Hooper Bay Tribal Administrator Jan Olson drives his off-road vehicle toward a row of sand dunes on the Bering Sea coast.
A flock of giant gulls pecking at the rotting flesh of a dead walrus take off into the wind as Olson makes a sudden left turn and stomps on the gas pedal to nudge his side-by-side over the top of a grass-covered knoll.
“So, this is all Old Hooper Bay,” Olson says as the side by side idles. He turns the key and cuts the engine.
In 2022, the remnants of Typhoon Merbok slammed into Western Alaska. In Hooper Bay, the storm claimed one of the community's last defenses: much of this long row of sand dunes. They protect the village from the frigid, fierce waves of the Bering Sea. They also serve as a time capsule, preserving the history and stories of this place and the people who live here.
There are historic photos from the 1920s and 30s of small sod houses, with doorways built from driftwood, nestled here in these sand dunes. But no one has lived here for a long time.
The current village of Hooper Bay lies about a mile and a half away on the other side of the dunes. That’s where Olson was born and raised.
“The longest I was out of Hooper Bay was three months. And that was right out of high school,” Olson said. “So, you know, I grew up in these hills. This was our playground. You know, all the dunes that we had, it was our subsistence area. We had so many waterfowl. You could still come down here and find eggs. Even the shorebirds, you know, the ones that migrate all the way from Asia.”
But that was back when there were several rows of dunes here; now there’s just one row left. And it’s not just subsistence food resources that are threatened by the loss of the dunes. The Bering Sea is also reclaiming layers of history here.
An archaeological dig in the 1950s turned up cultural items that date to 1600 A.D. Olson said that a grave that was discovered years ago when the airport runway was undergoing upgrades is even older.
“So they did carbon dating and it was over 2,000 years old,” Olson said. “They were around the time when Jesus was walking around and preaching.”
Some of those ancient treasures haven’t been lost to the sea. Christine Stone keeps one that she found stored away in a hand-knitted red and white bag in her back bedroom.
Years ago, Stone was riding a four-wheeler near the dunes with three of her kids when something caught her eye.
“It was laying on the sand,” Stone said. “I had my older kid driving for me and my other daughter. We were sitting on the side and I go ‘hey, wait. I think I found an ulu.’”
Stone passed her hand over the object as she told her story. The ulu has a shiny, smooth, golden brown, wood handle. Its wide, curved blade is made from dark gray stone and is still sharp.
“Man, I was shaking when I found it. I found an ancient ulu,” Stone whispered. Her eyes still get big when she tells the story.
“I couldn’t believe it. It was right on the sand,” Stone laughed. “I was like, man, nobody ran over it and broke it into pieces? And it’s in a complete piece.”
An ulu like this is a treasured find in Hooper Bay. It links the people, like Stone, with their history and their ancestors. And they’re protective of that history, their stories, and artifacts like this. As these dunes erode, many are concerned about all they could lose.
“As far as I can remember, we lose about seven or eight rows of hills down here,” said 82-year old Elder Joe Bell.
“Seven rows,” Bell said. “Now we’re on our last section of hills. And if they’re gone, the ocean will be coming up.”
When Bell was young, he said that his elders predicted this erosion. They told him the dunes would disappear, the sea water would rise, and the community would have to move. Now it’s happening and Bell said that’s hard.
“It’s going to be a little difficult to try to explain some of the things I hear from my elders to pass it on to these younger generations. We are a cold weather people. We know how to survive through winters. That’s my worry for this younger generation,” Bell said.
Back on the beach, Olson looks toward the crashing waves of the Bering Sea. He said that his grandmother lived for more than a hundred years, but he didn’t really believe her when she told him the weather and people would change.
“I was kind of naive and I was like ‘yeah, right’ as a young boy. ‘It’s not gonna happen, you know, how could it happen here?’ And in my lifetime, it’s right now. You know I was thinking maybe when I am gone, that’s when it’s gonna happen, but it’s right now,” Olson said.
Like so many other community leaders in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Olson is exploring whether the community can and should relocate. If they do, he said that they have to take the stories from these dunes with them.
This reporting was supported by a grant from the Center for Rural Strategies and from the nonprofit media organization Grist.
