In Rural Alaska Villages, Families Struggle to Survive

[Vinca]

Source: CNN

Thousands of villagers in rural Alaska are struggling to survive, forced to choose between keeping their families warm and keeping their stomachs full, residents say.

Harvested nuts and berries, small game animals, and dried fish are the only things keeping some from starving.

To get to the nearest store, Ann Strongheart and her husband, who live in Nunam Iqua, Alaska, take an hour-and-15-minute snowmobile ride to Emmonak, Alaska. Their town does not have a store of its own.

In many stores, 2 pounds of cheese costs between $15 and $18, milk costs $10 a gallon, a 5-pound bag of apples costs $15, and a dozen eggs costs $22 -- more than double the price in the area just two years ago.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/02/09/rural.alaska.villages/index.html

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Plus $1,500 a month to heat their homes! Governor Palin . . . do something for these people.

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I'm thrilled that CNN has picked up this story.

See earlier thread here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5015472&mesg_id=5015472

[Andy823]

2. Palin is to busy

She can't take time out from promoting "herself" and trying to stay in the republican parties top ten list!

I think I read an article last week stating that she and a republican in the state congress were butting heads on this. He wants some action taken "NOW", and Palin isn't ready to declare and "emergency" yet! I think she is sent someone up to take a look at the problem, but she concluded it did not meet the "guidelines" for an emergency yet! Obviously the woman is an idiot :spank:

[GreenTea]

3. Any help for the actual people is accidental - It's media exploitation to further Palin's "Road to

Nowhere" project paid for by our tax dollars.

Palin wants to build a 3 BILLION dollar plus road there and all the way up the west coast of Alaska.

Once started the road will cost far more in excess of 3 billion dollars, but it'll make Palin look as if she's doing some great work for poor people on a huge project, But really it'll help her presidential image while the same sleazy corporations will be building it and then use the road to exploit for other corporations (oil) profits.

So this sad story should really help & serve Palin very well, to get her multi-billion dollar road built - Again, the road she wants built is really meant to help get more profits for the oil companies and other resource grabbing, fuck the land & wildlife corporations for republicans like Palin and her presidential aspirations.

[Blue_In_AK]

6. A far better use of funds would be to build a railroad

to western Alaska by which goods AND people could get out there and back without the huge maintenance costs that a highway would undoubtedly entail. Plus, it's cleaner for the environment. In fairness, it really isn't all that outlandish to consider a transportation link to the western part of our state aside from air travel, which is the only way we can get out there now (at extremely high cost) but a road would be a huge boondoggle.

That's just my opinion, but a lot of people here agree with me.

[canaar]

11. Interesting concept.

What would you propose for a distribution system once the railroad would be punched through the Alaska Range. I could envision a railroad from Anchorage to McGrath and then to the Yukon that would provide goods up and down the Kuskokwim and Yukon Rivers. Would be curious whether a roadbed could be built on sufficiently solid ground to reach the Seward Peninsula.

[Blue_In_AK]

12. I think if the railroad went from Fairbanks to Nome

it's a shorter route and could avoid much of the Alaska Range which lies between here (Anchorage) and Fairbanks. I'm looking at a topographical map right now, and it looks like fairly smooth terrain from Fairbanks to Manley Hot Springs, Ruby, Galena, Council and then on to Nome. Of course, it could be marsh out there, too, which might be an issue, but as far as mountains, it doesn't look too bad. I'm going to have to get out my Alaska atlas here and check out what the terrain is out there.

I'm no engineer, but it just seems like the maintenance would be much less of an issue with a railroad than with a highway. Spurs could be built to the other little towns out there.

(I'm thinking big like old Wally Hickel. :rofl: )

[canaar]

14. The Fairbanks to Nome

option for a roadbed continues to get a lot of play. I question the purpose of focusing on Nome. I understand that geologists and prospectors are a pretty tight lipped bunch so there may be mineral resources on the Seward Peninsula that bulk ground transportation might help to be developed. Certainly a rail system would be more cost effective transportation than a highway. My perspectives on Western Alaska are admittedly focused on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and Bristol Bay as this area of the bush has a much greater number of communities and population than the Seward Peninsula and Slope. Rail transport of bulk goods including fuel and construction materials across the Alaska Range for transhipment down both major rivers could be a real boon for those communities as well as helping to create a sustainable fresh water port at Bethel. I would like to hear a discussion of the relative difficulties of maintaining track through the Alaska Range (Windy or Rainy Passes) on a rock foundation (but with significant avalanche issues) compared with maintaining a railbed on marsh over permafrost (my knowledge of terrain between Fairbanks and Nome being practically non-existent).

I think that the root of my discomfort with the Fairbanks to Nome rail or road lies in my sense that the proposed link represents a disregard of Native Alaska community economic development in favor of pouring money into Nome, perhaps the only primarily non-native community in Western Alaska.

[Blue_In_AK]

18. You certainly have good points.

Bethel would work for me, too, if a way could be found, and maybe makes more sense since I believe there are about a 1,000 more people there than Nome, plus all the Y-K villages, as you point out.

In either case, it seems to me like some form of ground transportation between the more populated areas of the state on the road system and the west would be a good thing, not only for transporting goods but people, as well. As it is now, urban and rural Alaskans are almost completely out of touch with each other which has led to many, many misunderstandings and inequalities over the decades. This is one state; we should be linked.

And then, of course, there's Juneau...

[Marrah_G]

15. Is the ground solid enough for a railroad?

I was under the impression it was mostly permafrost. If it were possible, a train connecting those villages could make all the difference in the world.

[uppityperson]

17. I would think a railroad would have a smaller footprint, causing less melting/sinking than a hiway.

They would have to do work on it regularly to keep it from sinking, but there would be less against the ground than a highway, perhaps. Perhaps I have no clue also.

[Ranting_Wacko]

4. Let them eat wolf!

Plenty of good eating on them. dontcha know? Why can't they just get in their helicopters and go hunting like I do?

[juajen]

7. No, they eat caribou, which is why the wolf population has to be kept down. NT

[canaar]

9. It's not the subsistence hunters

of caribou who are driving the "only good wolf, is a wolf killed from the air," debate. This is purely a cash driven debate by guides, outfitters, sport hunters and the supporting commercial enterprises. Subsistence hunters historically took wolves for clothing as well as for herd management. Subsistence hunting evolved through increased trading opportunities into a subsistence/cash economy for which 'pelts for cash' to purchase and maintain the tools for taking game became a key to the local economies. One of the unintended consequences of the animal rights activists' influence on the fur fashion industry has been to eliminate the cash base from the subsistence/cash relationship. What has replaced it is wasteful aerial herd management through wanton wolf slaughter while at the same time disrupting a fragile economic relationship for aboriginal people living in a very demanding and unforgiving environment. Not the whole story perhaps, but a few vital pieces in the larger economic picture puzzle.

[Arctic Dave]

13. I think you covered some of the main topics.

Good job.

[HopeHoops]

5. Oh, if ONLY Sarah could have brought such economic beauty to the rest of America - sigh.

[Dappleganger]

8. So Alaska has LAWS which are preventing these people from getting help??

I wish Obama would step in and help them, it would show her up BIG TIME.

[ConcernedCanuk]

10. a dozen eggs costs $22 -wow - something wrong there

.
.
.

I was upset when our eggs went from $1.80 to $2.55 a dozen

Think I'll not complain anymore

[Marrah_G]

16. I would think it would be cheaper to have a village henhouse

The grain would have to be cheaper then paying that crazy price for eggs.