Reindeer!
In Alaska, reindeer are much more real than the fantasy animals that pull Santa’s sleigh. Introduced to Alaska from Siberia by the US government in the 1890s, reindeer were part of a strategy to solve food shortages among the Native peoples after the gold rush. Today, reindeer provide food security and economic opportunities for the Alaskan Native community. Even more so than farming, reindeer herding requires a deep understanding of the needs of Indigenous communities and academic science—as well as how to navigate and influence local, state, and federal policies.
On this episode, host Lisa Margonelli is joined by Jacqueline Hrabok and Bonnie Scheele of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s High Latitude Range Management program to learn more about the interplay of science, policy, and community in reindeer herding.
This is our final episode of 2024. We’ll be back in late January for an interview with opera singer and actress Renee Fleming and neurology professor Susan Magsamen on the intersection of music, art, and health. And we would love to explore more local science policy issues in our upcoming episodes! Write to us at [email protected] about any policy developments happening near you.
Resources
- Learn more about the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ High Latitude Range Management program.
- Visit Bonnie Scheele’s reindeer farm at the Midnite Sun Reindeer Ranch website and Facebook page.
Transcript
Photos courtesy of Bonnie Scheele and Jacqueline Hrabok.
Lisa Margonelli: Welcome to The Ongoing Transformation, a podcast from Issues in Science and Technology. Issues is a quarterly journal published by the National Academy of Sciences and Arizona State University. This year, we’ve explored topics like how white papers get to the White House, how scientists transition from the lab to policy jobs, and national issues like healthcare inequities. On our very last episode of 2024, we are venturing 4,000 miles away from Washington, D.C. and looking at a very different kind of policy: reindeer herding in Alaska.
In Alaska, reindeer are much more real than the fantasy animals that pull Santa’s sleigh. They were introduced to Alaska by the US government in 1891 with the aim of providing food security and economic opportunities to the Alaska Native community. Today, herding reindeer requires a deep understanding of Indigenous community needs, academic science, and how to navigate local, state, and federal policies.
I’m Lisa Margonelli, editor-in-chief of Issues. I’m joined by Jackie Hrabok and Bonnie Scheele who run the University of Alaska Fairbanks High Latitude Range Management program. Jackie, Bonnie, I’m so excited to talk to you today. To get us started, could you both tell me a little bit more about yourselves and how you got involved in reindeer?
The work that we do together is about food production, food sovereignty, using the entire animal as a livelihood, which draws in that relationship between science and art, chemistry and art.
Hrabok: My dream was to always go from Canada to Alaska, and that’s where the first experience of being an intern at University of Alaska Fairbanks at their large animal research station in Fairbanks began, where I had the opportunity to work with reindeer and caribou and muskox. And then it progressed to do focus on the health and disease of reindeer with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and their veterinary program and large animal science and veterinary medicine, looking at specifically how reindeer are so important in the livelihoods of these Indigenous Sámi reindeer herders. And that took me to Finland, which continued a really in-depth partnership with providing opportunities through bachelor’s degrees, associate degrees, certificates for students worldwide in the Circumpolar North to learn from each other around the world what reindeer husbandry means to them.
Margonelli: That’s very interesting because you’re sort of touching on how reindeer science is an international thing.
Hrabok: A lot of the work that we do together is about food production, food sovereignty, using the entire animal as a livelihood, which draws in that relationship between science and art, chemistry and art. So reindeer are still very much important in numerous Indigenous communities around the world and in areas where the range management and the size of the area’s natural-like pastures are large enough to support a commercial meat production industry.
Margonelli: Thank you. I want to ask Bonnie. I think you maybe had a different path into reindeer.
Scheele: Yes, absolutely. So my name is Bonnie Scheele. And an introduction in our culture would lead with my name and then I would introduce as far back as I could for my family relations. So I am the fourth generation in my dad’s side of my family for reindeer herding. But I actually found out last year that my great-grandfather was a company herdsman when reindeer herding was set up differently, and his name was Elmer Davis. And so very much likely my grandfather grew up reindeer herding and my dad grew up reindeer herding. My parents both passed away in 2021. And so I inherited the herd from there. And I am involving my kiddos the way that my parents involved me, the way that their parents involved them with reindeer herding. And so it’s a legacy herd that we have and that we’re continuing on.
