The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced

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A century ago, railroad tycoon Edward H. Harriman, one of the most powerful men in America, decided to take a little vacation - in the form of one of the most ambitious scientific expeditions the world had ever seen.

He invited the top authorities in the country: geologists, botanists, foresters, ornithologists, paleontologists, zoologists, painters, photographers, writers - at least two of each, like a private Noah's Ark of knowledge - to join him on a 9000-mile exploration of the coast of Alaska. Many were famous -- John Muir, John Burroughs, and George Bird Grinnell -- and a few were still obscure - the young painter Louis Agassiz Fuertes and the unknown photographer Edward Curtis. For many of these brilliant men, the journey would alter their destiny.

Over a century later, Thomas Litwin of Smith College organized an expedition to follow the path of the original one. Again, it was stocked with a constellation of scientific brilliance, though this time they were both men and women. It was called the Harriman Expedition Retraced, and its purpose was simple: to go to exactly the same places and see what the effects of the 20th century had wrought on Alaska. 'What we are doing,' said historian William Cronon, 'is seeing this landscape at two moments in time. We're seeing it through that expedition in 1899 and seeing it at the beginning of the 21st Century and we're asking, 'What's the change? What are the dynamics of history that have brought us here, and what do they tell us about where we are headed?'

The film uses both expeditions as a vehicle for understanding subtle as well as dramatic changes in Alaska's environment, economy, and society. While thoroughly researching very specific and specialized issues that surface in Alaska's history - such as the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, the separation of kinfolk during the Cold War, the prosperity of Alaskan natives, and the repatriation of indigenous artifacts - the film also addresses the boom and bust of industry, global warming, endangered species, the state of natural resources, and the influx of tourism to the pristine edges of the world.

It was produced by the award-winning team of Larry Hott and Diane Garey of Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc., producers of 'The Boyhood of John Muir', 'The Wilderness Idea', 'The Adirondacks', and 'Wild by Law'. It presents a unique look at 100 years of change in Alaska, and in American attitudes towards the environment and indigenous peoples.

'Combines the best qualities of historical documentary, nature film, and investigative reporting on the modern-day environmental and social challenges faced by the people and ecosystems of coastal Alaska. Offering magnificent photography and compelling stories...it is a cinematic tour de force that no one should miss.' William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

'I thoroughly enjoyed watching this film, which masterfully catches the spirit of the original Harriman expedition...The photography is superb as is the assembly of the film.' Vera Alexander, School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, University of Alaska Fairbanks

'It's rare that a documentary film can encompass nearly all of environmental history and ethics in a mere two hours...The history of Alaska, since its purchase by the United States, provides a locus for examining nearly all the environmental issues facing the world today, from oil spills to overfishing, from deforestration to destruction of habitat. Too much for the viewer to handle? No way...It's a fast-paced voyage, full of wry jokes, lovely music, and wonderful wildlife.' David Tebaldi, Executive Director, Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities

'A vivid demonstration of how the past can illuminate the present and future. By recreating the Harriman Alaska Expedition, the film shows the environment--and human attitudes toward it--changing over the course of a century...The film is beautifully shot and sharply written and edited. This is engaged historical and environmental filmmaking at its best.' Stephen Fox, author of JOHN MUIR AND HIS LEGACY

'The thing that most impresses me...is the willingness to tackle thorny, sensitive, and complex issues about Alaska...such...as clearcut logging by Native corporations--an especially divisive conflict...No preaching. No sensationalizing. Just clear-thinking presentation of modern problems and their historical roots, engagingly addressed by people of conscience with a personal stake in differing solutions. What a treat! It engendered much discussion in our small group, and I feel sure it will do the same in living rooms, classrooms, and conference rooms across America and beyond.' Kesler Woodward, Professor of Art Emeritus, University of Alaska

'An excellent teaching tool for many age levels. The film offers teachers an opportunity for exciting, in-depth interdisciplinary work in the sciences, economics, language arts, cultural studies, ecology, history, geography, the arts, etc. Educators will be thrilled with this exquisite documentation of a slice of America over one century.' Doris J. Shallcross, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts/Amherst

'This film exemplifies the best aspects of thoughtful inquiry: first-hand exploration, insightful engagement of history, and the construction of a narrative that raises as many important questions as it answers.' Carol T. Christ, President, Smith College

'Larry Hott ranks with the best documentary film makers today...especially when it comes to films about the environment. The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced has all the elements of a great Hott documentary: a compelling and swift-moving narrative that places contemporary Alaska in the context of history; humor and humanity, and stunning footage of the Alaskan wilderness.' Tom Lewis, author of Divided Highways , Professor of English at Skidmore University

'Well received and praised by over 100 Arctic enthusiasts, allowing them to use the film as a tool of understanding the North, our connection to the Arctic region, and respect for all living inhabitants of the fragile, yet dynamic environment.' Scott Pollock, Program Director, Arctic Film Festival Program, North House Folk School

'Beautifully presented, thoughtful and well organized, this documentary presents both an interesting, historical event in wonderful detail and examines the impact of industry and tourism upon the history, environment, wildlife, and native cultures of Alaska... appropriate for all grade levels in the areas of environmental sciences, natural sciences, sociology, visual arts, and anthropology.' Social Sciences Post Secondary, 2003 NAMTC/NMM Curriculum Media Reviews

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Main credits

Hott, Lawrence R. (film producer)
Hott, Lawrence R. (film director)
Litwin, Thomas S. (film producer)
Garey, Diane (film producer)
Garey, Diane (screenwriter)
Garey, Diane (editor of moving image work)
Chowder, Ken (screenwriter)
Feldshuh, Tovah (narrator)

Other credits

Edited by Diane Garey, Tricia Reidy; cinematography by Allen Moore, Michael Chin, Stephen McCarthy; music by Richard Einhorn.

MARC Record See Worldcat record

Keywords

Edward Harriman, Alaska, scientific expeditions, Smith College, John Muir, Edward Curtis,; John Burroughs, endangered species, environmental history, Exxon-Valdez oil spill, native americans, global warming, William Cronon, repatriation of indigenous artifacts, tourism, fisheries, history; "The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced"; Bullfrog Films

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My dear sir, Mr. E. H. Harriman,

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a wealthy New Yorker is going to Alaska.

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He desires to take a dozen or so
scientific men as his guests.

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Mr. Harriman requests me to ask
you to join the expedition.

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And I earnestly trust you\'ll do so.

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The opportunity is one in a lifetime.

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Very truly yours, C. Hart Merriam.

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[music]

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A question, I will ask gently,

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how many American people today
remember Edward Harriman,

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not so many. What was Harriman,
a great industrialist?

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What\'s his place in history?
Well, I\'m not so sure.

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Maybe Harriman the industrialist
greatest place in history is that

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he brought the naturalist to Alaska.

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The Harriman Boys never ever would
have been able to reconcile

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where we are today. I don\'t
think wildest imagination,

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anyone in America in 1900

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could have conceived of Alaska in 2000.

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[music]

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The original Harriman Alaska expedition

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took place in 1899. The Harriman Alaska
Expedition was a strange episode

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in… in American Science. It\'s an amazing
group of people who were on that boat.

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They wanted to categorize everything, they wanted to catalogue
everything, they wanted to write it down, they wanted to preserve it.

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There was a botanist onboard, a bird person
than that individual was expected to capture

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the biological diversity of… of
this massive expanse of coast.

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The Harriman Alaska Expedition
Retraced took place 102 years later.

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Whose jurisdiction is this? (inaudible)
forest. Well, there\'s a big difference

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between now and 100 years ago, isn\'t it? Hundred
years ago they could do what they wanted.

