible) a little more deeply
I think it also gives you hope

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
and maybe even some inspiration. Because
(inaudible) corporations own the land

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
subject to congressional act in fee simple.
We could sell the land

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
at anytime and several of the
corporations have gone through bankruptcy

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
and never in any of that the
(inaudible) Corporations sell land

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
because to do so would be to give up their
connection to what makes them native.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
What we have in Sitka is a
classic confrontation of

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
a sort of an old established American
way of looking at the world which is,

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
the forest is here for the… for the
harvesting and a newer point of view

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
which says that the natural world
is valuable for other reasons

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
than just tearing trees
off the mountain sides.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
There\'s a troubling issue, the United
States is far and away the largest consumer

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
of… of wood products. And where\'s
it that wood gonna come from.

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
Almost all of our red cedar goes into the United
States markets uses this home siding, fence posts.

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
As we protected our forest, in the United States
we increased our import of timber products

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
from Canada which has lower environmental standards. And then
working in South America, there\'s a lot of concern there.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
Areas like the (inaudible) if there\'s no
timber program uh… it will simply put pressure

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
in areas that are actually in many ways much more fragile
than the (inaudible), so it\'s a really complicated issue.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
There is… I don\'t see a simple answer here.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
Sitka is said to be one of the rainiest spots
on the coast. People actually live in Sitka

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
from choice and seem to find life sweet.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
This is a very valuable way of living; hunting,
fishing, enjoying the beauty of the land.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
A lot of your city folks who ought to get out of
the city and they\'re moving up to Washington.

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
They\'re spreading further north all the time, so they
could live our lifestyle. Let\'s protect (inaudible).

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
[music]

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
After four warm humid days at Sitka, we turned our
faces for the first time toward the open ocean.

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
The usual Alaska excursion ends
at Sitka, but ours was now

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
only fairly began.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
[music]

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
Okay, hang on!

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
[music]

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
Oh, here\'s a good thing.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
Here\'s two sea otters. Two
sea otters right in here.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:33.000
[music]

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
You can prickle this kelp. And…

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
and what you (inaudible) this
is the flotation device.

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
What we… what we eat pickle is the uh…

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
just this part. You can also slice
them and fry them in frying pan.

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
[music]

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
Look the songbirds are up there.
I ate a (inaudible) at one time

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
that old (inaudible) people here

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
ate (inaudible). It has the consistency of

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
a rubber tire kinda. It
was very… very tough.

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
There\'s a little (inaudible) here. You see the
little (inaudible). Those are… those are edible too.

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
I\'m more likely to know
about it, you can eat it.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
[music]

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
June 24th, 1899,

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
in the early evening, we cited a little cluster
of buildings peeping out of the forest

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
at the base of a lofty mountain,
this was Orca. Where there is

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
a large salmon cannery Khan. The
Harriman Expedition was right here.

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
In 1899, the Orca cannery was
right here and this was a place

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
where Grinnell observed cannery operations.
George Bird Grinnell was

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
a distinguished writer and editor, an expert in Native
American ways of life and an ardent conservationist.

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
At Orca, Grinnell was
shocked and very angry.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
The cannery managers run their factories in the
most wasteful and thought (inaudible) selfish way,

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
grasping eagerly for everything that is within
their reach and thinking nothing of the future.

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
Their motto seems to be, \'If
I don\'t take all I can get,

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
somebody else will.\' George Bird Grinnell.
For all the talk about gold rushes

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
and… and another booms and busts.
Can salmon was… was by and large

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
uh… one of the main drivers
of Alaska\'s economy.

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
The fishing activity that was going on
here was so cutthroat, both in competition

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
among the canneries and so rapacious

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
that he feared that the salmon would go the way
as he put it if the buffalo in the lower 48.

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
In 1899, when Harriman brought his expedition
up to Alaska there was very little

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
in the way of government oversight. The Treasury
Department is in-charge of regulating fisheries.

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
They saw it solely as commerce. They really
didn\'t have an idea as to what was happening

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
biologically for the salmon. Salmon
have a very interesting life history

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
and important part of the life history is that
they come back to a river to spawn. All the salmon

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
in a particular river come up by the
cannery. They all come by the same place,

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
so it\'s easy to take them all. Now if you take all
the fish, you won\'t notice that for a few years

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
because they\'re still adults out to see that are waiting to
come in, but if you do that for two or three years in a row,

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
there won\'t be any fish left in that river. At Harriman\'s
day there are only enough canneries to have local effects.

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
Right after the Harriman Expedition,
the canning industry doubles

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
by 1901 and by 1903 it has
doubled in size again.

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
They\'re cannery (inaudible) up everywhere. The number of fish that
had been caught and canned continued to grow and… grow and grow.

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
It actually wasn\'t until 1919 that
the first serious signs of depletion

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
were apparent and it caused
a panic in the industry.

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
[music]

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
One of the striking features
of the Alaska Fisheries is

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
the extraordinary boom and bust nature of
these economists. In the case of fisheries,

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
you see different waves of fish
being exploited at moments,

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
very intensive exploitation and then the collapse
of the population on which the fisheries dependent.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
The canneries were able to
severely deplete the salmon

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
all over Alaska, so salmon became very scarce,
the Secretary of Interior was coming up here

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
and the President was worried about this place. The people
who lived here wanted to manage their own resources

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
and stop the rapacious over exploitation
of the resources that was occurring

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
because the canneries were based in
Seattle and San Francisco and not here.

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
Finally, in 1957, the salmon found
an unlikely savior, Statehood.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
When Alaska became a state, it was
able to set fishing limits for itself.

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
The salmon became much more abandon
again and when you look down there,

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
there you see salmon swimming around
in the water. This is typical

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
of so much of Alaska today. You
can still see teaming salmon runs

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
in many of the rivers. Today\'s
runs are largely very healthy,

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
but we do see some weakness
(inaudible) really weak runs

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
in the Yukon and Sequim Rivers this year
uh… are a tremendous cause of… of concern

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
and it cries out for
many of the things that

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
Grinnell was saying back in 1899, \'We need more
scientific inquiry. We need to know what\'s going on

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
with these fish and we need stronger
regulation and enforcement of fishing rules.

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
June 25th, 1899,

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
Prince William Sound is shaped like a
spider and open irregular body of water

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
80 miles or more across. We
are in a great ice chest.

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
The mountains are ribbed with glaciers and
the head of the bay is walled within.

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
John Burroughs.

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
It was in Prince William Sound that the
expedition made the most important discovery of

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
the entire voyage. The Elder steamed up to an
enormous glacier on the western side of the Sound

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
and this was as far as they
could go according to the maps,

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
but John Muir spotted a narrow gap between
the ice wall and the rock coastline.

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
He asked Harriman to let him take a small boat to explore
the opening. But Edward Harriman had another idea.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
He ordered the captain and the
pilot to steer the Elder itself

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
right into the passage. The
local pilot refused to do it

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
and in fact he stopped off to his room because he saw the
potential hazards which any prudent mariner would see.

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
Is it deep enough to take a big ship through
there. Can they have any control over the ship

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
with the current the way it is? Wheatear they\'re gonna get
smashed into the glacier. Were they ever get out of there again.

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
In this critical moment
Harriman had to decide

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
whether to say, well, there might be something there
might not. What Harriman did was not only decide that,

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
yes, we\'re gonna go further, but he took over
the helm, so that he would be responsible

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
rather than the captain. Which to me
it just doesn\'t make sense because

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
what good would it financial responsibility do if you\'re
going to lose the whole ship, anyways you\'re all gonna die.

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
They were headed (inaudible) to face
the glacier uh… no control whatsoever,

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
but this current was so strong and it was running
parallel to the face of the glacier that

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
the current kept them away from the ice.
The Elder hugged the rocky shoreline

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
and threaded its way through the channel.

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
The passage was dangerously narrow and threatening,
but gradually opened into a magnificent icy field

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
about 12 miles long. Mr. Harriman ordered the
captain to proceed up the middle of the new field.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
Full speed, sir? Enquired the captain.
Yes, full speed ahead.

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
[music]

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
Muir was right. He… his theory was correct.
They discovered a whole new embayment

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
that had never been studied before. I\'m a
little baffled by how they made it across it

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
because it\'s not really an easy place to
navigate through today. I felt a great deal

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
about how lucky the first expedition was.
They did take

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
a dangerous route they we\'re in uncharted
waters, literally in many places

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
they did not know what to expect.
I think that turn towards

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
the Harriman fjord in the glacier
which they found really did show

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
tremendous bravery. I saw that Mr.
Harriman was uncommon.

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
He was taking a trip for rest and at the
same time managing his exploring guests

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
as if he were a grateful soothing essential
part of his (inaudible) scientific explorers

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
are not easily managed. Nevertheless,
he kept us all in smooth working order

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
looking after everything to the
minutest details. John Muir.

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
John Muir and John Burroughs, both of
them had a dark suspicion of businessmen

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
in their motives that suspicion really
lasted until they got aboard ship

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
and met Harriman, and gradually their suspicions
thought. I know there\'s a deeper connection

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
between Muir and Harriman as different as
those two men were and it takes a great deal

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
of vision and dedication to
do what Edward Harriman did

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
obviously in a world of J. Pierpont
Morgan and Rockefeller and Carnegie.

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
But with John Muir it took a great
deal of… of dedication and commitment

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
to spend months and months of solitude
that he spent in the wilderness.

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
I think that they recognize something
of themselves in each other

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
and they began a lifelong friendship.
Muir and the others

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
promptly named the new body of water, the
Harriman Fjord and the glacier it\'s far end

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
was called a Harriman Glacier.

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
Chris, what\'s your read

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
on Prince William Sound? (inaudible) is still down in
the water, you might see a little bit caving there,

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
but the most active one and the biggest one here is very
(inaudible). I mean, how good is this (inaudible) ice can we go?

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
In that there\'s no ice classification,
so we can\'t go in the ice.

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
We can navigate around ice.

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:48.000
[music]

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
The Harriman Expedition,

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
Prince William Sound was a world
of pristine glacial wonder.

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
To the American public almost a century later, it would
become famous as the site of something quite different,

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
Prince William Sound was the
site of the 1989 oil spill,

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
just really over in that area
next to (inaudible) Island is,

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
you can\'t see a Bligh Reef and that\'s
where the oil tanker ran aground

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
in March of 1989. For three days,
people can\'t figure out what to do?

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
There was very little response equipment
around. There was no effort to clean it up

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
because the equipment wasn\'t there. People
were not prepared for something like this.