Margonelli: So Jackie’s talked a little bit about the role of reindeer in food supplies and culture and chemistry and economic. Tell me a little bit about what it feels like to be with the reindeer. What was it when you were a kid that made you feel good about being with the reindeer?
Scheele: So I really appreciate the aspect from Jackie. So our family, we’ve always had a research element involved with our reindeer herding. There were a lot of scientists in my life, and they would always be collecting samples of the reindeer, counting the reindeer, figuring out. But then for my side of it, being a reindeer herder is totally culturally tied. It’s a little bit different from what we’ve done from time immemorial for gathering food; it’s a little more directed in an agricultural sense, but it ties in super closely with how we are as Indigenous people connected to the land. And in being connected to the land, we have the stewardship responsibility for sustainability, because as I mentioned with our legacy herd, it’s our responsibility to pass on these resources to the next generation. So it’s really important to continue and maintain our culture, our identity, with science because we can move forward together with one supporting the other.
Margonelli: Well, that’s really interesting because a lot of times scientists think about doing policy as the scientists travel out from the university. But it seems very much like the scientists and the Indigenous communities and reindeer herders are very much interwoven, and this has taken place over generation after generation. Before we get into the aspects of how this collaboration works, can you tell me just a little bit more about what’s going on with the reindeer? I think there are maybe 20,000 reindeer on the Seward Peninsula and they are all managed by Indigenous family herders.
Scheele: It’s a little bit different structure. And so I’ve been referring back to how prior to the current structure, it was company herdsmen set up. And then in the 1960s, all of that was restructured and the entirety of the Bering Strait region was split up into grazing ranges. And at that point, you had to apply for a grazing range permit. And I’m really thankful and grateful to my grandfather for going and applying for a permit. When he did so, he was able to select the Nome area for our family. And that’s been in our family since he applied for that permit. Other areas of the Bering Strait region all the way down to St. Michael Stebbins, they have different make-ups of how they are composed. So some areas work with their tribal entities and with individual herders. And then quite a few of them are comprised of us individual herders with the families, ideally passing it on to the next family member.
Margonelli: And then some of the policy is set by the Bureau of Land Management?
Scheele: Yeah. So depending on which area your grazing range permit sits is how you would deal with those land managers and the interests that they hold. So there’s Bureau of Land Management, there’s Bureau of Indian Affairs, there’s State of Alaska, and there’s the National Park Services for some of them. And then a huge amount of them is also controlled by the tribal entities for each area. So you actually have to draw a separate contract with those tribal entities also. So there’s a lot of moving parts to this. And there is an entity known as the Alaska Reindeer Council that is composed of all of these state and federal entities that come together and they have a memorandum of understanding to be able to present this unified situation to the herders for all of that understanding. And so whoever would be the largest land manager in your grazing range area would lead your permit application for that with the others following suit with whatever their criteria is for that area.
Margonelli: So just to drill down a little bit further, how big is a reindeer and how much do they need to eat?
Hrabok: The reindeer that we see up in this Bering Strait region, the females, they’re roughly about 250 pounds. The males, if they’re castrated or a bull, well, they can be even close up to about double that.
Margonelli: So at 250 pounds, they’re like the size of a large American sheep or a young cow.
Scheele: I don’t think either of us would know. (laughs)
Margonelli: Okay. All right. Fine. (laughs) So let’s continue on. So during the summer, they eat grass and stuff. And then during the winter, they eat lichen?
Hrabok: Reindeer will selectively feed month by month. So according to when there is a really surge in nutrients from the tundra or from their environment where they’re living, they’re selectively choosing what they need to be in prime fitness. If you were to come here and to watch reindeer graze, this is the way to do it. You just come sit down, get your binoculars, and you just observe the natural behavior of reindeer. Some will select on, in the summertime, leafy greens where’s the most amount of protein coming, even from a leafy willow. So really rich green items. And then they will go on throughout the summer to fall time selectively feeding on mushrooms. Throughout the winter time, what’s available in the winter after all the nutrients have gone back down into the roots? Well, there’s lichen. So reindeer will feed and move in the winter months according to the tundra areas that have richer abundance of lichen species.