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The original trip was the brainchild
of Edward Henry Harriman.

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That\'s where the story starts. The man named Edward
Henry Harriman, who was the chairman of the board

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for the Union Pacific Railroad.
He had no background in science.

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He had an insatiable curiosity about almost
everything. The retracing was the brainchild of

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Tom (inaudible) of Clark Science Center, Smith
College. Are there limits on how many can land here?

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Yes. There are. So it\'s 20… No matter where we
are in here, its 25 at a time. Correct. Okay.

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Both expeditions follow the same route.

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They went along the entire coast of Alaska.
(inaudible). Cape Fox.

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Glacier Bay. (inaudible). Letisha Island. The (inaudible).
The Orca canoeing. (inaudible). (inaudible). (inaudible)

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The south end of Anga Island. Dutch Harbor. The
Bering Sea. Bogus Bogoslof Island. (inaudible).

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St. Paul. Little (inaudible). Gamble. Small
(inaudible) village called (inaudible).

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[music]

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Edward Harriman\'s purpose is still
debated today. Perhaps he came for bear.

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Harriman the sportsman very
much wanted to shoot one.

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Perhaps it was for minerals, fur or fish.

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Harriman the businessman knew that
fortunes could be made in Alaska.

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Or perhaps it was simply
love, love of nature.

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For Edward Harriman knew that
in the making of fortunes

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wilderness can often be destroyed.

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Alaska itself was in a very fragile state then.
It was one of the last great pristine wilderness

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is in North America, but it did
also recently been penetrated by

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the canning industry, the mining industry,
the gold rush. It was on the verge of losing

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that wilderness that most
people associated with it.

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The purpose of the Harriman Expedition
Retrace was to understand change

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to witness the differences that
a century has made in Alaska.

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We\'re seeing this landscape
at two moments in time.

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We\'re seeing it through the eyes
of that earlier expedition in 1899

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and we\'re seeing it now at the beginning of the
21st century, and we\'re asking what\'s the shift,

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what\'s the change. Harriman
was coming to take a look,

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to value, to test the opportunity

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and Harriman was sort of the ultimate
tourist. It\'s sort of the ultimate adventure.

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Let\'s go, take a look, but
let\'s do with some dignity,

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let\'s deal with some professionalism,
let\'s get the best… let\'s get the best.

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Harriman started with the best. C. Hart Merriam,
first Chief of the U.S. Biological Survey.

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Merriam jumped at the chance to go.
He even agree to recruit the others,

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selecting a veritable who\'s who of American science
and art. His first pick was John Burroughs,

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the best love nature writer in America.

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John Burroughs. Dr. Dall was our Alaska
specialist having previously visited

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the territory 13 times. And John Muir,
we had an authority on glaciers

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and a (inaudible) that he would not allow the rest
of the party to have an opinion on the subject.

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Dr. Fernow was our professor of forestry.
Then, my professors Emerson,

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Palache, and Gilbert could not tell us about
geology or Brewer and Gannett about geography,

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Merriam about the mammals, Ridgeway,
Fisher or Elliot about birds,

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Devereux about mines or Grinnell and Dellenbaugh
about Indians, it could hardly be worth of a while

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to try to find out. The two scientists here

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social scientist and a physical scientist

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(inaudible) from the area and we\'re talking about
a phenomenon that\'s in the headlines today…

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The modern expedition traveled on the cruise ship
the Clipper Odyssey. Once again the ship carried

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a distinguished team of scientists, writers and
artists. But this time the experts included

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women and Alaskan natives.
Harriman ship the George W. Elder

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steamed out of Seattle on May 31st, 1899.

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The Clipper Odyssey left British Columbia

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on July 22nd, 2001.

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(inaudible) turn off its light, 1899 Harriman
Alaska Expedition Retrace is underway.

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Neither expedition was a
bare bones operation.

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This trip, we have 118 passengers
uh… traveling with crew of 72.

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Our hour party, 126 persons in all

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included 14 Harriman Family members
and servants, two taxidermists,

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two stenographers, 11 hunters and packers.
Officers, engineers, deck hands,

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10 housekeepers, 4 gentlemen serving at 2
bars. Two physicians, one trained nurse,

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one doctor of divinity. Its expedition
travel with GPS and with satellite phones

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and with cell phones and with GPS mapping.

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Harriman too brought the latest in technology. He had an
enormous (inaudible) he had hauled onboard in Seattle.

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It had a six-foot speaker. Awesome Buko. Does
everybody know what Awesome Buko is? Yes.

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They take a long cattle for food,
they take a lot of chickens.

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There\'s a milk cow to provide milk.
There are cases of champagne,

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cases of cigars. They could
enjoy almost luxurious life.

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[music]

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Harriman was in 1899 familiar with luxury,
but this has not always been the case.

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Born in New Jersey in 1848,
he left school at age 14

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to become a Wall Street errand boy.
At 22, he was

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a full-fledged member of the New York Stock
Exchange. At 31 he married into a railroad family.

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Two years later, he bought
his first rail line,

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34 miles of track in upstate New York.
At 50 he seized

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control of the vast but ailing Union
Pacific Railroad and spent months

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inspecting every mile, station,
flat car and engine on the line.

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Harriman got his railroad running smoothly,
but in the process exhausted himself.

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When his doctor told him to rest, Harriman
decided to vacation in the wilds of Alaska,

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the last American frontier.
Alaska has been somewhat like

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a colony ever since white
people started coming here

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there has been a wave of exploitation
after wave of exploitation

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from whales, and sea otters,
and timber, and fishing

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and of course now oil is the big one
followed close after by industrial tourism.

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And so what Alaskans have seen is

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this constant process of outsiders
coming, making money and leaving,

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and often leaving the place much worse
than how it was when they came.

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The first leg of the 1899 expedition

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was along the inside passage. An
island studded coastal sea-lane

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stretching from British Columbia to the Gulf of
Alaska. Here, the expedition discovered gold.

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The gold rush now three years old.

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Thousands of men had gone into
the region on the wildest Vegas

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rumor of gold. Alaska is full of such
adventurers ransacking the land.

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Men hoping for new Klondike, hoping to
be the first in new and rich fields.

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Forty thousand people

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go into the Klondike Region for the
gold rush, but only 400 of those people

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find gold in quantities that you could go back
later and say, \'Well, they made their fortune.\'

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That\'s 1%. It\'s only the people like
Harriman who can make opportunity

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actually come to exist in Alaska because
it\'s going to take huge amounts of money

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and they\'re the people with the huge amounts
of money. At the mining Town of Skagway,

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Harriman took his scientists for a
ride on the White Pass Railroad.

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One of Alaska\'s first rail lines build
to carry miners into the goldfields.

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Although there\'s no real clear
evidence that he was here to scout out

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investments in mining or in a railroad. It\'s real
hard to believe that railroads weren\'t on his mind.

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People had immense difficulty getting
into that remote corner of Alaska

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and if only one could provide transportation into the
interior, think of the wealth that could be reaped

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from that landscape. When Harriman
solved a railroad across the White Pass

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or gold mines he saw the country live with
possibilities but also with forebodings.

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When he saw the horrendous
blighted landscape

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caused by the mining there\'s no doubt
that he saw the duality of this,

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that the progress carried this awful price
of destroying the landscape in the process.

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Onboard the elder were two men deeply
committed to protecting the landscape.

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One was John Muir, the founder of
the Sierra Club. He was at 59,

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a passionate Evangelist for the cause of
wilderness. He had spent months and even years

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on his own in wild places. This
was his eighth trip to Alaska.