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
And then a big storm came in and move the oil
out. It had Kodiak Island, Afognak Island.

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
The currents took it up into Cook Inlet.
Over a thousand miles

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
of shoreline were oiled. It was the
largest spill in North American history,

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
11 million gallons of oil
leaked from the ship.

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
Everybody was clamoring
for Exxon to do something

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
and so Exxon did probably about the
worst thing that could have done.

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
They went on the beaches with high-pressure hot
water hoses and squirted soapy water on the rocks.

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
So the oil seep down deep into the
rocks deep, into the substrate.

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
The oil spill was a terrible disaster,
in particularly for the people

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
who used resources for their daily food.
You can imagine somebody showing up

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
and throwing a bucket of crude oil in your refrigerator. Well, this
is just what happened with people in the Prince William Sound.

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
We saw in the newspaper that the oil was a few
miles out of Cape (inaudible) where we finished

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
and we got in the boat immediately
headed on out there and

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
it was kind of overwhelming umm… to smell it in the
air and to see the seabirds and everything dying.

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
[music]

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
Thousands of birds were killed, sea otters,

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
harbor seals, fish, you know they
were immediate effects like that,

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
probably the most devastating effects
that were the long-term effects.

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
We have a crew out umm…

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
this summer that is looking at all of the
beaches that were heavily and moderately oiled

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
in 1989. They\'re finding 10 times more oil

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
than they anticipated. There\'s oil
that\'s a lot lower in the timeline

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
and it\'s just being leached
out very slowly overtime,

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
it\'s still fresh oil, it\'s still toxic.

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
The connection between oil as a resource
extractive industry and the kinds of industries

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
that were going on in the Harriman
days is very similar. In those days,

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
they were overfishing salmon, they were overfishing
herring. It was that classic come to Alaska;

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
let\'s dig it up, let\'s catch
it and then let\'s move on.

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
Since the 1970s oil has
flowed from Mile Marker Zero

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean,
to Mile Marker 800 at Valdez

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
in Prince William Sound. It\'s amazing
that those engineers had so much hubris

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
that they believe that they could
build an 800 mile long pipeline.

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
Pump oil into it at Prudhoe Bay and
get it out of Valdez 800 miles below.

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
And not only did they have that hubris, they were right,
they did it. It is an amazing thing that has changed

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
the face of Alaska in many… many ways. The
oil companies pay royalties to the state.

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
The money is invested for the citizens of
Alaska in an account called the Permanent Fund.

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
The Permanent Fund Dividend was
money that was set aside back

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
when the oil windfalls were created.

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
It provides every Alaskan with a dividend check and I
think this year they\'re talking about it being close to

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
$2,000 per person, for every man, woman and child.
For a family of four, you stand to get an $8,000

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
in… in the mail, that for a lot of Alaskan.

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
It\'s a tremendous supplement for… for their
income. This money that I don\'t think

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
anybody in their wildest imagination thought would
amount more to a couple $100 a little… a little bonus

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
for people when the program was first started. It
now has a tremendous impact on the state economy.

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
Yes, oil has been good to Alaska.

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
Yes, it… we have great schools and anchorage, and we can build
airports and we can do all these great things for the state,

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
but it has this price tag to it. You
also have to ask where this oil goes.

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
It goes to Washington State, it goes to
Southern California and it fuels automobiles

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
and other energy needs of
the Los Angeles Basin.

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
They wouldn\'t be here if the Los Angeles Basin weren\'t
meeting this oil. We\'re all tied up in this pledge.

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
It is not just Alaskans. For Exxon Oil

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
the price tag came to $900 million in the form
of a fund that pays for habitat protection

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
and environmental research
in Prince William Sound.

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
The transport of petroleum is the
reason these studies being funded.

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
We had an accident here 10 years ago and the
study is a direct result of a human accident

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
that impacted the environment and, you
know, our studies out here is directed

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
at determining how that spill
effected these animals.

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
This is very different than the Harriman
Expedition. Jennifer is doing heart rate,

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
watching how diving ability develops in
these pups. We\'re putting a satellite tag

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
on one tonight and we\'ll monitor its movements
and its diving behavior for 10 months.

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
We take a biopsy from each of these animals

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
and your grandmother was right, you are which you eat, you
can actually tell what the older seals have been eating

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
based on fatty acids signature
in their blubber layer.

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
The good that came out of the oil spill was

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
in the form of moving science forward.
We have had

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
so much research devoted to
understanding birds, shellfish,

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
mammals in Prince William Sound that
wouldn\'t have otherwise been spent.

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
Well, I\'ve seen the oil spill

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
and after that I\'ve seen
a slow increase of use.

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
I guess you\'d call it a people spill and a
lot of us think it\'s gonna be far worse

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
than any oil spill ever will be.
Straight ahead is College Fjord

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
and aboard this new vessel we can get closer than ever before.
That (inaudible) water was originally built around 1985.

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
When you aboard today, you need to be thinking if
you were like chicken (inaudible) blue or halibut.

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
[music]

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
And taking a look at the cruise ship schedule for today
a busy day on the docks, the Crown Princess is here

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
already tied up at 06:30 this morning.
Tourism was in its infancy

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
when Harriman arrived. Today, it is one
of the state\'s leading industries.

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
And the Sky Princess is scheduled to be here
right around one and to leave at six p.m.

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
for a grand total of 6,377 passengers

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
visiting our tiny little town today.

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
It is imposed on Alaska the obligation
on one hand to big oil barrel

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
for the nation and national park for the world,
and did meet both of those roles sufficiently,

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
erratically is extremely
difficult balancing act.

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
Tourism to a degree a benign industry,
but it does have its impact.

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
A hundred years ago
tourist boats had started

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
and they stayed more or less of the place and they went for
a couple of hikes, but now there\'s transportation systems,

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
they\'ve got helicopters going uh… off

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
there\'s… there\'s multiple landing pads down there.
They\'ve got little airplanes per flight seeing.

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
The crowd again impact can extend way over
the hills into the desirable wilderness.

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
Most visitors see Alaska

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
from the deck of a cruise ship. These vessels are
like small cities carrying thousands of people.

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
A typical day the ship bearing 1,800
passengers involves over 7,000 meals,

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
2,000 showers and several tons of laundry.

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
One of the interesting things
about the cruise industry

00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:59.999
as there\'s a whole hidden area that nobody
thinks about that\'s the crew of the ships.

00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.999
One of the things that you find umm…
in every port is discussions about

00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:09.999
the telephones, where are they. What
they\'re looking for is services for

00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:14.999
when their import and that\'s really
important to them to communicate back home.

00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:19.999
Come around the corner.

00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:24.999
As you imagine, so there\'s 20
stations, 20 internet stations.

00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:29.999
What kinds of things are purchased here?
I… I assume it\'s mostly crew, is it?

00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:34.999
Yeah, it\'s mostly crew, so we\'ve
got a lot of different snacks

00:55:35.000 --> 00:55:39.999
from different countries, from Philippines, Indonesia,
Great Britain. For your catering (inaudible).

00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:44.999
Thanks. Says it all, doesn\'t it?

00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:49.999
Cruise ship services.
Cruise ships have brought

00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:54.999
the marvels of Alaska to millions of people and
air and water pollution to the Alaskan Coast.

00:55:55.000 --> 00:55:59.999
The state legislature has passed the
tightest controls on cruise ship pollution

00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:04.999
in the nation, but the flooded
visitor is still rising.

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:09.999
My fear is that (inaudible)
environments like Prince William Sound

00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:14.999
will be overexploited. There\'ll be lodges coming
in, there\'ll be more and more tour boats,

00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:19.999
there\'ll be more and more (inaudible), more and more
operators like myself. Umm… It\'s going to take away

00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:24.999
from that… that wilderness quality
that feeling that, \'Wow, I\'m out here

00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:29.999
walking with no one\'s ever walk before.\' We
should lay up against tourism the same criteria

00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:34.999
that I would place against every
growth proposal, development proposal

00:56:35.000 --> 00:56:39.999
isn\'t environmentally frown, does it pay
its own way and do the people want it.

00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:44.999
I think in some areas, we\'re
finding a negative reaction

00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:49.999
on the part of people
who say enough already.

00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:54.999
There\'s no limit on the number
of airplanes and helicopters

00:56:55.000 --> 00:56:59.999
that could be flying over glaciers, there\'s
no limit, on number of cruise ships,

00:57:00.000 --> 00:57:04.999
(inaudible) and buses. The
people seem to think that

00:57:05.000 --> 00:57:09.999
there\'s… there\'s absolutely the space here
is endless and a lot of us who came up here

00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:14.999
looking for something different, seeking
something different or watching Alaska

00:57:15.000 --> 00:57:19.999
gradually relentlessly becoming just like
every other place in the United States.

00:57:20.000 --> 00:57:24.999
I was born and raised in California, and I
felt like I should lived a hundred years ago.

00:57:25.000 --> 00:57:29.999
All I had to do is come here and
I\'m like a hundred years back.

00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:34.999
I\'m (inaudible) my water and, you know,
I do have electricity with generators,

00:57:35.000 --> 00:57:39.999
but this is like it was a 100 years ago.
It\'s just I\'m here now.

00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:44.999
I am an oyster farmer and I
live here with my husband.

00:57:45.000 --> 00:57:49.999
We grow these from little itty-bitty
things and we sell them to restaurants

00:57:50.000 --> 00:57:54.999
and we go to the state fair and
we sell them direct to customers.

00:57:55.000 --> 00:57:59.999
I can take them, and I can open them and I
conserve and chilled with the sauce, and I can see

00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:04.999
people drop to their knees and say, \'Oh, that is the
best I\'ve ever had, \' And what would that motivate

00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:09.999
you to do or to be in life. I think
I would be an oyster farmers.

00:58:10.000 --> 00:58:14.999
[sil.]

00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:19.999
Wonderful. What one?

00:58:20.000 --> 00:58:25.000
They\'re good.

00:58:50.000 --> 00:58:54.999
Two humpback whales right
here, just right off the bow.

00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:59.999
[music]

00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:04.999
(inaudible) but they throw
flukes when they dive.

00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:09.999
[music]

00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:14.999
It\'s gonna lift his tail
off, there\'s the fluke.

00:59:15.000 --> 00:59:19.999
(inaudible) look at it. This is (inaudible) you ID
individual, so I\'m just… I\'m born a naturalist.