Traditional Indigenous reindeer husbandry culture, the reindeer are naturally grazing and are sustaining themselves in their natural environment.
So reindeer are telling you as the herder what is their preferred diet for every month of the year. And as owner, it’s up to you to guide your reindeer. Usually, traditional Indigenous reindeer husbandry culture, the reindeer are naturally grazing and are sustaining themselves in their natural environment. Whether that’s on the tundra in a boreal forest or alpine taiga environment, the goal is to keep your animals in the best condition from natural provided vegetation in that habitat.
Scheele: So in saying that reindeer are only the sustainable livestock agricultural resource for Alaska because there is no extra conditions that we have to create for them. And that’s why our grazing range permits are set the way they are for the optimum performance, because with all of the land managers and based on the science that has come together, we base the numbers for each grazing range on their winter feed, which is lichen. So of that availability, then the number is determined for how many deer can be on that grazing range to prevent overgrazing for lichen.
Margonelli: The reindeer are very different than other range livestock where they might be just eating a few types of foliage. Here they’re choosing. I read somewhere that they can also smell the lichen under the snow. How do they find the lichen under the snow?
Hrabok: Reindeer have very highly adapt vision. So they do detect ultraviolet radiation, meaning that if you can imagine the landscape is just covered in snow and there might be a little bit of lichen sticking up somewhere that that lichen then is absorbing ultraviolet radiation. And reindeer are able to find it based on very good vision from actually the sides of their head all the way, of course, to the front. They’re able to move quite great distances. They’re able to access the prime quality of food at any given time throughout the month.
The only change where that might not be possible is when you actually have fences that separate reindeer herding cooperative areas. And in that kind of system of raising your reindeer, then the size of your grazing permit is controlling the availability of natural forage in those areas. Then you won’t be able to have such a wide variety of species richness and diversity naturally occurring for your reindeer. But here in Alaska, in the Bering Strait region where reindeer have so much more access to naturally growing vegetation on the tundra, their diet here isn’t restricted based on size of the pasture. So they’re always on the go in search of a lichen corridor, in search of what is best growing food at any point of time that they’re on the go.
Margonelli: Cool. So I wanted to talk a little bit about how scientists and the communities work together. You both work at the High Latitude Range Management Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And maybe you can tell me about what the High Latitude Range Management Center does and how it sort of fits into the sort of reindeer ecosystem, human and reindeer, in Alaska.
Hrabok: So the High Latitude Range Management program, it is an opportunity for students to get an introduction into learning skills that helped to guide reindeer for reindeer health. So range management, herd health management, learning about current policies of working with the government agencies that are all brought together through the Alaska Reindeer Council. The High Latitude Range Management program offers coursework for the occupational endorsement and the certificate program to get hands-on training. You have all these options of really how are reindeer most important to you. And that also varies amongst all these different Indigenous peoples groups around the Circumpolar North and the different students and other entities that we work with through the High Latitude Range Management program.
Margonelli: So, Bonnie, tell me what you do with the program.
Scheele: I think my most important accomplishment is to be able to really have the herders realize the value of this High Latitude Range Management program as being a tool for their success, for their herds, for their communities. The prior program to High Latitude Range Management was the Reindeer Research Program based out of UAF in Fairbanks. And that was all about every aspect of what a reindeer experiences as a captive deer. And that was invaluable information, but it doesn’t really apply for 99% of what we as Indigenous herders do with our deer on our range. Having that information available through Jackie’s expertise with what she’s studied for her career, it’s completely invaluable when we need to move deer and how to handle them in those captive settings. And so the occupational endorsement that Jackie had mentioned with our program, these courses are set up to the benefit of the herder as their intensives.
Margonelli: So this is people who are really working in the field. They come in and then they have this intensive experience where they’re learning about veterinary science for the reindeer, they’re learning about legal structures, they’re learning about slaughterhouse rules, they’re learning about all kinds of branding, they’re learning about all of these different things at the same time.