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The other was John Burroughs, the
best-known nature writer of his day.

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The comfort loving Burroughs lived in
New York\'s bucolic Catskill region

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and had never traveled west of the
Mississippi. But if he did not travel,

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his writing did. He had sold over
two million copies of his 27 books.

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Their personalities could not have
been more different, Burroughs was

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quiet reclusive, introspective. He called
himself the dreamer aboard the ship.

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Muir was outgoing uh… aggressive.

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He was probably the most reluctant
guest that Edward Harriman had.

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He was suspicious of a millionaire railroad tycoon.
Harriman after all represented the class of business

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that Muir as Head of the Sierra Club
regarded as a threat to the wilderness.

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He agreed to go only because he would see
parts of Alaska that he had never seen before

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and probably at that point in his life, he thought
this was the last time to get to see them.

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John Burroughs.

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June 8th, 1899, finds us in Glacier
Bay on our way to the newer glacier.

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We were in the midst of strange
scenes hard to render in words.

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The miles upon miles of
moraines on either hand,

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gray loosely piled from
50 to 200 feet high,

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sparkling seawater dotted with
blue bergs and loops drift ice.

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Nothing we had read or heard prepared
us for the color of the eyes.

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Especially, the newly exposed parts.
It\'s deep almost indigo blue.

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[music]

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Glacier Bay was the first truly
wild stop on the voyage.

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For five days the company happily explored the
landscape, shooting and trapping animal specimens,

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mapping waterways, measuring the
glaciers that almost surrounded the bay.

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[music]

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In the time of Harriman, we knew about
glacier ice, we knew how it formed

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and how it flowed. How it made the kind of landscapes
that we see here. How it carves the mountains.

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Most of these glaciers are in what
is called Catastrophic Retreat,

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which means that they are
retreating very rapidly.

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John Muir was an authority on glaciers. Glacier
Bay was his old play land and homestead.

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He had lived for months by the massive
river of ice now called the Muir Glacier.

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In 1899, he was amazed to discover that
it had receded by a full two miles

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in just 20 years. Today,
scientists know that

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the entire width of Glacier Bay was once
covered by ice. A glacier that has receded

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70 miles in 150 years 150 year.

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What could be more dramatic about
150-year period than this.

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I don\'t think any of the global warming predictions
come close to this kind of environmental change

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in such a short period of time. Whatever
we are contributing to global warming

00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.999
and I\'m sure that\'s significant uh… it\'s
sitting on top of this larger trend.

00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:49.999
Global warming is… is a long steady process
that\'s been uh… going on at a rather rapid rate

00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:54.999
uh… for… for quite some time. Now ever
since the Industrial Revolution in fact

00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.999
and we can actually track it by looking at
the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere

00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:04.999
and correlate this with warming. There\'s
certainly some effect that humans have had

00:16:05.000 --> 00:16:09.999
to help produce this warming, but there
are probably other natural normal climate

00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:14.999
uh… cycles that are operating at the
same time. So I think the question

00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:19.999
for modern scientists today is whether the…

00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.999
whether the human impact is the whole story or
if the human impact is only part of the story.

00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:33.000
[music]

00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:39.999
One of the things I love about
the mountain, I just love

00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.999
is the way the mist weave
in and out and they create

00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:49.999
these little scenes that only lasts
for an instant and they\'re gone.

00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.999
The cloud it just floats… floats along.

00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:59.999
It\'s hard to know whether it was
Harriman\'s idea or Merriam\'s idea

00:17:00.000 --> 00:17:04.999
to include artists, and poets
and writers on this trip.

00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:09.999
Perhaps a little bit of both. But it was a stroke of
genius because he made this trip something different.

00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:14.999
It took it that next step above a… a
strict scientific exploring expedition.

00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.999
Frederick Dellenbaugh and R. Swain
Gifford, the artists who accompanied

00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:24.999
the original Harriman Expedition did
work that\'s documentary. Their work is

00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.999
very observational. Prior to
the invention of photography

00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:34.999
and especially to the invention of cameras that
could be easily used on expeditions of this sort,

00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.999
the role of the artist was really to
document, to record and to be as dispassion

00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.999
and a recorder as possible. What I\'m hoping
to do is something that\'s more reflective of

00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.999
the beginning of the 21st century
than the end of the 19th century.

00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.999
In 1899, there was also a
photographer aboard the Elder.

00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:59.999
He was there largely by coincidence. The
year before the Harriman Expedition

00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.999
George Bird Grinnell and C. Hart Merriam were
hiking together on Mount Rainier in Washington

00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:09.999
and they became totally lost.
By sheer chance,

00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.999
a young photographer found them and
help them home. This was Edward Curtis.

00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
The chance meeting would shape Curtis\' career
and alter the future of American photography.

00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
When Merriam needed a photographer to take
to Alaska, he remembered the young Curtis

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
and asked him to come. Curtis had
been given a specific assignment

00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
which was to document the geology and geography of the
area, so we have wonderful photographs of landscapes

00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
that they passed. But
Curtis\' budding career

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
was very nearly cut-short in Glacier Bay.
Expedition members left the ship in small boats

00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
to get a better look at their surroundings
as they would often do throughout the trip.

00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
In Glacier Bay, these outings were
far riskier than they realized.

00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
It\'s quite dangerous to approach the face of the
glaciers not knowing, the potential hazard.

00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
When you first came in here up to the face of the glacier,
it might be quiet, but there\'s a lot of icebergs around.

00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
The face of these glaciers can be up
to 300 feet tall, the calving face

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
which actually breaking off, you know, on a normal day
pieces of ice falling off the size of most people\'s homes,

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
sometimes the size of very large buildings.

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
[music]

00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
Edward Curtis and his assistant sat in a
canoe near Muir Glacier, the face of the ice

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
suddenly cracked and crumbled. The rest
of the expedition watched in horror

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
as a massive iceberg crashed into the water, a
wave 30 feet high swept over the tiny canoe.

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
I thought they would doomed as the
great wave bore down upon them.

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
The wave rolled on like a mighty earthquake
sweeping dozens of smaller birds before it,

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
but both men are splendid canoe
man and as the wave came

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
they paddled bravely right into its space
and to my amazement rose up over it.

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
As successive waves came, they were met in the same
way. Finally, the boys got ashore with their canoe.

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
The site was one never to be forgotten.

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
C. Hart Merriam.

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
[sil.]

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
John Burroughs.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
We\'re lingered in Glacier Bay and in an
adjacent water five or six days sending out

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
botanical, zoological and glacial
expeditions in various directions.

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
Yes, and one hunting party to stir
up the bears in Howling Valley.

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
John Muir told Edward Harriman about a
valley some miles away, so full of big game

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
but it was called Howling Valley. The
maps titled it simply (inaudible).

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
Muir neglected to mention that his own
journey there had nearly cost him his life

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
and Harriman eager to bag an
Alaskan brown bear set right off.

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
There was almost impossible to get to.
They had to hike

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
24 miles across the treacherous edge
of a glacier through very thick snow

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
and very foul weather. And when they
got about 16 miles into the trip,

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
their guide, a man who had had
once scouted for George Custer,

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
said, \'That\'s enough for me. I\'m going
back to the boat.\' Harriman trudged on

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
and it was so tough they had to rope themselves
together to keep up in the… in the deep snow.

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
They finally made it to the valley.
No animals

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
and all they could do was turn around and
trudged the 24 miles back through the storm

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
and come home empty-handed.
Frederick Dellenbaugh.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
Dr. Merriam got rheumatism in his knees
and he came back pretty well crippled.