00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:24.999
Uh… A naturalist really is just a biologist in a very
short attention span. (inaudible), right off the bow.

00:59:25.000 --> 00:59:29.999
(inaudible). Well, just today the
first thing we saw were albatross

00:59:30.000 --> 00:59:34.999
and one in the distance we\'re
looking at very closely,

00:59:35.000 --> 00:59:39.999
(inaudible) pinkish color bill maybe could
have been like the way it was marked,

00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:44.999
it could have been a short-tailed albatross. Now there\'s
about five 500 short-tailed albatross left in the world

00:59:45.000 --> 00:59:49.999
and (inaudible) off of Japan, but when
Harriman came here, they wrote in the books

00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:54.999
the sky was black with albatross. And when
there were recording short-tailed albatross.

00:59:55.000 --> 00:59:59.999
The changes from that time to this
time are unbelievably dramatic.

01:00:00.000 --> 01:00:04.999
[sil.]

01:00:05.000 --> 01:00:09.999
John Burroughs. On the morning of July 1st,

01:00:10.000 --> 01:00:14.999
we woke up in Uyak Bay on the north
side of the Island of Kodiak.

01:00:15.000 --> 01:00:19.999
Green hills and mountains surrounded us.
This is the home of the great Kodiak,

01:00:20.000 --> 01:00:24.999
the largest species of bears
in the world as big as an ox.

01:00:25.000 --> 01:00:29.999
The Kodiak brown bears
stand over 10 feet tall

01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:34.999
and weigh up to 1,500 pounds or better. It\'s
arguably the world\'s largest carnivore.

01:00:35.000 --> 01:00:39.999
Hunting Kodiak brown bear 100 years ago would
have the same type of mystique that it does now.

01:00:40.000 --> 01:00:44.999
(inaudible) Harriman loved hunting as did a
lot of people of his class at that time.

01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:49.999
Any opportunity at any land fault that he could
find in search of a bear, he went after.

01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:54.999
Harriman setup a hunting camp,
much to Muir\'s displeasure.

01:00:55.000 --> 01:00:59.999
Everybody going shooting, he wrote in his
diary. Sauntering as if it were the best day

01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:04.999
for the ruthless business. All day
long Harriman searched for bear

01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:09.999
without success. If Harriman
was having a hard time

01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:14.999
finding a brown bear on Kodiak, he was probably in the wrong place
at the wrong time. There… there\'s a high density of bears here.

01:01:15.000 --> 01:01:19.999
But they utilize the food source at
different times a year in different places.

01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:24.999
Being here early July, uh… the bears will be
starting to concentrate on salmon streams,

01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:29.999
so he would have to know which salmon
streams have an early run of salmon.

01:01:30.000 --> 01:01:34.999
July 2nd, 1899, Mr. Harriman found

01:01:35.000 --> 01:01:39.999
the long expected Kodiak bear. He
found her grazing with her cub.

01:01:40.000 --> 01:01:44.999
Eating grass like a cow Mr. Harriman said.
She was a large animal,

01:01:45.000 --> 01:01:49.999
but below the size of the
tradition Kodiak bear.

01:01:50.000 --> 01:01:54.999
He was the equipped with guides who
apparently had enough firepower

01:01:55.000 --> 01:01:59.999
to blow the bear to bits, should Harriman miss,
but Harriman did get the bear on one shot

01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:04.999
and then he shot the cub.
It was not exactly

01:02:05.000 --> 01:02:09.999
the biggest and the best of trophies, but
that to Harriman was a monumental achievement

01:02:10.000 --> 01:02:14.999
in his own mind I suspect that ranked with
some of the things that the scientists did.

01:02:15.000 --> 01:02:19.999
If I came upon Harriman with having shot a mother
with cubs uh… he would been cited for shooting bears

01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:24.999
out of season and for shooting a mother with cubs,
it\'s illegal to do that now and the reason for that is

01:02:25.000 --> 01:02:29.999
we\'re trying to protect those
family groups. Prior to 1925,

01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:34.999
there was no season. You could hunt as
many as you wanted, whenever you wanted.

01:02:35.000 --> 01:02:39.999
Now we have very strict seasons. We monitor how many
bears are killed. We also look at the sex ratio.

01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:44.999
We want to kill mostly males because
there as much as I hate to admit it,

01:02:45.000 --> 01:02:49.999
they\'re the expendable part of the population.
Currently, we kill 160 bears per year, 70% males.

01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:54.999
But most of the present-day bear
hunters have a less lethal motive.

01:02:55.000 --> 01:02:59.999
We have thousands of people every year coming
through. They come through as ecotourism.

01:03:00.000 --> 01:03:04.999
We have (inaudible) programs in the islands where the…
the… the guide will take people to within 15-20 feet,

01:03:05.000 --> 01:03:09.999
a fishing bears. Whenever you get more people into the
wilderness areas, you of course you\'re going to have an impact.

01:03:10.000 --> 01:03:14.999
What we\'re doing now is trying to
determine how much of impact that it is

01:03:15.000 --> 01:03:19.999
and then we decide or it is just too much for the
bears. One bear came on down through the water,

01:03:20.000 --> 01:03:24.999
we took pictures. I\'ve been (inaudible) got too
close and I went up over the ridge. He circled us,

01:03:25.000 --> 01:03:29.999
he came back down and pass the
fish and found our lunch boxes.

01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:34.999
He decided, he was gonna take the box lunch with it…
People will bring coolers with a nylon strap on it

01:03:35.000 --> 01:03:39.999
as a bear proof food container. Well, 1,500 pound animal
can pop that open in… in just a matter of seconds.

01:03:40.000 --> 01:03:44.999
We chased him for probably half mile down
the river and yelled at him, threatened him

01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:49.999
and bear finally dropped the box. We\'ve got
the candy bars. Now he\'s got a bad habit.

01:03:50.000 --> 01:03:54.999
Bears are more intelligent than dogs.

01:03:55.000 --> 01:03:59.999
They\'re very curious and they also have their
own personalities. Bears and people interact

01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:04.999
quite frequently. Sometimes it\'s funny type
of things, sometimes its life threatening.

01:04:05.000 --> 01:04:09.999
Two volunteer set out

01:04:10.000 --> 01:04:14.999
at three o\'clock in the morning to skin Harriman\'s
bear and drag the trophy back to Kodiak.

01:04:15.000 --> 01:04:19.999
The next day was set aside for
celebration, the 4th of July.

01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:24.999
[music]

01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:29.999
Why… why is this a special day for Kodiak? Because the
sun is shining. Yeah, the sun shining, it\'s not raining.

01:04:30.000 --> 01:04:34.999
The 4th of July found us as it usually
finds Americans wherever they are,

01:04:35.000 --> 01:04:39.999
full of patriotism and overflowing with
bunting and gunpowder (inaudible).

01:04:40.000 --> 01:04:44.999
A huge graphophone played very
well the part of a brass band.

01:04:45.000 --> 01:04:49.999
Songs and music finished the program. Our spirits
probably touched the highest point here.

01:04:50.000 --> 01:04:54.999
And no wonder, halfway through the voyage

01:04:55.000 --> 01:04:59.999
Harriman had bagged his bear and
attached his name to a glacier, a fjord

01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:04.999
and a whole raft of specimens, a genus
of wasp, a hydro, a small conifer,

01:05:05.000 --> 01:05:09.999
two fossils and an enormous worm. The
biologists on the Harriman Expedition

01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:14.999
were looking for new and exciting
things, they wanted treasures.

01:05:15.000 --> 01:05:19.999
And the greatest scientific treasure for a
biologist in many cases is finding an organism

01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:24.999
that has never been described before and
then getting it named after him or her.

01:05:25.000 --> 01:05:29.999
I do not get enough time on shore

01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:34.999
and I\'m soon tired of working at the ice
of the glaciers. I\'ve collected 45 mammals

01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:39.999
and 25 birds. But I fear we will not
have an overabundance of specimens

01:05:40.000 --> 01:05:44.999
collected on this trip. Albert Fisher.
They have a lot of empathy

01:05:45.000 --> 01:05:49.999
for the original expedition members in
the sense that when you\'re on this trip,

01:05:50.000 --> 01:05:54.999
you have these relatively short moments of time
where can run ashore and try to grab specimens.

01:05:55.000 --> 01:05:59.999
On the Elder, I find a
hotel, a club and home

01:06:00.000 --> 01:06:04.999
together with a floating university. I
enjoyed the instruction and companionship of

01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:09.999
a lot of the best fellows imaginable.

01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:14.999
Retracing the original Harriman Expedition
really forces you to think about hard questions.

01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:19.999
What forces you as not simply be
available time or the physical voyage

01:06:20.000 --> 01:06:24.999
up and down the coast. But bringing
together of so many people

01:06:25.000 --> 01:06:29.999
with so many philosophies and experiences and outlooks
on life, some know Alaska like the back of their hands,

01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:34.999
some have never been to Alaska. They\'ve seen it
with completely fresh eyes. This is the Kukak Bay

01:06:35.000 --> 01:06:39.999
Refuge rock site occupied
around (inaudible).

01:06:40.000 --> 01:06:44.999
The (inaudible) with along this right here. Okay. And in fact, the
fact that there\'s a rise here is because this is all garbage.

01:06:45.000 --> 01:06:49.999
You can look in this ridge here, you could see some
fairly young individual scattered spruce trees.

01:06:50.000 --> 01:06:54.999
Driftwood has been an important resource
for native peoples all over the North,

01:06:55.000 --> 01:06:59.999
who live where there are no trees. I have a really dumb
question. How do you start to find the house (inaudible).

01:07:00.000 --> 01:07:04.999
How do you look at this and (inaudible). When you\'re doing
archeology, this time you\'re basically you just have to

01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:09.999
uh… feel with your feet and if you fall in
a hole, you know, you found a house pit.

01:07:10.000 --> 01:07:14.999
Those individuals in the original Harriman
Expedition were pretty incredible naturalists

01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:19.999
and it\'s something some of us
think, we\'ve lost a little bit

01:07:20.000 --> 01:07:24.999
in this day of specialization, this
ability to… to have an overview.

01:07:25.000 --> 01:07:29.999
So it\'s good to remind yourself
what Alaska is, what science is.

01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:34.999
And this trip forces all of us out here
to… to face those kinds of questions.

01:07:35.000 --> 01:07:43.000
[music]

01:07:45.000 --> 01:07:49.999
John Burroughs. On the morning of July 8th,

01:07:50.000 --> 01:07:54.999
we tied up the pier in Dutch Harbor, Unalaska.
We were in a world of three prevailing tints;

01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:59.999
blue of the sea, green of the shore
and white of the lofty peaks

01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:04.999
and volcanic cones.