It is really developed for the herders so that this information can continue to be passed on in this formalized setting.
Scheele: Well, and all of these are based on everything that was taking place beforehand, and then they were implemented into just a more formalized structure to be passed on to the next generation of herders because there was a gap for our family of our everyday interaction with herding. My parents were really trying to remember all the aspects of reindeer herding. And at the time Dr. Greg Finstad had heard that my dad was taking over the herd, and he approached them and said, “Hey, I have this one-time course for you to participate in. If you guys take part of it, then you’ll be good to go for herding.” And it is really developed for the herders so that this information can continue to be passed on in this formalized setting to where we don’t have to re-figure out again or super-search really hard over and over for all of this information.
So when we go to our older herders—some of our oldest herders are in their 80s all the way down to the youngest herders that we have that are in their single-digit years—you don’t have to go through so much of the information over and over and over with them and wearing them out for all of this information. The core herding management husbandry practice are encapsulated. So now you’re just going over with them their history, what is their history of herding, what worked for them in their specific region. That is super important to know because each region is totally different from each other.
One of the things that we don’t cover in HLRM, but as a herder you have to really cover, is the influence of predators on your herd. And so we have four-legged and we have two-legged predators. So we have bears, wolves, human beings that will poach your deer. Caribou are a predatory to our animals because they will come in and they will take off with your herd, and there’s no recourse for the herders to be able to recover from that. And that’s part of one of the policy things that we’re hoping to change is that the herders have availability to recover from that. We had a huge gap in the 90s where the caribou herd got driven down because of availability of winter feed. They came through the Seward Peninsula and scooped up huge amounts of the reindeer. Some herders are still recovering from that now in 2024. And it shouldn’t be like that. We should be able to go back and be able to get a seed herd and start our herd again.
Margonelli: First of all, it was really interesting to hear how much the community has influenced the class and has influenced the way that science is integrated. And something that I think was mentioned is that there’s a class in writing across contexts that the students take and that is about preparing to engage with scientists.
Now, we have the language. Now, us as herders can know and understand what they’re saying to us in their ever-changing policy lingo.
Scheele: So because of all of the report writing that we as herders have to do to be able to report back to the agencies, it’s super important to know the lingo. So I think this goes back to where you were asking me what do I see my role in this. Well, when my parents were trying to figure out how to handle all of this and what are the rules and how do we engage… and that’s just one aspect of it. That’s not even going out and herding the reindeer, which is a whole ‘nother aspect of it. It’s just like, so we come into this course, and thanks to what it’s boiled down to, and what Jackie can convey to the students, is you do have to deal with the state and federal entities on a quarterly, if not more than quarterly, basis of where you’re letting them know what your needs are and they’re conveying to you what the requirements are for policy.
Now, we have the language. Now, us as herders can know and understand what they’re saying to us in their ever-changing policy lingo, but we can try and keep on top of it to turn around and say, “Actually, because of all the science that has occurred since the 1970s, we have the foundation here to have this request to you to change this policy. It’s backed up.” So without both of those integrations, we wouldn’t be able to go where we’re going. And most of that science is totally backed up by what we as Indigenous herders have observed our reindeer doing out on the land and we bring it to the intention of the researchers and say, “Hey, we need you to quantify this so that we can put it down as data to be used.”
Margonelli: Let’s talk a little bit about how that policy gets made because you’ve got federal policy entities, you’ve got local. And how do you change the policy about chasing into the caribou herd and separating out your reindeer?
Scheele: So like with state and federal issues, one of the biggest things that we as herders want to know, that we ask constantly for, is information on the movement of the caribou herds. And right now, we’ve been working, since the 90s and since the big scoop of the herds come in, they have collared animals in the caribou herds. And so they’re able to keep track of where those herds are. And I think an earlier question or a comment you had made was like, “How many are there?” And both caribou and reindeer have dips in cycles in their numbers. And right now, we’re seeing a really big dip in both numbers. And a lot of that has to deal with the climate change. Unfortunately, we’re being really highly impacted by all of that.