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
Harriman looked used up, but seem to
standard well or better than any of them.

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
There might not be any bears in Howling
Valley after all Burroughs wrote,

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
Muir\'s imagination may
have done all the howling.

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
June 14th, 1899, we came into Sitka Island

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
studied in mountain (inaudible)
harbor under drooping skies.

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
Sitka is one of the most beautiful
places anywhere in North America.

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
I know very few places that are as beautiful
and yet it is also a human community

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
that has been on that site for centuries
now. That has a very rich culture.

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
Russian heritage, Scandinavian
heritage, Tlingit heritage.

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
My name is (inaudible) which means big
mountaineer of Mount Fairweather.

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
I am a raven of the (inaudible) House,

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
the (inaudible) clan. Farmers
living here back in 1899

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
Mr. Harriman came in with a big yacht. He
probably impressed the heck out of me.

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
I\'d look at their yacht and say, \'Oh, boy! White
man lived pretty good, I want some of that.\'

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
I probably would. When Harriman was here a hundred
years ago native people were living off the land,

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
but there were these two forces
wanting to assimilate native people.

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
Native people entering the cash economy

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
and also the repression of native culture
and languages by Western forces,

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
teachers and missionaries. When the
European people first came here

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
they immediately assumed
we were (inaudible)

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
and no one asked us about our religion.

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
We were a very spiritual people and
we were always taught to respect

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
another man\'s religion and his right
to communicate with his creator,

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
but no one asked us that. What the government
wanted to do, what the missionaries wanted to do,

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
what compassionate Americans wanted
to do was to assimilate those people

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
to acculturate them to American values, so that they
could survive. And I think that the Harriman Expedition

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
virtually to a person saw the
native population in that way.

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
[sil.]

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
In Sitka, Harriman holds ashore his enormous
graphophone. He used this primitive tape recorder

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
to record a group of Tlingit men and
preserved a sample of a language

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
that seemed about to disappear. Since Tlingit
were required to speak English in church,

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
in school and at work.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
Certainly, when Harriman came through

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
uh… that was a tough time to be
a native a hundred years ago.

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
Today, it\'s a lot better and at least
part of the reason that\'s better is

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
because we have an economic foothold
because of native corporations

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
and because of our participation in the
political and economic future of this country.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
Edward Harriman in fact almost
all Americans of his day

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
would be surprised by the reversal of fortunes
that has taken place over the last century.

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
But the status of native peoples
in Alaska is quite different

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
than it is in the lower 48. The United
States Congress halted treaty-making

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
with Native Americans right after the Civil War. In
other words, right at the time of the Alaska purchase,

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
so there were no treaties
with Alaska Natives.

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
The practical effect of that was that there
weren\'t any Indian reservations in Alaska.

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
Since they were not restricted to reservations, Alaskan
Natives continued to live on the land and claim it

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
as their own. In the 1960s, when oil
companies drew up plans for a pipeline

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
across Alaska, the natives
asserted their rights to the land.

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
They went to Congress, they rejected uh… going through
the quarter claims because they wanted to have land.

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
They didn\'t want to have just money.
We want to control of land.

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
In 1971, Congress passed

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
the Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act
Annex which turned over 44 million acres

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
and nearly a billion dollars to Alaska
Natives. A network of Native Corporations

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
was established to administer
the money and oversee the land.

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
The Alaskan Natives are in a position to sit down and say,
\'Okay, here are the areas that we traditionally utilized

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
and we weren\'t entitled to these areas,
\' and they get title to those areas.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
For the Harriman Expedition,

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
the native people were never the main focus. The
scientists had come to study glaciers and mountains,

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
flora and fauna. In Sitka, what was
most striking to them was the obvious.

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
They could see the trees.
For much of the forest

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
of the Continental United States had already been logged
to devastation, but the expeditions chief expert on trees

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:58.000
surprisingly did not see Alaska\'s trees as a gold
mine. A sombre mixed forest of hemlock and spruce

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
covers the Alaskan shore westward.
The even temperate moist climate

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
accounts for the luxuriance forest cover of
conifers. Luxuriance is a relative term here

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
since the larger portion of the area
does not contain trees fit for lumber.

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
Bernhard Fernow. Bernhard Fernow was

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
the Elders resident forester, an elegant
impression with musical talents.

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
He was also chair of the ship\'s entertainment committee.
Bernhard Fernow played the piano on the original expedition

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
and so I\'m going to try to emulate
this and… and play a few pieces.

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
[music]

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
In addition to the small value of these
woods, the conditions under which

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
lumbering would have to be carried out and the distance
from markets means this forest we\'d be left untouched.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
[music]

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
Fernow was talking at the turn of the century about
practices when… when everybody expected to harvest

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
large clear logs and didn\'t expect that
any lumber would have knots in it.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
What he saw as a very complex forest.
He saw it was very patchy, very uneven.

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
He was concerned about what is the wood quality,
how can you make money off of logging that forest.

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
Bernhard Fernow\'s prediction that the
Alaskan forest would not be logged,

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
actually proved correct
all the way until 1947.

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
When the federal government began to
subsidize pulp mills, thousands of acres

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
in the Tongass National Forest and southeast Alaska
were cut and the woods sold a dirt cheap prices.

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
Many Alaskan welcome the
jobs, but to others

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
that clear cutting was an outrage.

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
I\'m also a David Camp of Sitka Police
Department, I am notifying you

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
that you\'re required by law to leave at this
time, did you understand that? There came about

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
a very… very deep and destructive
conflict in Southeast Alaska

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
between people who said, \'We don\'t want our
forest treated this way, \' and people who said,

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
\'Whatever we have to do to have jobs is
okay.\' (inaudible) because your chain here.

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
How did you get chained here? (inaudible).
You chained yourself here?

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
Two things happened.

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
The economics of pulp mills didn\'t pan out.
They were losing money

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
and people in Southeast Alaska and all over
the country said, \'We will not countenance

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
what\'s being done to the forest in
order to sustain these industries.\'

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
This forest has been continuously a
forest for hundreds of years basically.

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
You could see that large hemlock in
the background here. That tree is

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
I\'m sure at least 250 to 300 years old and
that grew under the canopy of old forest.

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
And beside you can see trees of many
different size and shape, and you can see

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
layer upon… layer upon layer of leaves.
Now let\'s look at this forest over here.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
You see all we\'ve got is this
is a forest that was clear cut

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
approximately 50 years ago. They\'re about the same size
here and really there\'s only one layer canopy above us,

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
so it\'s a very simple forest. So difficult
for plants to grow under this forest,

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
and it\'s strictly a timber forest.
The decision to clear cut forest

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
is a very long-term one. By the 1990s,

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
the pulp mills had closed their doors, but clear
cutting still continues in Southeast Alaska.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
[music]

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
When I fly over Hoonah I normally will take a book and
read because I can\'t stand look out the window and see it,

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
I mean, for miles and… miles and miles in every direction,
there is nothing but clear-cut. Hoonah Indian Association

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
uh… for the past 10 years has spoken out
against any clear-cut logging in the region

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
and the unfortunate part of it is, is that it\'s
our cooperation who are doing the logging.

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
[sil.]

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
On native titled land which is
private land. The natives are free

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
to do anything they want to with the land and one of
the ways that they have attempted to generate profit

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
for the corporation is to clear-cut the trees
and ship them wherever there\'s a market.

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
Now I don\'t have anything against logging, don\'t get me wrong.
I\'ve lived along logging all my life, little (inaudible)

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
caretaking 10-year to log two acres,
you know, I mean, it wasn\'t noticeable

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
and it did uh… supply jobs for people
who want to live work in woods.