01:08:05.000 --> 01:08:09.999
Since Harriman\'s visit, the peaceful Island of
Unalaska and its port Dutch Harbor had become

01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:14.999
home to the world\'s largest and most productive
fishing fleet. At first herring and cod

01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:19.999
with a primary prey. After 1950, the
fishermen focused on a new target.

01:08:20.000 --> 01:08:24.999
Entrepreneurs back in the 60s

01:08:25.000 --> 01:08:29.999
and the crab fisheries umm…
and the state to claim

01:08:30.000 --> 01:08:34.999
they had to go out and get the
world to meet this great big beast

01:08:35.000 --> 01:08:39.999
that crawled around the floor the Bering
Sea. People found out there\'s king crab is

01:08:40.000 --> 01:08:44.999
a delicious… delicious critter. We had a gold
rush and absolute gold rush taking place.

01:08:45.000 --> 01:08:49.999
The king crab gold rush
came crashing to an end.

01:08:50.000 --> 01:08:54.999
Today, Dutch Harbor\'s economy is based on
yet another species. Scientists call it

01:08:55.000 --> 01:08:59.999
Pollachius virens, fishermen call it pollock,
but most of us simply called it lunch.

01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:04.999
You walk into a McDonald\'s
or Burger King or wherever

01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:09.999
and you get a fast food fish fillet.
You don\'t know where it\'s coming from.

01:09:10.000 --> 01:09:14.999
You have no sense that it\'s connected to this
environment that we\'re talking about in Alaska.

01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:19.999
The Pollock industry is the single largest
ground fish fishery in the United States.

01:09:20.000 --> 01:09:24.999
It has a stake of somewhere in the
neighborhood of a 1,000,000 to

01:09:25.000 --> 01:09:29.999
a 2,000,000 metric tons that represents

01:09:30.000 --> 01:09:34.999
3 billion pounds of Pollock.
Our plant processes roughly

01:09:35.000 --> 01:09:39.999
1.1 million pounds of
Pollock uh… every 12 hours

01:09:40.000 --> 01:09:44.999
and we run round the clock during the season seven
days a week. And we take the fish and separate it

01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:49.999
any bones, and skin and foreign material from
the meat itself, and then we wash the meat

01:09:50.000 --> 01:09:54.999
and refine it. The base product that we
produce here is odorless and tasteless,

01:09:55.000 --> 01:09:59.999
so you can do anything with it that you want to,
add coloring to it, texture (inaudible) it,

01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:04.999
and is frozen down to -20 degrees
Celsius in about two hours

01:10:05.000 --> 01:10:09.999
and then box and cased up.
A fish fillet weighs about

01:10:10.000 --> 01:10:14.999
one quarter pound, a hungry
human can easily two.

01:10:15.000 --> 01:10:19.999
A whole Pollock weighs two pounds. A
hungry male sea lion can eat 45 a day.

01:10:20.000 --> 01:10:24.999
People and sea lions compete for
the same fish from Western Alaska

01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:29.999
and therein a problem.

01:10:30.000 --> 01:10:34.999
One of the most important
issues in Alaska today is

01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:39.999
the conflict that is
being generated between

01:10:40.000 --> 01:10:44.999
Steller sea lions and commercial fisheries.
Steller sea lions are protected marine mammal.

01:10:45.000 --> 01:10:49.999
They have been listed as endangered.

01:10:50.000 --> 01:10:54.999
Pollock is largest single
species fishery in the world

01:10:55.000 --> 01:10:59.999
and Steller sea lions eat Pollock. A lot of
times we talk about declines in terms of

01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:04.999
10% or 15%. In this part
of the northern Gulf,

01:11:05.000 --> 01:11:09.999
the number of pups counted on (inaudible)
Island is down from over 6,000

01:11:10.000 --> 01:11:14.999
in the 1970s to less than a thousand today.

01:11:15.000 --> 01:11:19.999
Many environmentalists believe that
the way to save the Steller sea lions

01:11:20.000 --> 01:11:24.999
is to limit Pollock fishing and they\'ve
gone to court to do just that.

01:11:25.000 --> 01:11:29.999
In 1991, they sued to end fishing near sea lion
fall out in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.

01:11:30.000 --> 01:11:34.999
But the population of sea
lions continued to decline.

01:11:35.000 --> 01:11:39.999
So they sued again, the court imposed more limits on
Pollock fishing, but many environmentalists claim

01:11:40.000 --> 01:11:44.999
the restrictions aren\'t tough enough to
help. What we\'re really challenging here is

01:11:45.000 --> 01:11:49.999
the assumption that you can go into these
oceans, ignore the ecological relationships

01:11:50.000 --> 01:11:54.999
and take out a species like Pollock in
large quantities. We argued that issue

01:11:55.000 --> 01:11:59.999
very strongly because we felt they were not
in jeopardy\'s results to Pollock fishery.

01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:04.999
It\'s a familiar baffle, environmentalists
against industrialists,

01:12:05.000 --> 01:12:09.999
with each side describing it in black and white.
But scientists from the Harriman Expedition

01:12:10.000 --> 01:12:14.999
Retraced to see the problem is the
color of the Bering Sea, gray.

01:12:15.000 --> 01:12:19.999
Nowhere is anyone proven at least proven
to me that\'s for sure that number one,

01:12:20.000 --> 01:12:24.999
that the whole problem is Steller sea lions
as Pollock or number two, a whole problem is

01:12:25.000 --> 01:12:29.999
Steller sea lions is commercial fisheries.
Everything lives in the environment.

01:12:30.000 --> 01:12:34.999
The environment is changing, temperatures have
been changing. Ask anybody who lives in Alaska

01:12:35.000 --> 01:12:39.999
very long. It\'s warmer now. There
is no reason to assume that

01:12:40.000 --> 01:12:44.999
the climate now can sustain

01:12:45.000 --> 01:12:49.999
the same number of Steller sea lions have
it could sustain 20 or 30 years ago.

01:12:50.000 --> 01:12:54.999
Can the environment pull that many and
we don\'t know the answer to that.

01:12:55.000 --> 01:12:59.999
It\'s probably over simplistic to think
that simply removing the fishery

01:13:00.000 --> 01:13:04.999
is gonna bring in sea lions back, I mean, we\'re feeling
very helpless about. We… we don\'t know what to do.

01:13:05.000 --> 01:13:09.999
Umm… The fishermen are clearly bearing
the (inaudible) of it. The Bering Sea

01:13:10.000 --> 01:13:14.999
and the Gulf of Alaska ground fish fisheries
which included number of species,

01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:19.999
is the only area in the
world where there has been

01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:24.999
not one single species
listed as overfished.

01:13:25.000 --> 01:13:29.999
So to… to… to say that
somehow these fisheries

01:13:30.000 --> 01:13:34.999
are… are raising havoc with the ecosystem
and so forth is totally false.

01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:39.999
The Bering Sea cannot feed the entire world and
we shouldn\'t try to maintain that illusion.

01:13:40.000 --> 01:13:44.999
And it may very well be that, you know,

01:13:45.000 --> 01:13:49.999
uh… it\'s… it\'s worthy sacrifice to say,
\'We\'re not gonna have that Pollock fillet

01:13:50.000 --> 01:13:54.999
uh… in a fast food sandwich because there are other
things we care about more.\' To my way of thinking

01:13:55.000 --> 01:13:59.999
that\'s choosing marine mammals over humans, humans
need the Pollock fishery and other fisheries

01:14:00.000 --> 01:14:04.999
for a number of reasons. One is
they need jobs. But another one is

01:14:05.000 --> 01:14:09.999
people need the food. In order to
eat fish, you have to kill fish.

01:14:10.000 --> 01:14:14.999
In order to kill fish, you have to catch fish. If you
catch the fish there\'s something else that can\'t eat it.

01:14:15.000 --> 01:14:19.999
And you can\'t save everything, at
the same time you can\'t everything.

01:14:20.000 --> 01:14:24.999
I still think it\'s amazing

01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:29.999
that these guys can climb
up here like this.

01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:34.999
I mean, 2,000 pounds go straight up the side
of the rock. If you or I jumped off that rock

01:14:35.000 --> 01:14:39.999
or tumble off that rock, we\'d end up with broken
legs and broken arms and everything else.

01:14:40.000 --> 01:14:44.999
Instead they just come
crashing down (inaudible).

01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:53.000
[music]

01:14:55.000 --> 01:14:59.999
John Burroughs, I long to spend
some days here in Dutch Harbor

01:15:00.000 --> 01:15:04.999
in the privacy of its green solitudes. If I could
only have a few days of intimacy with nature,

01:15:05.000 --> 01:15:09.999
I should be more content. But in the afternoon,
the ship is off into the Bering Sea.

01:15:10.000 --> 01:15:14.999
At Dutch Harbor,

01:15:15.000 --> 01:15:19.999
Burroughs found a woman who could cook him great
breakfasts and he longed to be spoiled again.

01:15:20.000 --> 01:15:24.999
So he… he was about to jump ship
before they went off to… to Siberia.

01:15:25.000 --> 01:15:29.999
Umm… He was trying to leave on the
gangplank and Muir caught him and said,

01:15:30.000 --> 01:15:34.999
\'Where are you going with those… those suitcases
Johnny?\' And ushered him back on ship

01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:39.999
where poor Burroughs
suffered great seasickness.

01:15:40.000 --> 01:15:44.999
I got this miserable sore throat,
it\'s terrible. I can hardly talk,

01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:49.999
you know, talking is mostly what we\'re suppose to
do on this boat and I had my body\'s been aching.

01:15:50.000 --> 01:15:54.999
My chest is congested, coughing all night

01:15:55.000 --> 01:15:59.999
and I\'m also whining really a lot of about the
whole thing. I actually did go into town.

01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:04.999
I switch sort of go from one person
to the next and ask him, you know,

01:16:05.000 --> 01:16:09.999
it to be willing to take care, I\'m a sick traveler
from a faraway place, who\'s an enamored of

01:16:10.000 --> 01:16:14.999
the green fields of Unalaska?
Nobody… nobody bet for that.

01:16:15.000 --> 01:16:19.999
Muir chided Burroughs about his
seasickness, but poet Charles Keeler took

01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:24.999
pity on the writer and sat with him in his
cabin, reading Wordsworth by the hour.