And so the availability of the lichen for the caribou has been driving them into other areas that they wouldn’t normally be in. And so we’ve been told as herders that we would have this information available to us or they would inform us of where the caribou herds are moving. And then we as herders have participated in collar programs also with our reindeer. We know where our reindeer are at. But in relation to where the caribou movement is happening, it’s good to have collars on our deer also so we can see where that happens.
And then it just becomes an issue of making sure that the information is just strictly used for herd management and not for any other purpose. And so we would sign agreements to where that would have happened. And then if we can’t come to an understanding with a state or federal entity, then we would go back to research and we would take a look at what’s occurred in the past and the movements of those animals and then point out and say, “Well, in this process, we would like to include in the next policy change, the reason for where we would like to have this information access to it.”
If there is new policy under discussion, then we all discuss it so that everyone uses their expertise in the group, and we bring that back then into the classroom.
Hrabok: So each year, there is the annual Alaska Reindeer Council Meeting. It’s a gathering that it’s usually in early spring or late winter, and it gathers the representatives of the various government agencies, plus staff and faculty and students from this High Latitude Range Management program, Bonnie and myself. And together, we present annual report of what government entity has… What sort of research projects they might have done. That is shared amongst everybody. If there is new policy under discussion, then we all discuss it so that everyone uses their expertise in the group, and we bring that back then into the classroom.
Now, more than half my life, I have been involved directly, it’s like my livelihood, as the researcher, as the professional student, as that lead faculty of developing curricula with government agencies, working with the herders, what are some of the challenges? How can technology be incorporated into the classroom? How can grant writing skills be incorporated into our coursework to train the next generation in the communities to be able to seek out and apply for their own funding for their specific needs?
So some of the skills that I have developed over roughly 20 years, they’re coming from the Indigenous Sámi reindeer husbandry range. And that’s my connection bringing them from Norway, Sweden, Finland. So there is the Sámi Education Institute in Inari, Finland, and they also have northern campuses in Toivoniemi. And from that partnership with University of Alaska Fairbanks, we’re able to have coursework that is all created through the needs of students from the policy makers, from the researchers, from the senior herders themselves, the parents of the students that are 20, 30, 40, 50, 60-year olds. And the whole part of this is feeding yourself, clothing yourself, and doing those same things for others, and bringing in an income so that you can buy those other things that you need to be content, but maybe more importantly is also thriving and having that passion, you know what you love to do, and by having some funding come in that it’s allowing you to do more of it.
And one of those areas that we see is very important all around the Circumpolar North is handicraft production. There are so many people in each of the community that have these absolute master craft skill levels, and whether it’s hand stitching, carving, tanning leathers and furs, and making jewelry that is bringing in this additional income and using your passion to share it amongst your community members, and also helping to get some other grants that combine science with art. I thought that was important just to bring up that connection of all these things we’re talking about, reindeer, reindeer, reindeer, reindeer, but it’s people and the interaction between the people and everything, everyone that you live with to thrive.
Margonelli: That’s really beautiful. That oftentimes gets left out of science policy because that is after all the point.
Hrabok: Because my family weren’t reindeer herders, I started off as being the… “Bachelor’s degree! I need to challenge more. I’m going to be a mad scientist.” That was one of my dreams as a 16, 18-year-old. And then it switched, “I’m going to get my PhD.” But why? Where does that come from? I want to be the first person in the family to get that higher education. And then the huge change point for me, it’s where all the research was done and the direct experience of these research projects that do occur on Indigenous lands, that there has been lack of communication between those that are creating the research on the Indigenous reindeer research range, like the lands of the Sámi or the Yupik, Iñupiat, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, those areas.
You can’t know what it’s really like if you’re not there as your life daily with the people and animals in those communities that you’re trying to create policy for.
And that’s where instead of being just the student studying, research, research, then it became I married into it. And now the shift is no longer research, research, “What else can we find or do?” Now, it’s like, “Wait a minute, what do the people who are living with reindeer as their livelihood? Is there something there that could be partnered with us, the researchers?” And that’s where the main change of my life occurred back… I can’t remember how old I was, early 30s.
