Environment

When the first families from Newtok relocated to Mertarvik earlier this month, they were asked, “How do you feel?” It’s a question that residents have been confronting over 20 years, as they’ve worked to move away from their eroding village. But how are you supposed to feel when you’ve left your home, your family, and your friends to pioneer a brand new village? Mertarvik residents say that it’s complicated.

Jeremy Lee is just hoping he has a warm place to sleep tonight. On Wednesday, Oct. 2, white smoke rose from the trailer where he'd been renting a room since April. Between him and the smoke stretched a line of emergency vehicles with police officers in blue uniforms and firefighters in yellow turnouts moving between them.

 Red Devil Part II

Leann Morgan stands at a makeshift table on bank of the Kuskokwim River, cutting a huge northern pike. Leann and her father, Joe Morgan, make pike a regular part of their subsistence diet. They eat salmon, lush, and sheefish. In the fall, they hunt moose. But the pike they eat contain high levels of mercury. So high, in fact, that the federal government issued a warning to Elders, children, and pregnant women to limit how much they eat from the area. But Leann and Joe aren’t worried.

This is a three-part series reported from a village of 20 people on the Upper Kuskokwim River that stands to gain the most from the proposed Donlin Mine. Many villages in the region are conflicted over the mine. Red Devil was built by mining almost 100 years ago and now carries a toxic legacy of mine pollution, but to most of its residents, the Donlin Gold mine represents hope. Like so many communities in Alaska, resource extraction is both a lifeline and a risk.