01:16:25.000 --> 01:16:29.999
I think the least anybody
would do for somebody

01:16:30.000 --> 01:16:34.999
who\'s suffering as I am, would be

01:16:35.000 --> 01:16:39.999
to read me some nice poetry. And
the first start of October 25th,

01:16:40.000 --> 01:16:44.999
and raging snow, (inaudible)
rolled off the reef and sink.

01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:49.999
No one survived, no one.

01:16:50.000 --> 01:16:54.999
But they didn\'t drown. They died of
exposure, they were suffocated in oil,

01:16:55.000 --> 01:16:59.999
just time to say goodbye, we\'re foundering.

01:17:00.000 --> 01:17:04.999
Oh, man! This is what I needed, Sheila.
I realize now that,

01:17:05.000 --> 01:17:09.999
however bad I feel,

01:17:10.000 --> 01:17:14.999
it\'s nothing compared to that. Don\'t get
better soon, I\'ll read more. There\'s a threat,

01:17:15.000 --> 01:17:19.999
more death poems.

01:17:20.000 --> 01:17:24.999
[music]

01:17:25.000 --> 01:17:29.999
John Burroughs, July 8th, 1899, we ran into

01:17:30.000 --> 01:17:34.999
lowering misty weather off the Bogoslof Island. Two
abrupt volcanic mountains, one of them thrown up

01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:39.999
in recent years, the other the breeding ground of
innumerable sea lions and myriads of seabirds.

01:17:40.000 --> 01:17:44.999
Bogoslof is a place in the Bering
Sea north of the illusions

01:17:45.000 --> 01:17:49.999
where uh… this mountain came up out
of the ocean in the late 1700.

01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:54.999
It erupts and it makes the volcano and then it washes
away and then it erupts and makes a new volcano.

01:17:55.000 --> 01:17:59.999
And then it has a pointed top and then it has a flat
top. And then it has a pit and then the pit washes away.

01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:04.999
And all these people are coming and going describing
all these changes and it\'s… it\'s not your typical

01:18:05.000 --> 01:18:09.999
boring volcano that takes a
millennium to do anything.

01:18:10.000 --> 01:18:14.999
The Harriman Expedition documented
things in such a way that

01:18:15.000 --> 01:18:19.999
it provides a baseline or 100 years
later to understand change at Bogoslof

01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:24.999
for there\'s been tremendous uh… physiographic
changed as a result of that volcanic activity.

01:18:25.000 --> 01:18:29.999
Knowing what birds were there 100 years ago and
what size that island was gives us a great chance

01:18:30.000 --> 01:18:34.999
for comparing change.

01:18:35.000 --> 01:18:39.999
In the cases of most animal life, the
increase of the species is checked by enemies

01:18:40.000 --> 01:18:44.999
and by the limitations of food, but in the
case of the (inaudible) on Bogoslof Island,

01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:49.999
enemies are scarce and the ocean seems to
provide an inexhaustible store of food.

01:18:50.000 --> 01:18:54.999
The only apparent check is the
limit of available nesting places

01:18:55.000 --> 01:18:59.999
and since the birds require only a shelf
of rock, three or four inches square,

01:19:00.000 --> 01:19:04.999
the numbers are almost beyond belief.
C. Hart Merriam.

01:19:05.000 --> 01:19:09.999
Merriam, he was apparently very excited

01:19:10.000 --> 01:19:14.999
about the numbers of (inaudible) that he saw
there. I think he described him as over a million.

01:19:15.000 --> 01:19:19.999
I don\'t know what a million birds look like and it may not have been exactly a
million, but there\'s no question that there were lots and lots of (inaudible) there.

01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:24.999
And the Harriman folks were
very careful naturalists

01:19:25.000 --> 01:19:29.999
and they document it (inaudible) very well.
That was a descriptive phase.

01:19:30.000 --> 01:19:34.999
That\'s critical before you can go to the
next phase which is to start to understand

01:19:35.000 --> 01:19:39.999
the ecology of the species.

01:19:40.000 --> 01:19:44.999
Count Jeff so we know how many minutes,
how many seconds have to capture.

01:19:45.000 --> 01:19:49.999
[sil.]

01:19:50.000 --> 01:19:54.999
Thirty, it\'s done ready to go…

01:19:55.000 --> 01:19:59.999
Today because of the
technologies developed,

01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:04.999
we\'re monitoring change more, so that\'s… that\'s…
that\'s a big change in the way we\'re doing business,

01:20:05.000 --> 01:20:09.999
but it\'s based on the description that the
Harriman Expedition and others made earlier.

01:20:10.000 --> 01:20:14.999
For one member of the expedition,

01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:19.999
the rocky islands of the Bering Sea teeming
with seabirds were close kin to heaven.

01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:24.999
When C. Hart Merriam put together
the team for Mr. Harriman,

01:20:25.000 --> 01:20:29.999
he took along Louis Agassiz Fuertes. He had just
graduated from Cornell University two years before.

01:20:30.000 --> 01:20:34.999
Fuertes was lucky to have
graduated from Cornell.

01:20:35.000 --> 01:20:39.999
At one time, he was failing mathematics,
chemistry and philosophy, but in art

01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:44.999
his grade was perfect. He was passionate
about drawing and about birds.

01:20:45.000 --> 01:20:49.999
His mother had once found him in the kitchen
sketching a live owl that he had tied to the table.

01:20:50.000 --> 01:20:54.999
Fuertes had this remarkable
just photographic memory.

01:20:55.000 --> 01:20:59.999
All these little settled
cues that a bird can give,

01:21:00.000 --> 01:21:04.999
he immediately could pick up on, remember
and knew how to draw when he got back home.

01:21:05.000 --> 01:21:09.999
The birds in Alaska and particularly out in
the Bering Sea were completely new to him

01:21:10.000 --> 01:21:14.999
and he jumped at every opportunity
to capture them on paper.

01:21:15.000 --> 01:21:19.999
He got a wonderful bit of sound effect
here with the birds in the background.

01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:24.999
These were the kinds of sounds that Fuertes just
(inaudible) and when he wrote letters home to his family,

01:21:25.000 --> 01:21:29.999
he would say that, \'I can hardly hear
myself think for all the birds.\'

01:21:30.000 --> 01:21:34.999
If someone else were to write that kind of a letter,
you think it was a complaint, but in Fuertes case

01:21:35.000 --> 01:21:39.999
it was his highest form of pleasure.
He had a way of capturing

01:21:40.000 --> 01:21:44.999
a sense of an individual bird, not
just a generic one. You look at that

01:21:45.000 --> 01:21:49.999
screening humbling (inaudible) with its mouth
again, you have a certainty that he has seen

01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:54.999
that actual bird.

01:21:55.000 --> 01:21:59.999
John Burroughs. On the afternoon of July
9th, we dropped anchor of Saint Paul Island

01:22:00.000 --> 01:22:04.999
one of the Pribilof. The government agent conducted
as a (inaudible) or through wild meadows

01:22:05.000 --> 01:22:09.999
starred with flowers and covered
with grass nearly (inaudible).

01:22:10.000 --> 01:22:14.999
It\'s a beautiful spot, a
very wild amazing place,

01:22:15.000 --> 01:22:19.999
but it\'s also so important because this is where
conservation history really made its turn.

01:22:20.000 --> 01:22:24.999
This is where uh… the world agreed
that animals needed to be protected.

01:22:25.000 --> 01:22:29.999
Alaska had been American since
1867, when the Secretary of State

01:22:30.000 --> 01:22:34.999
William Seward bought it from Russia for
the exorbitant price of $7.2 million.

01:22:35.000 --> 01:22:39.999
The secretary was soundly
thumped in the Press.

01:22:40.000 --> 01:22:44.999
One New York newspaper complained,
Russia has sold us a sucked orange

01:22:45.000 --> 01:22:49.999
but the purchase included the Pribilof Island home
to the largest (inaudible) seal herd in the world.

01:22:50.000 --> 01:22:54.999
Suddenly, the U.S. was in the fur business.

01:22:55.000 --> 01:22:59.999
When the United States purchased
Alaska, just on one (inaudible)

01:23:00.000 --> 01:23:04.999
70,000 seals were taken in one
season, that\'s just in one area

01:23:05.000 --> 01:23:09.999
on the island umm… that…
that gives an example of

01:23:10.000 --> 01:23:14.999
what happened when the United States first
purchased Alaska. And they would have taken more

01:23:15.000 --> 01:23:19.999
had not they run out assault and they had
people dropping from sheer exhaustion,

01:23:20.000 --> 01:23:24.999
they just couldn\'t do it.

01:23:25.000 --> 01:23:29.999
George Bird Grinnell.

01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:34.999
All of those employed in the fur seal
fisheries of Pribilof Islands are Aleuts,

01:23:35.000 --> 01:23:39.999
who have long been under the influence of the
Russian Church. They are now Christianized.

01:23:40.000 --> 01:23:44.999
A hard working people who nevertheless
find it difficult to gain a subsistence

01:23:45.000 --> 01:23:50.000
under the increasing scarcity of
creatures on which they depend for food.

01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:04.999
The Aleuts were the backbone of an
industry that in just 10 years recovered

01:24:05.000 --> 01:24:09.999
the full purchase price of Alaska.

01:24:10.000 --> 01:24:14.999
When Harriman people got here in 1899, they found that
the fur seal numbers had been dropping dramatically.

01:24:15.000 --> 01:24:19.999
They… they had a sense of what had been here before.
There were good government reports and so on.

01:24:20.000 --> 01:24:24.999
But they were shocked to find that in the last
two years uh… the population had dropped by

01:24:25.000 --> 01:24:29.999
almost a quarter. It\'s hard to imagine
what it was that brought this whirlwind,

01:24:30.000 --> 01:24:34.999
this hurricane of hunting into this… into
this see… into the Bering Sea at the…

01:24:35.000 --> 01:24:39.999
during the 19th century. But the answer
is it was Beijing, it was Moscow,

01:24:40.000 --> 01:24:44.999
it was London, it was New York City. Everybody
wanted what these islands produced.