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
We got along fine with logs. What
you see here is mass destruction.

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
This is disrespect. This is against culture

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
and on the long run the economy. But we\'re
trying to do is address a lot of objectives.

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
Umm… Some people believe that we should just
preserve the forest. Native should not harvest

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
or extract resources. But we have a
responsibility to advance the again

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
the… the… the social, cultural, economic
welfare of our shareholders. We cannot submit

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
resolution after resolution, stage protest
after protest and we had no recourse.

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
And we\'ve been able to slow the harvesting umm…
volume down with the umm… U.S. Forest Service

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
because we have a process. We can take
it to… through the court systems.

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
With our own corporations we have no recourse. They say, \'They
need to provide this income for all of the shareholders.\'

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
One could believe that

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
all of the things about (inaudible)
are caring native people apart.

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
The notion of… of corporations having
nothing to do with cultural values

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
and who we are as native
people, but if you look at

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
(inaudible) a little more deeply
I think it also gives you hope

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
and maybe even some inspiration. Because
(inaudible) corporations own the land

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
subject to congressional act in fee simple.
We could sell the land

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
at anytime and several of the
corporations have gone through bankruptcy

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
and never in any of that the
(inaudible) Corporations sell land

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
because to do so would be to give up their
connection to what makes them native.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
What we have in Sitka is a
classic confrontation of

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
a sort of an old established American
way of looking at the world which is,

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
the forest is here for the… for the
harvesting and a newer point of view

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
which says that the natural world
is valuable for other reasons

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
than just tearing trees
off the mountain sides.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
There\'s a troubling issue, the United
States is far and away the largest consumer

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
of… of wood products. And where\'s
it that wood gonna come from.

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
Almost all of our red cedar goes into the United
States markets uses this home siding, fence posts.

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
As we protected our forest, in the United States
we increased our import of timber products

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
from Canada which has lower environmental standards. And then
working in South America, there\'s a lot of concern there.

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
Areas like the (inaudible) if there\'s no
timber program uh… it will simply put pressure

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
in areas that are actually in many ways much more fragile
than the (inaudible), so it\'s a really complicated issue.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
There is… I don\'t see a simple answer here.

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
Sitka is said to be one of the rainiest spots
on the coast. People actually live in Sitka

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
from choice and seem to find life sweet.

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
This is a very valuable way of living; hunting,
fishing, enjoying the beauty of the land.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
A lot of your city folks who ought to get out of
the city and they\'re moving up to Washington.

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
They\'re spreading further north all the time, so they
could live our lifestyle. Let\'s protect (inaudible).

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
[music]

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
After four warm humid days at Sitka, we turned our
faces for the first time toward the open ocean.

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
The usual Alaska excursion ends
at Sitka, but ours was now

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
only fairly began.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
[music]

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
Okay, hang on!

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
[music]

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
Oh, here\'s a good thing.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
Here\'s two sea otters. Two
sea otters right in here.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:33.000
[music]

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
You can prickle this kelp. And…

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
and what you (inaudible) this
is the flotation device.

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
What we… what we eat pickle is the uh…

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
just this part. You can also slice
them and fry them in frying pan.

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
[music]

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
Look the songbirds are up there.
I ate a (inaudible) at one time

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
that old (inaudible) people here

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
ate (inaudible). It has the consistency of

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
a rubber tire kinda. It
was very… very tough.

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
There\'s a little (inaudible) here. You see the
little (inaudible). Those are… those are edible too.

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
I\'m more likely to know
about it, you can eat it.

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
[music]

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
June 24th, 1899,

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
in the early evening, we cited a little cluster
of buildings peeping out of the forest

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
at the base of a lofty mountain,
this was Orca. Where there is

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
a large salmon cannery Khan. The
Harriman Expedition was right here.

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
In 1899, the Orca cannery was
right here and this was a place

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
where Grinnell observed cannery operations.
George Bird Grinnell was

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
a distinguished writer and editor, an expert in Native
American ways of life and an ardent conservationist.

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
At Orca, Grinnell was
shocked and very angry.

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
The cannery managers run their factories in the
most wasteful and thought (inaudible) selfish way,

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
grasping eagerly for everything that is within
their reach and thinking nothing of the future.

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
Their motto seems to be, \'If
I don\'t take all I can get,

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
somebody else will.\' George Bird Grinnell.
For all the talk about gold rushes

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
and… and another booms and busts.
Can salmon was… was by and large

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
uh… one of the main drivers
of Alaska\'s economy.

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
The fishing activity that was going on
here was so cutthroat, both in competition

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
among the canneries and so rapacious

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
that he feared that the salmon would go the way
as he put it if the buffalo in the lower 48.

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
In 1899, when Harriman brought his expedition
up to Alaska there was very little

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
in the way of government oversight. The Treasury
Department is in-charge of regulating fisheries.

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
They saw it solely as commerce. They really
didn\'t have an idea as to what was happening

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
biologically for the salmon. Salmon
have a very interesting life history

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
and important part of the life history is that
they come back to a river to spawn. All the salmon

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
in a particular river come up by the
cannery. They all come by the same place,

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
so it\'s easy to take them all. Now if you take all
the fish, you won\'t notice that for a few years

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
because they\'re still adults out to see that are waiting to
come in, but if you do that for two or three years in a row,

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
there won\'t be any fish left in that river. At Harriman\'s
day there are only enough canneries to have local effects.

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
Right after the Harriman Expedition,
the canning industry doubles

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
by 1901 and by 1903 it has
doubled in size again.

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
They\'re cannery (inaudible) up everywhere. The number of fish that
had been caught and canned continued to grow and… grow and grow.

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
It actually wasn\'t until 1919 that
the first serious signs of depletion

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
were apparent and it caused
a panic in the industry.

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
[music]

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
One of the striking features
of the Alaska Fisheries is

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
the extraordinary boom and bust nature of
these economists. In the case of fisheries,

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
you see different waves of fish
being exploited at moments,

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
very intensive exploitation and then the collapse
of the population on which the fisheries dependent.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
The canneries were able to
severely deplete the salmon

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
all over Alaska, so salmon became very scarce,
the Secretary of Interior was coming up here

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
and the President was worried about this place. The people
who lived here wanted to manage their own resources

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
and stop the rapacious over exploitation
of the resources that was occurring

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
because the canneries were based in
Seattle and San Francisco and not here.

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
Finally, in 1957, the salmon found
an unlikely savior, Statehood.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
When Alaska became a state, it was
able to set fishing limits for itself.

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
The salmon became much more abandon
again and when you look down there,

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
there you see salmon swimming around
in the water. This is typical

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
of so much of Alaska today. You
can still see teaming salmon runs

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
in many of the rivers. Today\'s
runs are largely very healthy,

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
but we do see some weakness
(inaudible) really weak runs

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
in the Yukon and Sequim Rivers this year
uh… are a tremendous cause of… of concern

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
and it cries out for
many of the things that

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
Grinnell was saying back in 1899, \'We need more
scientific inquiry. We need to know what\'s going on

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
with these fish and we need stronger
regulation and enforcement of fishing rules.

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
June 25th, 1899,

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
Prince William Sound is shaped like a
spider and open irregular body of water

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
80 miles or more across. We
are in a great ice chest.

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
The mountains are ribbed with glaciers and
the head of the bay is walled within.

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
John Burroughs.

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
It was in Prince William Sound that the
expedition made the most important discovery of

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
the entire voyage. The Elder steamed up to an
enormous glacier on the western side of the Sound

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
and this was as far as they
could go according to the maps,

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
but John Muir spotted a narrow gap between
the ice wall and the rock coastline.

