“Tiring, boring, cikuq amllesiiyaallruuq (the ice was lots),” says Newtok Tribal member Samuel John when asked about his family’s recent move from Newtok to Mertarvik. He says that he was sad to come here because he didn’t want to leave his home in Newtok, since it is his childhood home.
While moving over, Sam and his family spent several hours trapped by the ice. When the tide finally went out, the ice went with it and they made it safely. Most of their subsistence food, dishes, and house essentials were brought here to a temporary house in Mertarvik by boat before ice covered up the river. Sam is living in a transitional home in Mertarvik. He says that it is too small for all seven people in his family to live in. There are two rooms downstairs and an upstairs attic where Sam and his older brothers sleep. Both of his sisters sleep in one room, and his parents and younger brother sleep in the other room downstairs. He says it is horrible sleeping upstairs because it is mostly hot and downstairs is a little cooler. The ceiling upstairs is short, so they have to duck when they are up there. Their house looks cool, although it is a little small for seven people.
According to Tribal Administrator Calvin Tom, the Newtok Village Council will add on to the transitional homes, making them permanent homes. The duplex homes will not go away, they are not going to be wasted. They will still be used for overflow housing when homes get crowded in Mertarvik.
The remaining residents in Newtok made the move to Mertarvik last fall. Because the river was closed up by the ice, they had to use planes and snowmachines to transport their stuff to Mertarvik. Earlier in the fall, a barge came to Mertarvik a couple of times to bring school construction supplies and temporary homes. For the temporary homes, they used trucks with trailers to bring them up. Calvin Tom announced that they were going to bring the temporary homes and told the students not to play around the road since the temporary houses could fall while the truck hits the brakes.
Newtok residents moved to Mertarvik due to disastrous erosion and permafrost thawing. The erosion started during the mid 1970s to 1980s, and residents started noticing that the erosion had gotten closer and closer to the school and the houses. Many residents remember losing a lot of land in 2016 and 2017 in particular. That was when the permafrost thawed so much that we lost a lot of land. Some families were worried because the erosion got closer and closer to the houses that had been taken down. The Ningliq River used to be a small river, but now it's big due to the land loss. The river is wider and shallower.
Mertarvik and Newtok are about nine miles apart and separated by a river and inlet. Since there is a big river (Ningliq), we travel by boat to get to Mertarvik or Newtok. If the river is frozen, we travel by snowmachine. Sometimes there are seals under Mertarvik, near Newtok, and between Mertarvik and Newtok.
Both Newtok and Mertarvik are small villages, and both are one community, though we have been separated for several years. We are glad that the remaining residents in Newtok have made the move to Mertarvik and we are one community once again.