01:24:45.000 --> 01:24:49.999
[music]

01:24:50.000 --> 01:24:54.999
The fur seals pelt dense and luxurious was
much desired in the world fashion market,

01:24:55.000 --> 01:24:59.999
but by 1899 there was already a growing
awareness of a rising phenomenon,

01:25:00.000 --> 01:25:04.999
the extinction of species.
George Bird Grinnell had helped

01:25:05.000 --> 01:25:09.999
found the Audubon Society to halt the
wholesale slaughter of egrets and herons,

01:25:10.000 --> 01:25:14.999
whose gaudy feathers were used to trim ladies hats.
Now Grinnell directed his passionate attention

01:25:15.000 --> 01:25:19.999
to the plight of the fur seals. George
Bird Grinnell went home to New York

01:25:20.000 --> 01:25:24.999
after the Harriman Expedition and wrote an editorial in (inaudible)
Magazine and he said that, \'Unless the fur sealing was stopped

01:25:25.000 --> 01:25:29.999
or controlled within the next four years,
the species could become extinct.\'

01:25:30.000 --> 01:25:34.999
Merriam had the clout when he got back to
Washington to begin uh… changing people\'s minds

01:25:35.000 --> 01:25:39.999
and changing policies.
Eventually, in 1912 a…

01:25:40.000 --> 01:25:44.999
an international treaty was established
that would protect the fur seals.

01:25:45.000 --> 01:25:49.999
One could make the argument that had
the Harriman Expedition not stopped

01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:54.999
at the Pribilof, the fur seals
could easily have become extinct.

01:25:55.000 --> 01:25:59.999
The International Fur Seal Treaty
was a revolutionary document,

01:26:00.000 --> 01:26:04.999
the first international treaty on wildlife.
Five nations agreed to limits on hunting.

01:26:05.000 --> 01:26:09.999
The species was protected. Meanwhile,
the United States continued

01:26:10.000 --> 01:26:14.999
its commercial harvesting of seals and
the Aleuts continued to do the work

01:26:15.000 --> 01:26:19.999
under the close supervision
of the island manager.

01:26:20.000 --> 01:26:24.999
The island manager in the old days was
the ultimate authority. We would decide,

01:26:25.000 --> 01:26:29.999
for example, who would get married, when they would
get married, who they would marry. If my grandfather

01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:34.999
wanted to have fur seal pelt. He would
have to go to an island agent and say,

01:26:35.000 --> 01:26:39.999
\'Can I please have some pelts to make a
blanket or boot tops.\' We paid them in goods.

01:26:40.000 --> 01:26:44.999
If you got along with the island manager, you
got your two bags of groceries or whatever.

01:26:45.000 --> 01:26:49.999
If you didn\'t get along with him, then
you got your two cans of tuna fish.

01:26:50.000 --> 01:26:54.999
But the market for fur was in decline.
In the 1980s, the United States ended

01:26:55.000 --> 01:26:59.999
the commercial fur seal harvest on the Pribilof.
The Aleuts began to govern the islands themselves.

01:27:00.000 --> 01:27:04.999
Today, they continue a controlled harvest,

01:27:05.000 --> 01:27:09.999
taking fur seals for food. The practice is part of
the Alaskan native tradition called subsistence.

01:27:10.000 --> 01:27:14.999
Terrible… terrible… terrible word,

01:27:15.000 --> 01:27:19.999
you know, subsistence uh… one
person might think the word is

01:27:20.000 --> 01:27:24.999
just getting by, I mean,
just the bare substance

01:27:25.000 --> 01:27:29.999
to survive in a society.
Another person recognizes

01:27:30.000 --> 01:27:34.999
it as… as a way of life.
We have an (inaudible)

01:27:35.000 --> 01:27:39.999
the members of the Aleut Community of Saint Paul from Saint
Paul Sealer from the tribal Government of Saint Paul.

01:27:40.000 --> 01:27:44.999
The annual subsistence seal harvest
is happening now through August 7th.

01:27:45.000 --> 01:27:49.999
(inaudible) scheduled to begin at
seven a.m. Monday through Saturday.

01:27:50.000 --> 01:27:54.999
[sil.]

01:27:55.000 --> 01:27:59.999
What we are doing here is
subsistence fur seal harvest.

01:28:00.000 --> 01:28:04.999
What it all about is… is to carry
on the culture within our community

01:28:05.000 --> 01:28:09.999
and try to pass it on to the
generations that are coming up and

01:28:10.000 --> 01:28:14.999
the… it\'s my job to teach the young
people and to put it in your heart

01:28:15.000 --> 01:28:19.999
to participate in this and to continue

01:28:20.000 --> 01:28:24.999
to participate in eating
our cultural foods.

01:28:25.000 --> 01:28:29.999
Their participation is greatly needed
to carry out the community activity,

01:28:30.000 --> 01:28:34.999
come and gather meet or check with our outer
to see if they need help (inaudible).

01:28:35.000 --> 01:28:39.999
It\'s much more of an obligation,
the sharing obligation.

01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:44.999
You… you don\'t get to keep what you
catch and what you… what you harvest.

01:28:45.000 --> 01:28:49.999
There\'s a distribution responsibility.
When I was growing up

01:28:50.000 --> 01:28:54.999
seal camp was still very much a part of our
existence. We would go up in the spring

01:28:55.000 --> 01:28:59.999
uh… young kids with… with
parents and with uncles.

01:29:00.000 --> 01:29:04.999
Your main concentration is learning
how to get that nipper in there

01:29:05.000 --> 01:29:09.999
and paying attention to and once it\'s on there…
There is a powerful connection with land

01:29:10.000 --> 01:29:14.999
that people didn\'t necessarily have to articulate.
They live those values every single day.

01:29:15.000 --> 01:29:19.999
Today, we have to articulate the more. We
have to talk about them, we have to maintain

01:29:20.000 --> 01:29:24.999
in a conscious effort our
connection with native lands.

01:29:25.000 --> 01:29:29.999
Every single step in our operation
is a learning experience

01:29:30.000 --> 01:29:34.999
and you work your way up from the bottom
(inaudible) on the bottom right now

01:29:35.000 --> 01:29:39.999
is a watch boy. His next step will…
will be, you know, a puller,

01:29:40.000 --> 01:29:44.999
pulling the skins off them and… and the
next step up would be using a knife

01:29:45.000 --> 01:29:49.999
and the next step up would be (inaudible). You work
your way up the ladder and become very skilled

01:29:50.000 --> 01:29:54.999
in all the different areas and potentially
become a leader. We live in communities

01:29:55.000 --> 01:29:59.999
that have very… very fragile economies
and that harvest is critical

01:30:00.000 --> 01:30:04.999
not only to our economics but to our
social well-being. This is our food.

01:30:05.000 --> 01:30:09.999
This is what we eat and we want to
carry this on. It\'s very good meat

01:30:10.000 --> 01:30:14.999
and people who have misconstrued
by just focusing on

01:30:15.000 --> 01:30:19.999
strictly the killing in the process of killing and
when in reality this is a very organized effort

01:30:20.000 --> 01:30:24.999
as a young boy, my father brought
me out here and put it in my heart

01:30:25.000 --> 01:30:29.999
I know for fact that my son
will be here for many years…

01:30:30.000 --> 01:30:34.999
The… the building behind me here is

01:30:35.000 --> 01:30:39.999
the sealing factory on the Pribilof
Islands. This building is now abandoned.

01:30:40.000 --> 01:30:44.999
It\'s being turned into a museum.
Bear with me been a while

01:30:45.000 --> 01:30:49.999
since I blubbered.

01:30:50.000 --> 01:30:54.999
Once I get that,

01:30:55.000 --> 01:30:59.999
I turn the pelt over. And when you\'re
a blubber, you don\'t try to use

01:31:00.000 --> 01:31:04.999
too much of your arm, if you\'re gonna be here
all day. You\'re gonna be really tired to use,

01:31:05.000 --> 01:31:09.999
more or less use your upper body.

01:31:10.000 --> 01:31:14.999
These skins I got from subsistence harvest.
I take it for my own self,

01:31:15.000 --> 01:31:19.999
blubber it, salt it down and when I\'m
ready, I ship it to the tannery.

01:31:20.000 --> 01:31:24.999
One of the things that I found most
intriguing about visiting the factory here

01:31:25.000 --> 01:31:29.999
was actually watching my fellow shipmates,
many of them were horrified to see

01:31:30.000 --> 01:31:34.999
that seal skin being stripped of its blubber
and being converted into a commodity.

01:31:35.000 --> 01:31:39.999
It was also very… very clear when
they ran their hands over that skin,

01:31:40.000 --> 01:31:44.999
it felt that extraordinarily soft
surf, they wanted to own that.

01:31:45.000 --> 01:31:49.999
Roughly how much for one of
these, do you have any idea?

01:31:50.000 --> 01:31:54.999
No, I couldn\'t even venture a guess.

01:31:55.000 --> 01:31:59.999
[sil.]

01:32:00.000 --> 01:32:04.999
We have been in the Bering Sea area for nearly
10,000 years and we\'ve been on St. Paul

01:32:05.000 --> 01:32:09.999
for over 200 years. We
believe we are visitors and

01:32:10.000 --> 01:32:14.999
in fact our… our word for as
other people, other cultures

01:32:15.000 --> 01:32:19.999
or other languages say \'dine, \' really
translate into (inaudible) visiting this land.

01:32:20.000 --> 01:32:24.999
So we believe we are visitors and

01:32:25.000 --> 01:32:29.999
uh… that other visitors will come after us.

01:32:30.000 --> 01:32:34.999
John Burroughs.

01:32:35.000 --> 01:32:39.999
July 10th, 1899, according to our
original program our outward journey

01:32:40.000 --> 01:32:44.999
should have ended at the Seal Islands, but Mrs.
Harriman expressed the wish to see Siberia

01:32:45.000 --> 01:32:49.999
and if all went well the midnight
sun and toward that bear

01:32:50.000 --> 01:32:54.999
and ensure our (inaudible) was turned.

01:32:55.000 --> 01:32:59.999
The ship anchored at the Eskimo
encampment of Plover Bay in Siberia.

01:33:00.000 --> 01:33:04.999
It was here that something new started appearing
in Edward Curtis\' photographs, people.

01:33:05.000 --> 01:33:09.999
Curtis began to see the
interest in Indigenous people

01:33:10.000 --> 01:33:14.999
and began making more and more photographs of this group
of cultures that had been very little documented up

01:33:15.000 --> 01:33:19.999
until that time. Following
the Harriman Expedition,

01:33:20.000 --> 01:33:24.999
Curtis went on to take photographs of other Indian
groups and really devoted the rest of his life

01:33:25.000 --> 01:33:29.999
to documenting the life of the American
India. Had Curtis not been invited

01:33:30.000 --> 01:33:34.999
on the Harriman Expedition, I think it\'s fair to say
that his great series of books on the American Indian

01:33:35.000 --> 01:33:39.999
would never have been
conceived let alone executed.