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
He asked Harriman to let him take a small boat to explore
the opening. But Edward Harriman had another idea.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
He ordered the captain and the
pilot to steer the Elder itself

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
right into the passage. The
local pilot refused to do it

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
and in fact he stopped off to his room because he saw the
potential hazards which any prudent mariner would see.

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
Is it deep enough to take a big ship through
there. Can they have any control over the ship

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
with the current the way it is? Wheatear they\'re gonna get
smashed into the glacier. Were they ever get out of there again.

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
In this critical moment
Harriman had to decide

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
whether to say, well, there might be something there
might not. What Harriman did was not only decide that,

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
yes, we\'re gonna go further, but he took over
the helm, so that he would be responsible

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
rather than the captain. Which to me
it just doesn\'t make sense because

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
what good would it financial responsibility do if you\'re
going to lose the whole ship, anyways you\'re all gonna die.

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
They were headed (inaudible) to face
the glacier uh… no control whatsoever,

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
but this current was so strong and it was running
parallel to the face of the glacier that

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
the current kept them away from the ice.
The Elder hugged the rocky shoreline

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
and threaded its way through the channel.

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
The passage was dangerously narrow and threatening,
but gradually opened into a magnificent icy field

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
about 12 miles long. Mr. Harriman ordered the
captain to proceed up the middle of the new field.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
Full speed, sir? Enquired the captain.
Yes, full speed ahead.

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
[music]

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
Muir was right. He… his theory was correct.
They discovered a whole new embayment

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
that had never been studied before. I\'m a
little baffled by how they made it across it

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
because it\'s not really an easy place to
navigate through today. I felt a great deal

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
about how lucky the first expedition was.
They did take

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
a dangerous route they we\'re in uncharted
waters, literally in many places

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
they did not know what to expect.
I think that turn towards

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
the Harriman fjord in the glacier
which they found really did show

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
tremendous bravery. I saw that Mr.
Harriman was uncommon.

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
He was taking a trip for rest and at the
same time managing his exploring guests

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
as if he were a grateful soothing essential
part of his (inaudible) scientific explorers

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
are not easily managed. Nevertheless,
he kept us all in smooth working order

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
looking after everything to the
minutest details. John Muir.

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
John Muir and John Burroughs, both of
them had a dark suspicion of businessmen

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
in their motives that suspicion really
lasted until they got aboard ship

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
and met Harriman, and gradually their suspicions
thought. I know there\'s a deeper connection

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
between Muir and Harriman as different as
those two men were and it takes a great deal

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
of vision and dedication to
do what Edward Harriman did

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
obviously in a world of J. Pierpont
Morgan and Rockefeller and Carnegie.

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
But with John Muir it took a great
deal of… of dedication and commitment

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
to spend months and months of solitude
that he spent in the wilderness.

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
I think that they recognize something
of themselves in each other

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
and they began a lifelong friendship.
Muir and the others

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
promptly named the new body of water, the
Harriman Fjord and the glacier it\'s far end

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
was called a Harriman Glacier.

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
Chris, what\'s your read

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
on Prince William Sound? (inaudible) is still down in
the water, you might see a little bit caving there,

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
but the most active one and the biggest one here is very
(inaudible). I mean, how good is this (inaudible) ice can we go?

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
In that there\'s no ice classification,
so we can\'t go in the ice.

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
We can navigate around ice.

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:48.000
[music]

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
The Harriman Expedition,

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
Prince William Sound was a world
of pristine glacial wonder.

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
To the American public almost a century later, it would
become famous as the site of something quite different,

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
Prince William Sound was the
site of the 1989 oil spill,

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
just really over in that area
next to (inaudible) Island is,

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
you can\'t see a Bligh Reef and that\'s
where the oil tanker ran aground

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
in March of 1989. For three days,
people can\'t figure out what to do?

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
There was very little response equipment
around. There was no effort to clean it up

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
because the equipment wasn\'t there. People
were not prepared for something like this.

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
And then a big storm came in and move the oil
out. It had Kodiak Island, Afognak Island.

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
The currents took it up into Cook Inlet.
Over a thousand miles

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
of shoreline were oiled. It was the
largest spill in North American history,

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
11 million gallons of oil
leaked from the ship.

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
Everybody was clamoring
for Exxon to do something

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
and so Exxon did probably about the
worst thing that could have done.

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
They went on the beaches with high-pressure hot
water hoses and squirted soapy water on the rocks.

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
So the oil seep down deep into the
rocks deep, into the substrate.

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
The oil spill was a terrible disaster,
in particularly for the people

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
who used resources for their daily food.
You can imagine somebody showing up

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
and throwing a bucket of crude oil in your refrigerator. Well, this
is just what happened with people in the Prince William Sound.

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
We saw in the newspaper that the oil was a few
miles out of Cape (inaudible) where we finished

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
and we got in the boat immediately
headed on out there and

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
it was kind of overwhelming umm… to smell it in the
air and to see the seabirds and everything dying.

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
[music]

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
Thousands of birds were killed, sea otters,

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
harbor seals, fish, you know they
were immediate effects like that,

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
probably the most devastating effects
that were the long-term effects.

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
We have a crew out umm…

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
this summer that is looking at all of the
beaches that were heavily and moderately oiled

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
in 1989. They\'re finding 10 times more oil

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
than they anticipated. There\'s oil
that\'s a lot lower in the timeline

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
and it\'s just being leached
out very slowly overtime,

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
it\'s still fresh oil, it\'s still toxic.

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
The connection between oil as a resource
extractive industry and the kinds of industries

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
that were going on in the Harriman
days is very similar. In those days,

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
they were overfishing salmon, they were overfishing
herring. It was that classic come to Alaska;

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
let\'s dig it up, let\'s catch
it and then let\'s move on.

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
Since the 1970s oil has
flowed from Mile Marker Zero

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean,
to Mile Marker 800 at Valdez

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
in Prince William Sound. It\'s amazing
that those engineers had so much hubris

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
that they believe that they could
build an 800 mile long pipeline.

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
Pump oil into it at Prudhoe Bay and
get it out of Valdez 800 miles below.

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
And not only did they have that hubris, they were right,
they did it. It is an amazing thing that has changed

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
the face of Alaska in many… many ways. The
oil companies pay royalties to the state.

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
The money is invested for the citizens of
Alaska in an account called the Permanent Fund.

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
The Permanent Fund Dividend was
money that was set aside back

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
when the oil windfalls were created.

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
It provides every Alaskan with a dividend check and I
think this year they\'re talking about it being close to

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
$2,000 per person, for every man, woman and child.
For a family of four, you stand to get an $8,000

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
in… in the mail, that for a lot of Alaskan.

00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
It\'s a tremendous supplement for… for their
income. This money that I don\'t think

00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
anybody in their wildest imagination thought would
amount more to a couple $100 a little… a little bonus

00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
for people when the program was first started. It
now has a tremendous impact on the state economy.

00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
Yes, oil has been good to Alaska.

00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
Yes, it… we have great schools and anchorage, and we can build
airports and we can do all these great things for the state,

00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
but it has this price tag to it. You
also have to ask where this oil goes.

00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
It goes to Washington State, it goes to
Southern California and it fuels automobiles

00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
and other energy needs of
the Los Angeles Basin.

00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
They wouldn\'t be here if the Los Angeles Basin weren\'t
meeting this oil. We\'re all tied up in this pledge.

00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
It is not just Alaskans. For Exxon Oil

00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
the price tag came to $900 million in the form
of a fund that pays for habitat protection

00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
and environmental research
in Prince William Sound.