And by living in these small rural communities where you can only fly in, there’s such a difference of being the researcher where you get to fly in four times per year for a week versus living there and experiencing, “We haven’t had a plane with food on it for four days.” That’s your guarantee. You as a community member, you are going to practice subsistence hunting and berry picking and mushroom picking, and you are learning to live from the land with everyone else that you live with in the community. And until I think a researcher really gets that experience, you don’t know. You can’t know what it’s really like if you’re not there as your life daily with the people and animals in those communities that you’re trying to create policy for.
So there’s such goodness amongst people and this open communication, these conferences, and these annual meetings. I have seen through life of how important it is to have representation from all of the people where this is their livelihood. And when you incorporate all the youth and those teenagers that might not really want to right be there then because something else is going on, you bring them. You bring the elders always into the classroom because without the elder, the researcher doesn’t know what already has been known in that area. And that is the goodness, that is the passion of that connection between the research, the community members, and the land mammals that we have all been speaking about between policy and higher education and workforce development.
Scheele: We as reindeer herders, we do not get subsidies that other livestock producers receive. And so everything that we’ve done is completely out of pocket. There are some grants that cover some of our activities, but they can be really difficult. And I do understand there are difficulties in other aspects of livestock agriculture within the US. But for the availability of funds that go around, we haven’t been qualified to be able to utilize those funds. So we have been working with the Alaska representation—senators and the House representatives—and with the tribal relations out of the USDA to include, in the Tribal Food Bill for the Farm Bill, reindeer as an exempt status so that we would have a commercially graded product to be able to sell. So that would ensure our food security and our food sovereignty for our regions. And we were this close to see it go through.
With all of those aspects changing, our main food sources are being decimated by this and so we want to be able to offer reindeer as another aspect of here’s food security, here’s food sovereignty.
And so now with all of the change that’s occurring, we’re going to start again. But with Indigenous people, you’ll find that we’ve been doing this for time immemorial of re-educating and starting over and making sure that it happens. So we’ll just go at it at another angle and another tactic to be recognized that we have sovereignty over our food. And part of the reason for the importance of this is that everything that we do in Alaska is not the same as the lower 48 for food security. We are subsistence-based culture here. And so our salmon are affected, our sea mammals are affected. And then one of the few things that we can potentially have more control over is reindeer. Reindeer can be a food source. Birds are affected by all the things that are changing over the last 100 years with climate. And so with all of those aspects changing, our main food sources are being decimated by this and so we want to be able to offer reindeer as another aspect of here’s food security, here’s food sovereignty.
We’re looking at anywhere between seven and $25 a gallon for fuel out here. And having access to fuel affects everything in your daily activities. And when you’re paying that much for fuel, then guess what? You’re also paying for that much for shipping and trying to get things up here. And with Alaska, with how much food we bring into the state, we’re totally reliant on what Jackie was saying. If the plane don’t show up, because we’re not on a road system for most of our communities, you won’t have milk, eggs, chicken, pork, or beef for weeks on end. And even when they do come in, you go and look at a package of chicken that has two chicken breasts and you’re paying $32, $45 for that package of food. And I’ve got how many kids or how many family members in my home to feed? But when you know that there is somebody who’s in your region, who has a herd of reindeer available and they’re working hard to make sure that that food’s available to you and your family, great.
And then on top of that, like Jackie was saying, you’re going out and you’re picking the berries. You’re out there doing the subsistence work of getting the birds, the geese, the ducks. You’re looking for caribou. You are going out and finding ptarmigan. You’re making sure that you’ve got your moose tag for that year. And if you’re lucky enough, you’re also making sure you got a muskox tag for that year to be able to put this stuff away for the winter.
But then the other element to that is all these communities run on generation. And so when you have a power infrastructure that is 50 years old and you’re experiencing power outages on a weekly basis, now all of a sudden your freezer full of food is out. And then in the past, we as Indigenous people have really relied on making food caches in the tundra to keep our food frozen. Well, we can’t even do that anymore because now the ground’s warming up and it won’t stay colder at freezing temps for a food cache. So it’s just really important that we overcome these challenges in a way that benefits our communities and what works for them as we keep moving forward. We’ll keep persevering and we’ll make a way to make it happen.