01:33:40.000 --> 01:33:44.999
George Bird Grinnell.

01:33:45.000 --> 01:33:49.999
The outlook for the Eskimo is glooming.
White men uncontrolled and uncontrollable

01:33:50.000 --> 01:33:54.999
already swarm over the Alaskan Coast.
They have taken away Eskimo women.

01:33:55.000 --> 01:33:59.999
They (inaudible) the men with liquor. Perhaps
for a while a few may save themselves,

01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:04.999
but there is an inevitable conflict
between civilization and savagery,

01:34:05.000 --> 01:34:09.999
and wherever the two touch each other,
the weaker people will be destroyed.

01:34:10.000 --> 01:34:14.999
But when the members of the Harriman Expedition
Retraced visited to remote Siberian villages,

01:34:15.000 --> 01:34:19.999
they found that the 20th century had not
produced the catastrophe Grinnell expected.

01:34:20.000 --> 01:34:28.000
[music]

01:34:35.000 --> 01:34:39.999
It was a stunning experience to come
into the beach in zodiac and see

01:34:40.000 --> 01:34:44.999
these women and men in beautiful
traditional dress and dancing

01:34:45.000 --> 01:34:49.999
these exquisite dancers and
singers these traditional songs.

01:34:50.000 --> 01:34:54.999
That\'s a small (inaudible) village
uh… called (inaudible) and

01:34:55.000 --> 01:34:59.999
very isolated, no roads. The
only way of communication

01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:04.999
by sea, by boats. In the wintertime,
they (inaudible) dogs this is why

01:35:05.000 --> 01:35:09.999
this village have so much dogs.
Six-hundred people live here

01:35:10.000 --> 01:35:14.999
uh… and more than 100 kids.

01:35:15.000 --> 01:35:19.999
[sil.]

01:35:20.000 --> 01:35:24.999
Several Eskimo umiaks

01:35:25.000 --> 01:35:29.999
came out to us to trade and before long
more than 175 persons were alongside,

01:35:30.000 --> 01:35:34.999
all we\'re holding up the
items they wish to sell.

01:35:35.000 --> 01:35:39.999
Here, when we come out at the beach, our
people selling furs, (inaudible) wolverines,

01:35:40.000 --> 01:35:44.999
the brown bear, traditional
reindeer herders clothing, hats.

01:35:45.000 --> 01:35:49.999
All of us crowded around in
this feeding frenzy curiosity.

01:35:50.000 --> 01:35:54.999
Where\'s my money, what can I buy.

01:35:55.000 --> 01:35:59.999
We have salmon caviar. They made for us

01:36:00.000 --> 01:36:04.999
uh… fish soup, made from the trout.
They harvest yesterday gray whale

01:36:05.000 --> 01:36:09.999
and we have gray whale meat
and… and the (inaudible)

01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:14.999
the blubber which is
very tasty… very tasty.

01:36:15.000 --> 01:36:19.999
We are in a beautiful day
but it\'s very rare here.

01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:24.999
Uh… The autumn, (inaudible)

01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:29.999
and winter is probably from end of October

01:36:30.000 --> 01:36:34.999
to first part of June. Snow, hardly.

01:36:35.000 --> 01:36:39.999
People here are waiting for it to get warm.
They\'re not waiting for the sun to come out.

01:36:40.000 --> 01:36:44.999
They live with this land and they love it every
bit as much in the winter, they do in the summer.

01:36:45.000 --> 01:36:49.999
They make a life out of what\'s here.
I think that\'s something

01:36:50.000 --> 01:36:54.999
a lot of the world could learn from.

01:36:55.000 --> 01:36:59.999
The Eskimos of Siberia have close
cultural and even family ties

01:37:00.000 --> 01:37:04.999
with Alaskan Eskimos. But the two groups
were separated by Cold War Politics

01:37:05.000 --> 01:37:09.999
for nearly half of the 20th century. Their
communities were only a few miles apart,

01:37:10.000 --> 01:37:14.999
but in separate countries. The modern age
had installed an iron curtain between them.

01:37:15.000 --> 01:37:19.999
The Siberian Yupik Eskimo
people who lived here

01:37:20.000 --> 01:37:24.999
day after day… after day
could look across and see

01:37:25.000 --> 01:37:29.999
Little Diomede Island and think of
their… their relatives, their kin

01:37:30.000 --> 01:37:34.999
who lived over there. And think of
their kin who were looking back.

01:37:35.000 --> 01:37:39.999
All it could be was this meeting and the
imagination that these two people could not cross

01:37:40.000 --> 01:37:44.999
this open body of water because of the
rules that people set down for them.

01:37:45.000 --> 01:37:49.999
We used go hunting after grey whales

01:37:50.000 --> 01:37:54.999
and they don\'t like it\'s going to cross
the dateline, they get made, you know.

01:37:55.000 --> 01:37:59.999
They call the probably
DC and DC calls up here

01:38:00.000 --> 01:38:04.999
and they call our village here.
You just don\'t answer the phone.

01:38:05.000 --> 01:38:09.999
What… what is it about dateline
(inaudible)? They just told like go across

01:38:10.000 --> 01:38:14.999
and they said, there is a dateline
between Big and Little Diomede here.

01:38:15.000 --> 01:38:19.999
And Big and Little Diomede
is just 2.5 miles apart

01:38:20.000 --> 01:38:24.999
and we don\'t see no dateline, we
hunt where we hunt, you know.

01:38:25.000 --> 01:38:29.999
[sil.]

01:38:30.000 --> 01:38:34.999
The tiny Alaskan communities of Gambell and Diomede
depend on sea mammals for food, but the arctic is warming

01:38:35.000 --> 01:38:39.999
at a rapid rate. As the sea ice
recedes, the sea mammals decline.

01:38:40.000 --> 01:38:44.999
The problem seems to be
reduction in the sea ice,

01:38:45.000 --> 01:38:49.999
reduction in nutrients and plant growth.

01:38:50.000 --> 01:38:54.999
(inaudible) is in the higher organisms

01:38:55.000 --> 01:38:59.999
such as the sea lions and the fur
seals, not to mention the fish.

01:39:00.000 --> 01:39:04.999
And you sort of wonder whether there\'s
communities here are not doomed

01:39:05.000 --> 01:39:09.999
under those circumstances if they… if
they\'re going to be impacted so severely.

01:39:10.000 --> 01:39:14.999
Hey, what\'s up? This is
(inaudible) in Gambell.

01:39:15.000 --> 01:39:19.999
Welcome to this most beautiful view of
Gambell, that way you could see the ocean,

01:39:20.000 --> 01:39:24.999
around the town forest, everything, you could
come (inaudible), you could feel free.

01:39:25.000 --> 01:39:29.999
If you wanna call me,
call 1800 (inaudible).

01:39:30.000 --> 01:39:34.999
[sil.]

01:39:35.000 --> 01:39:39.999
Here are people living in one of the
rawest, most challenging environments

01:39:40.000 --> 01:39:44.999
anywhere on the planet. People who\'ve adopted
a number of features of modern technology,

01:39:45.000 --> 01:39:49.999
but in some fundamental ways are still living lives
they choose to live as their ancestors have lived

01:39:50.000 --> 01:39:54.999
for a very long time. The
hospitality they showed us,

01:39:55.000 --> 01:39:59.999
the generosity with which they share their lives
with us, the smiles on those children\'s faces

01:40:00.000 --> 01:40:04.999
are almost brought tears to my eyes.
How those people

01:40:05.000 --> 01:40:09.999
can continue to live the lives
they want to live in this land,

01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:14.999
I think is everybody is important as the
question of how do we protect wilderness.

01:40:15.000 --> 01:40:19.999
[sil.]

01:40:20.000 --> 01:40:24.999
After being on the expedition for
two months, it was clear that

01:40:25.000 --> 01:40:29.999
Harriman was growing restless. On one occasion,
he was sitting on one side of the boat

01:40:30.000 --> 01:40:34.999
when one of the members of the expedition
on the other side came running and said,

01:40:35.000 --> 01:40:39.999
\'You ought to come over and see the scenery over
here, some of the grandest that you will ever see.\'

01:40:40.000 --> 01:40:44.999
And Harriman just sort of growled. \'If I never see
another piece of damn scenery again it\'ll be too soon.\'

01:40:45.000 --> 01:40:49.999
Edward Harriman missed this
telephone, his telegraph, his office.

01:40:50.000 --> 01:40:54.999
The moment the Elder turn toward home,
Harriman\'s attention turned back to his work.

01:40:55.000 --> 01:40:59.999
But as the ship neared southeastern Alaska,
he heard something that piqued his interest,

01:41:00.000 --> 01:41:04.999
the report he heard and the actions
that followed would have reverberations

01:41:05.000 --> 01:41:09.999
for a full century.

01:41:10.000 --> 01:41:14.999
Frederick Dellenbaugh. I met
a man who told me about

01:41:15.000 --> 01:41:19.999
a deserted Indian village full of totem poles opposite
St. Mary\'s Island. We looked it up on the chart

01:41:20.000 --> 01:41:24.999
and found an Indian village
marked Cape Fox. Just after lunch

01:41:25.000 --> 01:41:29.999
we arrived and we could see houses all in a
row plainly from the ship. It must have been

01:41:30.000 --> 01:41:34.999
a fantastic site. They were amazed
to see a line of totem poles

01:41:35.000 --> 01:41:39.999
right on the shore line in the sand. It\'s
a (inaudible) village. Umm… At the time,

01:41:40.000 --> 01:41:44.999
the people who are living
here in about 1894,

01:41:45.000 --> 01:41:49.999
there\'s about 250 Tlingits.

01:41:50.000 --> 01:41:54.999
There were several clan houses. The village was
made up of three clans. There were 13 houses

01:41:55.000 --> 01:41:59.999
and about as many totem poles. It was a
question with us as to why the village had been

01:42:00.000 --> 01:42:04.999
so completely deserted and
apparently all at once and suddenly.

01:42:05.000 --> 01:42:09.999
In 1894, they had moved to (inaudible)

01:42:10.000 --> 01:42:14.999
40 miles north of here. They had
wanted to move to someplace

01:42:15.000 --> 01:42:19.999
where there was a… a… a school.

01:42:20.000 --> 01:42:24.999
The Tlingit people of Cape Fox Village
did not consider the village abandoned.