00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
The transport of petroleum is the
reason these studies being funded.

00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
We had an accident here 10 years ago and the
study is a direct result of a human accident

00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
that impacted the environment and, you
know, our studies out here is directed

00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
at determining how that spill
effected these animals.

00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:54.999
This is very different than the Harriman
Expedition. Jennifer is doing heart rate,

00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:59.999
watching how diving ability develops in
these pups. We\'re putting a satellite tag

00:52:00.000 --> 00:52:04.999
on one tonight and we\'ll monitor its movements
and its diving behavior for 10 months.

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
We take a biopsy from each of these animals

00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
and your grandmother was right, you are which you eat, you
can actually tell what the older seals have been eating

00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:19.999
based on fatty acids signature
in their blubber layer.

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:24.999
The good that came out of the oil spill was

00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
in the form of moving science forward.
We have had

00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
so much research devoted to
understanding birds, shellfish,

00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
mammals in Prince William Sound that
wouldn\'t have otherwise been spent.

00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
Well, I\'ve seen the oil spill

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
and after that I\'ve seen
a slow increase of use.

00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
I guess you\'d call it a people spill and a
lot of us think it\'s gonna be far worse

00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
than any oil spill ever will be.
Straight ahead is College Fjord

00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
and aboard this new vessel we can get closer than ever before.
That (inaudible) water was originally built around 1985.

00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
When you aboard today, you need to be thinking if
you were like chicken (inaudible) blue or halibut.

00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
[music]

00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
And taking a look at the cruise ship schedule for today
a busy day on the docks, the Crown Princess is here

00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
already tied up at 06:30 this morning.
Tourism was in its infancy

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
when Harriman arrived. Today, it is one
of the state\'s leading industries.

00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
And the Sky Princess is scheduled to be here
right around one and to leave at six p.m.

00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
for a grand total of 6,377 passengers

00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
visiting our tiny little town today.

00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
It is imposed on Alaska the obligation
on one hand to big oil barrel

00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
for the nation and national park for the world,
and did meet both of those roles sufficiently,

00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
erratically is extremely
difficult balancing act.

00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
Tourism to a degree a benign industry,
but it does have its impact.

00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
A hundred years ago
tourist boats had started

00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
and they stayed more or less of the place and they went for
a couple of hikes, but now there\'s transportation systems,

00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
they\'ve got helicopters going uh… off

00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
there\'s… there\'s multiple landing pads down there.
They\'ve got little airplanes per flight seeing.

00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
The crowd again impact can extend way over
the hills into the desirable wilderness.

00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
Most visitors see Alaska

00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
from the deck of a cruise ship. These vessels are
like small cities carrying thousands of people.

00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
A typical day the ship bearing 1,800
passengers involves over 7,000 meals,

00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
2,000 showers and several tons of laundry.

00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
One of the interesting things
about the cruise industry

00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:59.999
as there\'s a whole hidden area that nobody
thinks about that\'s the crew of the ships.

00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.999
One of the things that you find umm…
in every port is discussions about

00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:09.999
the telephones, where are they. What
they\'re looking for is services for

00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:14.999
when their import and that\'s really
important to them to communicate back home.

00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:19.999
Come around the corner.

00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:24.999
As you imagine, so there\'s 20
stations, 20 internet stations.

00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:29.999
What kinds of things are purchased here?
I… I assume it\'s mostly crew, is it?

00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:34.999
Yeah, it\'s mostly crew, so we\'ve
got a lot of different snacks

00:55:35.000 --> 00:55:39.999
from different countries, from Philippines, Indonesia,
Great Britain. For your catering (inaudible).

00:55:40.000 --> 00:55:44.999
Thanks. Says it all, doesn\'t it?

00:55:45.000 --> 00:55:49.999
Cruise ship services.
Cruise ships have brought

00:55:50.000 --> 00:55:54.999
the marvels of Alaska to millions of people and
air and water pollution to the Alaskan Coast.

00:55:55.000 --> 00:55:59.999
The state legislature has passed the
tightest controls on cruise ship pollution

00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:04.999
in the nation, but the flooded
visitor is still rising.

00:56:05.000 --> 00:56:09.999
My fear is that (inaudible)
environments like Prince William Sound

00:56:10.000 --> 00:56:14.999
will be overexploited. There\'ll be lodges coming
in, there\'ll be more and more tour boats,

00:56:15.000 --> 00:56:19.999
there\'ll be more and more (inaudible), more and more
operators like myself. Umm… It\'s going to take away

00:56:20.000 --> 00:56:24.999
from that… that wilderness quality
that feeling that, \'Wow, I\'m out here

00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:29.999
walking with no one\'s ever walk before.\' We
should lay up against tourism the same criteria

00:56:30.000 --> 00:56:34.999
that I would place against every
growth proposal, development proposal

00:56:35.000 --> 00:56:39.999
isn\'t environmentally frown, does it pay
its own way and do the people want it.

00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:44.999
I think in some areas, we\'re
finding a negative reaction

00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:49.999
on the part of people
who say enough already.

00:56:50.000 --> 00:56:54.999
There\'s no limit on the number
of airplanes and helicopters

00:56:55.000 --> 00:56:59.999
that could be flying over glaciers, there\'s
no limit, on number of cruise ships,

00:57:00.000 --> 00:57:04.999
(inaudible) and buses. The
people seem to think that

00:57:05.000 --> 00:57:09.999
there\'s… there\'s absolutely the space here
is endless and a lot of us who came up here

00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:14.999
looking for something different, seeking
something different or watching Alaska

00:57:15.000 --> 00:57:19.999
gradually relentlessly becoming just like
every other place in the United States.

00:57:20.000 --> 00:57:24.999
I was born and raised in California, and I
felt like I should lived a hundred years ago.

00:57:25.000 --> 00:57:29.999
All I had to do is come here and
I\'m like a hundred years back.

00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:34.999
I\'m (inaudible) my water and, you know,
I do have electricity with generators,

00:57:35.000 --> 00:57:39.999
but this is like it was a 100 years ago.
It\'s just I\'m here now.

00:57:40.000 --> 00:57:44.999
I am an oyster farmer and I
live here with my husband.

00:57:45.000 --> 00:57:49.999
We grow these from little itty-bitty
things and we sell them to restaurants

00:57:50.000 --> 00:57:54.999
and we go to the state fair and
we sell them direct to customers.

00:57:55.000 --> 00:57:59.999
I can take them, and I can open them and I
conserve and chilled with the sauce, and I can see

00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:04.999
people drop to their knees and say, \'Oh, that is the
best I\'ve ever had, \' And what would that motivate

00:58:05.000 --> 00:58:09.999
you to do or to be in life. I think
I would be an oyster farmers.

00:58:10.000 --> 00:58:14.999
[sil.]

00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:19.999
Wonderful. What one?

00:58:20.000 --> 00:58:25.000
They\'re good.

00:58:50.000 --> 00:58:54.999
Two humpback whales right
here, just right off the bow.

00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:59.999
[music]

00:59:00.000 --> 00:59:04.999
(inaudible) but they throw
flukes when they dive.

00:59:05.000 --> 00:59:09.999
[music]

00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:14.999
It\'s gonna lift his tail
off, there\'s the fluke.

00:59:15.000 --> 00:59:19.999
(inaudible) look at it. This is (inaudible) you ID
individual, so I\'m just… I\'m born a naturalist.

00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:24.999
Uh… A naturalist really is just a biologist in a very
short attention span. (inaudible), right off the bow.