Currently, for commercial product, we have to have 32 degrees and colder outside—snow on the ground—and the deer have to be frozen and quartered. And as a herder, when you’re limited to that, then your only price per pound is so low when your fuel costs are so high. So you can’t even pay the people who are helping you make this food available. And so one of the things that we would like to see is to be able to… With Jackie’s help, we’ve known all this. But with the researchers, with everything that’s occurred, is we know we can get a really good price for USDA prime cuts. We know we can sell that and then make money off of that to be able to afford the fuel, to pay the people, and to create a reindeer economy. So it’s not super bleak. I mean, we’ve been doing this from the 1890s. We’ll keep doing it and we’ll keep continuing on, but this is our livelihood. We didn’t get into it to get rich quick. We’re doing these legacy herds to continue on because it’s so close to what we live every day in our Indigenous lives. This is who we are. This is where we come from. And so just it matches so closely and we’re going to persevere.
Margonelli: That’s wonderful. This has been an amazing conversation. I just want to quickly make sure that we get one thing from Bonnie about how the reindeer is one of the few areas of reparations. So do you want to just talk about that really briefly?
That whole action that started with Captain Michael Healy was an aspect of reparations from the US government even before Alaska was a state. And it still continues today, and we’re still utilizing it.
Scheele: Yeah. Sure. So earlier, we were talking about how when the reindeer were brought over, there was Captain Michael Healy who had noted that during the gold rush and the whaling periods that were taking place in Alaska with a huge influx of people in these regions of Alaska, the subsistence lifestyle wasn’t able to sustain the Indigenous populations anymore. And so he went and approached Reverend Sheldon Jackson at the time in the 1890s and said, “I think introducing reindeer to the Indigenous populations of these regions of Alaska would be really beneficial.” And when that occurred, when Sheldon Jackson went to Congress and appropriated funds, they were able to bring the reindeer over from Chukotka Peninsula, from Russia, and then they set up these—umbrellad under Bureau of Indian Affairs—these reindeer stations. And then there was a mentorship program that occurred between the Indigenous and BIA. So then the Indigenous herders would be able to take over these herds and use them for their own purposes, for their communities.
That whole action that started with Captain Michael Healy was an aspect of reparations from the US government even before Alaska was a state. And it still continues today, and we’re still utilizing it. We’re very protective of the fact that we as Indigenous herders have this resource and to manage it sustainably for our future generations.
Margonelli: Thank you both. It has really been a pleasure talking to you. It’s also been really inspiring. I mean, we spend all of our time talking to people about how to create better policy between scientists and communities and really to create a better life. Issues has a mission statement about how can science be used to create a better life for more people. And what you’re talking about, what you’re doing, what you’re living is a really amazing expression of that. And thank you very much.
Scheele: Yeah. Thank you for having us. We’re really thankful to be able to share what we do with reindeer husbandry.
Hrabok: It’s important that people do share and visit when possible also like face-to-face to come see the animals and the communities and the students on the land because you can see. You know the people in your community, and you know there’s someone there that is really maybe good with gaming and someone’s really good with the local language. So maybe you can teach through what is the popular way currently to meet the needs of the communities. So we love what we do. It needs to be fun, lots of learning, lots of sharing, and you get to work with everybody. There is important to have that unity and to have these discussions so that policy is made to keep in line with where everyone wants to go. You can’t please everybody, but at least everybody is considered in the next step of the direction of where things might be going.
Margonelli: To learn more about reindeer herding and the interplay of science, policy, and community at the local level, visit our show notes.
Please subscribe to the Ongoing Transformation wherever you get your podcasts. And write to us at [email protected] about other topics you’d like to explore. What exciting policy developments are happening in your hometown? And they don’t even have to be exciting. We’ll still be interested.
Thanks to our podcast producer, Kimberly Quach, and our audio engineer, Shannon Lynch. I’m Lisa Margonelli, editor-in-chief at Issues. This is our last episode for the year. But we will be back in late January with an interview with Renée Fleming and Susan Magsamen on the intersection of music, art, and health.