VIVIAN FAITH PRESCOTT

Endangered Fifth Generation Sámi-American Displacement Due to Climate Change

This paper explores anthropogenic climate change influencing displacement/migration for the Sámi in Alaska.

- Center for Global Climate Migration Research



A body will rise with the summer thaw, spring currents

will bring another to shore. There is still no trace of you

as the light falls, as shadows gather into the silhouette

of a creekbed, or appear as a log balancing on tide.

I keep glimpsing a body here and there. It’s all in your

imagination, they say, this warming, this disappearing.

But this is how we will lose our next generation:

They are awakening from centuries of eroding shores.

Scattered about are flanges and teeth, a mandible perhaps.

One summer I discovered a few bones beneath

our small porch. We gave them to the high school

biology teacher for identification. He never returned them

but said they weren’t human. Deer? Bear? I only know

that someone is missing the missing here and we still need

a ceremony to rid us of our cravings and the gnawing

and the scratching at the edges of what we’ve become—

But it’s not for want of trying. Again and again,

we’ve tried shifting us into the shape of ourselves,

struggled to pull velvet horns over our heads,

tried enfolding into our shaggy haired coats,

and slipping our hands into claws and hooves.

*At present about a dozen Sámi live on the island of Wrangell, Alaska