by SUBHANKAR BANERJEE
One million animal and plant species face extinction due to human activity, according to the United Nations. Now, think about cultural production—art and literature that we have invested to address the extinction of just a handful of species (passenger pigeon included). Quite a bit actually. The extinction of one million species feels rather abstract, beyond the comprehension of human cultural production at the moment. We do not know how to speak of the scale of such extinction, except as a mere number: one million!
At the same time, the United Nations also warns that between 50% and 95% of the world’s languages “may become extinct or seriously endangered by the end of this century,” and that, the “majority of the languages that are under threat are indigenous languages.” The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues points out that even though “indigenous peoples make up less than 6% of the global population, they speak more than 4,000 of the world’s languages.”
Is there a connection between loss of biodiversity and loss of Indigenous languages? Or, to put another way, what significance protecting Indigenous languages might have for protecting biodiversity?
To answer these questions, let us begin in Arctic Village, Alaska, a community of about 150 Indigenous Gwich’in residents, situated above the Arctic Circle and just outside the southern edge of the now-imperiled Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest national wildlife refuge in the United States.
Over the past twenty years, I have often used this sentence in my writing and lectures: Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit. I was introduced to that articulation by Sarah James, Gwich’in elder and long-time defender of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (NWR). In June 2001, I had gone up to Arctic Village, where Sarah lives, to attend an emergency Gwich’in Gathering. Community members from all fifteen Gwich’in villages from across northeast Alaska and northern Yukon and the Northwest Territory in Canada had gathered in Arctic Village (as they did in 1988) to renew their commitment to protect the caribou and the Gwich’in way of life and defeat President George W. Bush’ attempt to open up the Coastal Plain of the Arctic NWR to oil and gas development.
When translated from Gwich’in to English, Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit means “the sacred place where life begins.” The “sacred place” that the Gwich’in people are referring to is the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge, a biological nursery of global significance, where the Porcupine (River) Caribou Herd give birth and raise their young, as do so many other species, including polar bears, muskoxen and many bird species that migrate to the Refuge from around the world. The Gwich’in people have relied upon the Porcupine Caribou for nutritional, cultural and spiritual sustenance for millenia.
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