01:42:25.000 --> 01:42:29.999
They were coming back
to get the totem poles.

01:42:30.000 --> 01:42:34.999
Mr. Harriman had a gang take down some of the totems and as
they were 20 to 40 feet high and three or more in diameter,

01:42:35.000 --> 01:42:39.999
this was no light task.

01:42:40.000 --> 01:42:44.999
To the mentality of a scientific
expedition at the turn of the century,

01:42:45.000 --> 01:42:49.999
this is not so much souvenir
collecting as artifact gathering,

01:42:50.000 --> 01:42:54.999
stuff that was not going to go home and go up on the
wall, but it was going to go home and go into a museum.

01:42:55.000 --> 01:42:59.999
At that time non-native people,

01:43:00.000 --> 01:43:04.999
uh… Euro-Americans auditing towards
native people was not one of equality

01:43:05.000 --> 01:43:09.999
and you could see it in the writings of
Harriman, where they talk about savages.

01:43:10.000 --> 01:43:14.999
I think it was this attitude
that allowed them to think well,

01:43:15.000 --> 01:43:19.999
uh… they don\'t even have the concept
of property. So they went ahead

01:43:20.000 --> 01:43:24.999
and removed those objects. And there is
a pole at the Field Museum in Chicago.

01:43:25.000 --> 01:43:29.999
There\'s a pole at the (inaudible), two
poles, maybe three poles at the Smithsonian.

01:43:30.000 --> 01:43:34.999
We\'re looking for (inaudible)
blanket, masks, bentwood boxes,

01:43:35.000 --> 01:43:39.999
box drums, dancing sticks. We found masks

01:43:40.000 --> 01:43:44.999
and other paraphernalia which we put on the
beach and then photographed and took on board.

01:43:45.000 --> 01:43:49.999
Meanwhile, Curtis took a very large negative of the
whole party with the totem poles in the background.

01:43:50.000 --> 01:43:54.999
John Muir was not in the picture.

01:43:55.000 --> 01:43:59.999
The outspoken Scott was the only member of the
group to protest the taking of the sacred objects.

01:44:00.000 --> 01:44:04.999
In 2001 the Harriman Expedition Retraced

01:44:05.000 --> 01:44:09.999
to post for a similar photograph
under very different circumstances.

01:44:10.000 --> 01:44:14.999
The Tlingit\'s of Cape Fox had successfully
filed for the return of the objects

01:44:15.000 --> 01:44:19.999
under the Native Repatriation Law.

01:44:20.000 --> 01:44:24.999
Retracing expedition in this instance

01:44:25.000 --> 01:44:29.999
meant undoing it. The totem poles
and other objects were brought back

01:44:30.000 --> 01:44:34.999
on the Clipper Odyssey to the docks in
(inaudible) and a welcoming ceremony took place

01:44:35.000 --> 01:44:39.999
on the beach at Cape Fox.

01:44:40.000 --> 01:44:44.999
It was a very powerful moment
to land at that beach and then

01:44:45.000 --> 01:44:49.999
to move ourselves backward in
time to a hundred years ago.

01:44:50.000 --> 01:44:54.999
There was the welcoming of the guests.
They granted us permission

01:44:55.000 --> 01:44:59.999
and they invited us to come onto their
land. And even though I\'m a Tlingit,

01:45:00.000 --> 01:45:04.999
I\'m… I\'m not of that clan
nor of uh… those people.

01:45:05.000 --> 01:45:09.999
So even myself, I had to be uh…
allowed and welcome to come.

01:45:10.000 --> 01:45:14.999
Which taken a hundred years to sort through this issue
of the taking of the objects from Cape Fox Village

01:45:15.000 --> 01:45:19.999
umm… and today that circle has been closed.
The objects have been returned.

01:45:20.000 --> 01:45:24.999
And members of the Harriman Family came.
Who\'s very important to the clan

01:45:25.000 --> 01:45:29.999
to have the Harriman family members;
(inaudible) Friedman and her child Ned here.

01:45:30.000 --> 01:45:34.999
She was standing there, holding
her baby uh… on her power pouch.

01:45:35.000 --> 01:45:39.999
We acknowledge their welcome.

01:45:40.000 --> 01:45:44.999
Thank you for welcoming us to your land.

01:45:45.000 --> 01:45:49.999
I know that today is a special day for you.

01:45:50.000 --> 01:45:54.999
We will be feeding the spirits.
Rosita has something for you

01:45:55.000 --> 01:45:59.999
to come and help us. Having objects
removed and then coming back home

01:46:00.000 --> 01:46:04.999
with non-Tlingit people, there\'s
something new. We all agreed that

01:46:05.000 --> 01:46:09.999
they should participate in the ceremony.

01:46:10.000 --> 01:46:14.999
And it was not just objects
that we\'re returning,

01:46:15.000 --> 01:46:19.999
but actual ancestors that
were coming back home.

01:46:20.000 --> 01:46:24.999
We wanted to feed our ancestors
and so we built a fire,

01:46:25.000 --> 01:46:29.999
fire being the medium to transfer
food into the Spirit World.

01:46:30.000 --> 01:46:34.999
Their culture has this duality; we have
eagles and ravens, we have guests,

01:46:35.000 --> 01:46:39.999
we have (inaudible) and we have
to have what we call balance.

01:46:40.000 --> 01:46:44.999
This duality has its meaning in terms of

01:46:45.000 --> 01:46:49.999
our relationship to those objects.
It\'s a real bond,

01:46:50.000 --> 01:46:54.999
a physical bond to ancestors,
but now it also becomes a tool

01:46:55.000 --> 01:46:59.999
for teaching our young about
history and also their culture.

01:47:00.000 --> 01:47:04.999
Our sacred objects and ceremonial objects,

01:47:05.000 --> 01:47:09.999
today are more important to our
identity because our identity is

01:47:10.000 --> 01:47:14.999
under more stress. Today,
some of the objects

01:47:15.000 --> 01:47:19.999
that were traded a hundred
years ago actually have

01:47:20.000 --> 01:47:24.999
much more significance
to us than at the time.

01:47:25.000 --> 01:47:29.999
After two months at sea,

01:47:30.000 --> 01:47:34.999
the George W. Elder steam back into Seattle.
The expedition had made quite a hold,

01:47:35.000 --> 01:47:39.999
over a hundred trunks of
specimens, birds, mammals,

01:47:40.000 --> 01:47:44.999
sea creatures, pottery, carvings, fossils.
The artists had made over

01:47:45.000 --> 01:47:49.999
5,000 photographs and paintings.

01:47:50.000 --> 01:47:54.999
E. H. Harriman never did anything by hands.
Having launched and funded

01:47:55.000 --> 01:47:59.999
and carried out this expedition, he was going
to make sure that everyone remembered it.

01:48:00.000 --> 01:48:04.999
He told everybody on the expedition that he
wanted all the photographs that everybody took

01:48:05.000 --> 01:48:09.999
because he wanted to put them together
in some sort of Momento. The Momento was

01:48:10.000 --> 01:48:14.999
a leather bound souvenir book of the expedition.
Harriman presented a copy to everyone on the journey.

01:48:15.000 --> 01:48:19.999
Then, he hired C. Hart Merriam
to edit the scientific findings.

01:48:20.000 --> 01:48:24.999
It would take Merriam a dozen
years to finish the task.

01:48:25.000 --> 01:48:29.999
In the end, the scientists produced
enough data to fill a 11-large volumes

01:48:30.000 --> 01:48:34.999
describing 13 new genera and
nearly 600 new species.

01:48:35.000 --> 01:48:39.999
To try to grasp this whole tremendous range

01:48:40.000 --> 01:48:44.999
in physical diversity and biological
diversity in a single cruise

01:48:45.000 --> 01:48:49.999
is… is almost overwhelming.
Today, our scientists have

01:48:50.000 --> 01:48:54.999
species expertise and regional
expertise, and it would be very rare

01:48:55.000 --> 01:48:59.999
to find a bird biologist or marine mammal
biologist to study their particular animal

01:49:00.000 --> 01:49:04.999
all the way from Seattle, Washington
to the northern coast of Alaska.

01:49:05.000 --> 01:49:09.999
That\'s what those individuals in the
original Harriman Expedition did.

01:49:10.000 --> 01:49:14.999
The four people who have

01:49:15.000 --> 01:49:19.999
the strongest place in history
from The Harriman Expedition

01:49:20.000 --> 01:49:24.999
are John Muir, the great
naturalist, writer,

01:49:25.000 --> 01:49:29.999
conservation activist; John
Burroughs, great writer, naturalist,

01:49:30.000 --> 01:49:34.999
conservation activist; C. Hart
Merriam a great naturalist

01:49:35.000 --> 01:49:39.999
and biologists and Edward
Curtis, one of our most famous

01:49:40.000 --> 01:49:44.999
and renowned photographers. All people
associated with the natural world.

01:49:45.000 --> 01:49:49.999
The moral of that story is history
may not remember you well

01:49:50.000 --> 01:49:54.999
for what you\'ve done for industry,
but history has always treated well

01:49:55.000 --> 01:49:59.999
the person who said,
\'Protect this wild place.\'

01:50:00.000 --> 01:50:04.999
What\'s so powerful about Alaska is
that it is not just about nature,

01:50:05.000 --> 01:50:09.999
it\'s about people. How
do we protect this land,

01:50:10.000 --> 01:50:14.999
how do we protect the nature that we
find in this land, how do we fashion

01:50:15.000 --> 01:50:19.999
a way of living where
people can both make a home

01:50:20.000 --> 01:50:24.999
and not so transform this land that it\'s
destroyed. That\'s not just a problem of Alaska,

01:50:25.000 --> 01:50:29.999
it\'s not just problem of the United States, it\'s a problem
of the Brazilian Rain Forest, it\'s a problem of Indonesia,

01:50:30.000 --> 01:50:34.999
it\'s one of the central dilemmas
of… of the entire world.

01:50:35.000 --> 01:50:39.999
We had three tons of coal
left in our bunkers,

01:50:40.000 --> 01:50:44.999
but of our little stock farm down
below only the milk cow remained.

01:50:45.000 --> 01:50:49.999
She had been to Siberia and back, and had
given milk all the way. No voyagers were

01:50:50.000 --> 01:50:54.999
ever more fortunate than we. No storms,
no winds, no delays or accidents

01:50:55.000 --> 01:50:59.999
to speak off, no illness. We
had gone far and fared well.

01:51:00.000 --> 01:51:05.000
John Burroughs.