Mary Blair - Grey Areas

 

 

It was 2008, and I had just gotten back from field work for my PhD in ecology, evolution and environmental biology. My dad called me up and he asked me, “Do you want to go to Norway?” And it was out of the blue, but I knew I had to say yes. My life until that point had been like a straight-line trajectory towards a PhD in science. 

 

I always excelled in math and science classes. There were these answers there in black and white, and that really worked for me. Whereas with the arts and the humanities, there would be these big gray areas, and they went over my head and I tried to avoid them, basically. So, there I was in the predicted PhD in science, and now there's this trip to Norway. 

 

We had always known that my great grandparents had come to the US from Norway, but we didn't know much more than that. My grandmother, her mom died when she was quite young, and she went to live with other family. And so, we had these big gaps about her early life. But my dad had found out that, in fact, her parents were not Norwegian at all. They were Sami. 

 

The Sami are the indigenous people of Arctic-Scandinavia. They were from a town called Kautokeino 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, and they herded reindeer for a living. Wow. [audience laughter] And it explains so much, like the words that my grandmother remembered from her parents, they sounded nothing like Norwegian. They were actually speaking a dialect of Northern Sami language that is no longer spoken anywhere today.

 

This was amazing. I didn't know there were indigenous reindeer herders, and now I'm related to them. [audience laughter] And now, they're inviting us to visit them in Kautokeino for the 110th anniversary of the Manitoba expedition, which was the US government project that brought Sami reindeer herders to Alaska to establish a reindeer herd there. 

 

So, we have to go, of course. My grandmother couldn't go, unfortunately. At that time, she was already declining rapidly from Alzheimer's. But my mom, dad and I went. And after three very long flights, we arrived. We were greeted by our cousin, [unintelligible [00:39:13], who had the biggest grin on his face. He was so excited to be welcoming us to his hometown. I was so excited to meet him for the first time, and I just felt this strong connection to him. 

 

We hopped in his car and drove into town. Just looking out the window, it was so beautiful. There was snow like 3ft high everywhere, even though it was April. We arrived at the community center for a welcome dinner for all the families. It was this huge room full of long tables, each one with about a dozen Sami reindeer herders and their long-lost American family. We got to our table. 

 

I was amazed at these faces looking back at me. They looked just like my grandmother. It was just incredible. The week continued. It was jam packed full of events, like a crash course in Sami culture. I was gifted a gákti to wear for the week. Gákti is traditional Sami clothing for women. This is a long wool dress with deep pleats in the skirt, vibrant colors and intricate trim that represents your specific family's hometown.

 

My cousin helped me put it on. I looked in the mirror and was so surprised at how comfortable I looked and felt. And together that night, we went to this big concert of traditional Sami song called joik. We were about 100 young Sami folks in the audience swaying to the music, drinking Finnish beer. Everyone wearing gákti that represented their family's hometown. I really felt like I was in the right place at that time. 

 

At every one of these events, there was delicious food. There would be reindeer steak, reindeer stew, reindeer pizza. [audience laughter] There's a theme. In fact, in honor of the animal, we really eat every part of the animal. And if we don't eat it, we use it in handicrafts or in our gákti or in accessories like this belt, for example. 

 

When we were having the reindeer pizza, which was at a pub, I was sitting across the table from another cousin who was telling me more about this, about how close the relationship is between the herders, and the reindeer and also the tundra landscape. So, for example, there are more than 300 words in the Sami language describing every possible different kind of snow. The Sami believe that reindeer can smell in ice. And because of that, they follow the reindeer instead of the other way around. 

 

I am really leaning in across the table listening to my cousin, because this is blowing my mind. In my graduate science courses, when we're talking about people hurting animals, we're usually talking about how they're harming the landscape. But here, my cousin is telling me that our ancestors, for thousands of years, have herded reindeer in a way that sustains the landscape and stewards the tundra ecosystem. This is a huge gray area for me, but I'm attracted to it. I'm so drawn into it. 

 

We wake up the next morning super early, go to another cousin's house per bar and hop on some snowmobiles, because we are going out into the tundra to see a reindeer herd. I am thrilled to see the reindeer and also to be driving a snowmobile for the first time by myself. It is awesome. I am flying over the hills, I'm getting the butterflies and I see people starting to slow down in front of me. So, reluctantly, I also have to slow down. 

 

I stop, and I hop off and I walk over to where Pear is kneeling in the snow with his herding dog. And I see they're both looking in the same direction. I turn my head to where they're looking, and I see the most beautiful tundra landscape, but it pales in comparison to the reindeer. 

 

There are hundreds and hundreds of them, and they're just right in front of me and they have these huge furry antlers and beautiful fuzzy silver-gray fur. I see their breath, like their hot breath coming out of their wet noses as they're grunting and digging down into the snow to get to what they eat, which is lichen. 

 

I'm just in awe of them. I remember that Pear told me that these animals are the descendants of my great, great grandfather's herd. If my great grandparents had stayed, these animals might have been my responsibility and this landscape might have been my responsibility to care for. That's where my mind was as I was looking at this beautiful group of animals. 

 

And then, I realized that all of my fingers and all of my toes had gone numb. [audience laughter] It's very cold out there, so we hop on the snowmobiles to go back. And then, we stop at a cabin. Pear has a one room wooden cabin on the tundra, and his wife is there. She opens the door, she welcomes us in to sit by the stove, thankfully, and she brings us hot coffee and reindeer jerky, which is delicious.

 

We start chatting, and Pear is sitting across from me and he starts talking about what this life is like day to day and how hard it has been in the last decade. The snow is melting earlier than it should, and then it refreezes and it makes these layers of ice that the reindeer cannot dig through, and they're starving to death more often. Avalanches are happening more often. The river ice is melting more often and unpredictably. He's lost a lot of reindeer this way. We've lost family members this way, family that I'll never have the chance to meet and get to know. And I'm just getting to know them. 

 

I can hear the pain in his voice. And I'm devastated, because this beautiful landscape and the reindeer and these people that I'm just getting to know could all be gone in a few decades if we don't do anything about climate change. We get home really late that night after saying our goodbyes, exchanging gifts and contact information. And on the flight home the next day, I'm very sad to be leaving, but I know that we'll keep in touch. 

 

I realize that something is changing for me. My family holds important knowledge about how to live sustainably on this earth. And in my field of work, we weren't really considering that kind of knowledge alongside knowledge from biology, and I hadn't been thinking about it at all in my PhD research. 

 

Now, I'm happy to say that in my field, it is more common to include that knowledge. And in my own work I co-produce projects in equitable partnerships with indigenous scientists and local communities. And in doing so have only improved my work and its importance for people. 

 

By leaving Norway and coming to the US, my great grandparents made a decision that meant I lost a continuous connection to Sami land and livelihood. But I realized now that I've remade that connection in my own way. And because I don't avoid gray areas anymore, not at all. I dive right into them and I have made my home there. Thank you very much.