Anchorage Daily News

Residents of Shishmaref, an Inupiat Eskimo village whose island home is being eaten away by the sea, are turning to the Internet for help in making a multi-million dollar move to the mainland of Northwestern Alaska.

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"Shishmaref: We Are Worth Saving!" is the message on www.shishmarefrelocation.com, the newly established Web site of the Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition. "To not act represents the annihilation of our community by dissemination."

The 610 residents of Shishmaref are united in their wish to relocate from the barrier reef island -- just a quarter of a mile wide and three miles long -- to a new location on the mainland, five miles away.

To do so, they need about $180 million, and a lot of expertise, from planners and grant writers to engineers, geologists and cultural anthropologists, said Tony Weyiouanna Sr., a village transportation planner employed through Kawerak, a nonprofit regional firm that provides a variety of services to communities in the Nome region.

By his calculations, Shishmaref must be fully moved by 2012, he said.

Efforts by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, in particular, plus the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, have so far secured Shishmaref about $23 million in flood assistance and planning the relocation project, Weyiouanna said.

Since it started the Web site, the relocation committee also has been in discussion with an organization that Weyiouanna would identify only as a foundation outside Alaska. It may provide about half the cost of the relocation project, he said.

That still leaves millions of dollars to be raised and technical expertise to be gathered as residents face increasing beach-front erosion.

SERIOUS START IN 2002

Serious organizational efforts to relocate began in 2002, and since then Weyiouanna has been the lone full-time employee on the project. Even before a severe storm in 1997, residents realized the seriousness of the problem, he said.

"Everyone knew in their minds that we couldn't stay here forever, and that someday we were just going to get washed away," he said. "The community decided they would form this coalition to work toward relocation, and try to work on the best plan to preserve the community, the culture, the unique lifestyle; to continue as much as we could for our children and our grandchildren."

That's a tall order for Shishmaref, which traces its history back for generations. The village is located on Sarichef Island, 126 miles north of Nome and 100 miles southwest of Kotzebue in the Chukchi Sea, just north of the Bering Strait.

Shishmaref is surrounded by the 2.6-million-acre Bering Land Bridge National Reserve. It is part of the Beringian National Heritage Park, endorsed by President George H. Bush and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990. Summers can be foggy, with average temperatures ranging from 47 to 54 degrees; winter temperatures average 2 to 12 degrees. The Chukchi Sea is frozen from mid-November through mid-June.

ORIGINALLY NAMED KIGIKTA

The original Eskimo name for the island is Kigikta. In 1816, Russian explorer Otto Von Kotzebue named the inlet Shishmarev, after a member of his crew. Excavations by archaeologists around 1821 provided evidence of Eskimo habitation for centuries.

Around 1900, Shishmaref's harbor had become a supply center for gold mining activities to the south. The village was named after the inlet, and a post office was established there in 1901. In 1969, the city government was incorporated.

In October 1997, a severe storm eroded more than 30 feet of the north shore. Fourteen homes and the National Guard Armory had to be relocated, according to state reports. In 2002, another five homes had to be relocated. That July, residents voted to relocate to the mainland.

Since then the community has worked with Alaska's congressional delegation, the Corps and others.

TELLING THE STORY

"We just got the Web site up about May 1," Weyiouanna said. "The main thing is to help tell the story of our situation, and hopefully get more people interested in helping our community relocate onto the mainland." Most homes would be moved, but the plan is to rebuild the bigger buildings, the store, the school and the community building, he said.

"We are tied to the land because of the subsistence activities," Weyiouanna said. "We should still be able to hunt and stuff. Maybe Shishmaref will be a spring camp in the future, but we will still go to the coast to do subsistence (hunting) and in fall too."