00:59:25.000 --> 00:59:29.999
(inaudible). Well, just today the
first thing we saw were albatross

00:59:30.000 --> 00:59:34.999
and one in the distance we\'re
looking at very closely,

00:59:35.000 --> 00:59:39.999
(inaudible) pinkish color bill maybe could
have been like the way it was marked,

00:59:40.000 --> 00:59:44.999
it could have been a short-tailed albatross. Now there\'s
about five 500 short-tailed albatross left in the world

00:59:45.000 --> 00:59:49.999
and (inaudible) off of Japan, but when
Harriman came here, they wrote in the books

00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:54.999
the sky was black with albatross. And when
there were recording short-tailed albatross.

00:59:55.000 --> 00:59:59.999
The changes from that time to this
time are unbelievably dramatic.

01:00:00.000 --> 01:00:04.999
[sil.]

01:00:05.000 --> 01:00:09.999
John Burroughs. On the morning of July 1st,

01:00:10.000 --> 01:00:14.999
we woke up in Uyak Bay on the north
side of the Island of Kodiak.

01:00:15.000 --> 01:00:19.999
Green hills and mountains surrounded us.
This is the home of the great Kodiak,

01:00:20.000 --> 01:00:24.999
the largest species of bears
in the world as big as an ox.

01:00:25.000 --> 01:00:29.999
The Kodiak brown bears
stand over 10 feet tall

01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:34.999
and weigh up to 1,500 pounds or better. It\'s
arguably the world\'s largest carnivore.

01:00:35.000 --> 01:00:39.999
Hunting Kodiak brown bear 100 years ago would
have the same type of mystique that it does now.

01:00:40.000 --> 01:00:44.999
(inaudible) Harriman loved hunting as did a
lot of people of his class at that time.

01:00:45.000 --> 01:00:49.999
Any opportunity at any land fault that he could
find in search of a bear, he went after.

01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:54.999
Harriman setup a hunting camp,
much to Muir\'s displeasure.

01:00:55.000 --> 01:00:59.999
Everybody going shooting, he wrote in his
diary. Sauntering as if it were the best day

01:01:00.000 --> 01:01:04.999
for the ruthless business. All day
long Harriman searched for bear

01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:09.999
without success. If Harriman
was having a hard time

01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:14.999
finding a brown bear on Kodiak, he was probably in the wrong place
at the wrong time. There… there\'s a high density of bears here.

01:01:15.000 --> 01:01:19.999
But they utilize the food source at
different times a year in different places.

01:01:20.000 --> 01:01:24.999
Being here early July, uh… the bears will be
starting to concentrate on salmon streams,

01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:29.999
so he would have to know which salmon
streams have an early run of salmon.

01:01:30.000 --> 01:01:34.999
July 2nd, 1899, Mr. Harriman found

01:01:35.000 --> 01:01:39.999
the long expected Kodiak bear. He
found her grazing with her cub.

01:01:40.000 --> 01:01:44.999
Eating grass like a cow Mr. Harriman said.
She was a large animal,

01:01:45.000 --> 01:01:49.999
but below the size of the
tradition Kodiak bear.

01:01:50.000 --> 01:01:54.999
He was the equipped with guides who
apparently had enough firepower

01:01:55.000 --> 01:01:59.999
to blow the bear to bits, should Harriman miss,
but Harriman did get the bear on one shot

01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:04.999
and then he shot the cub.
It was not exactly

01:02:05.000 --> 01:02:09.999
the biggest and the best of trophies, but
that to Harriman was a monumental achievement

01:02:10.000 --> 01:02:14.999
in his own mind I suspect that ranked with
some of the things that the scientists did.

01:02:15.000 --> 01:02:19.999
If I came upon Harriman with having shot a mother
with cubs uh… he would been cited for shooting bears

01:02:20.000 --> 01:02:24.999
out of season and for shooting a mother with cubs,
it\'s illegal to do that now and the reason for that is

01:02:25.000 --> 01:02:29.999
we\'re trying to protect those
family groups. Prior to 1925,

01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:34.999
there was no season. You could hunt as
many as you wanted, whenever you wanted.

01:02:35.000 --> 01:02:39.999
Now we have very strict seasons. We monitor how many
bears are killed. We also look at the sex ratio.

01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:44.999
We want to kill mostly males because
there as much as I hate to admit it,

01:02:45.000 --> 01:02:49.999
they\'re the expendable part of the population.
Currently, we kill 160 bears per year, 70% males.

01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:54.999
But most of the present-day bear
hunters have a less lethal motive.

01:02:55.000 --> 01:02:59.999
We have thousands of people every year coming
through. They come through as ecotourism.

01:03:00.000 --> 01:03:04.999
We have (inaudible) programs in the islands where the…
the… the guide will take people to within 15-20 feet,

01:03:05.000 --> 01:03:09.999
a fishing bears. Whenever you get more people into the
wilderness areas, you of course you\'re going to have an impact.

01:03:10.000 --> 01:03:14.999
What we\'re doing now is trying to
determine how much of impact that it is

01:03:15.000 --> 01:03:19.999
and then we decide or it is just too much for the
bears. One bear came on down through the water,

01:03:20.000 --> 01:03:24.999
we took pictures. I\'ve been (inaudible) got too
close and I went up over the ridge. He circled us,

01:03:25.000 --> 01:03:29.999
he came back down and pass the
fish and found our lunch boxes.

01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:34.999
He decided, he was gonna take the box lunch with it…
People will bring coolers with a nylon strap on it

01:03:35.000 --> 01:03:39.999
as a bear proof food container. Well, 1,500 pound animal
can pop that open in… in just a matter of seconds.

01:03:40.000 --> 01:03:44.999
We chased him for probably half mile down
the river and yelled at him, threatened him

01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:49.999
and bear finally dropped the box. We\'ve got
the candy bars. Now he\'s got a bad habit.

01:03:50.000 --> 01:03:54.999
Bears are more intelligent than dogs.

01:03:55.000 --> 01:03:59.999
They\'re very curious and they also have their
own personalities. Bears and people interact

01:04:00.000 --> 01:04:04.999
quite frequently. Sometimes it\'s funny type
of things, sometimes its life threatening.

01:04:05.000 --> 01:04:09.999
Two volunteer set out

01:04:10.000 --> 01:04:14.999
at three o\'clock in the morning to skin Harriman\'s
bear and drag the trophy back to Kodiak.

01:04:15.000 --> 01:04:19.999
The next day was set aside for
celebration, the 4th of July.

01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:24.999
[music]

01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:29.999
Why… why is this a special day for Kodiak? Because the
sun is shining. Yeah, the sun shining, it\'s not raining.

01:04:30.000 --> 01:04:34.999
The 4th of July found us as it usually
finds Americans wherever they are,

01:04:35.000 --> 01:04:39.999
full of patriotism and overflowing with
bunting and gunpowder (inaudible).

01:04:40.000 --> 01:04:44.999
A huge graphophone played very
well the part of a brass band.

01:04:45.000 --> 01:04:49.999
Songs and music finished the program. Our spirits
probably touched the highest point here.

01:04:50.000 --> 01:04:54.999
And no wonder, halfway through the voyage

01:04:55.000 --> 01:04:59.999
Harriman had bagged his bear and
attached his name to a glacier, a fjord

01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:04.999
and a whole raft of specimens, a genus
of wasp, a hydro, a small conifer,

01:05:05.000 --> 01:05:09.999
two fossils and an enormous worm. The
biologists on the Harriman Expedition

01:05:10.000 --> 01:05:14.999
were looking for new and exciting
things, they wanted treasures.

01:05:15.000 --> 01:05:19.999
And the greatest scientific treasure for a
biologist in many cases is finding an organism

01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:24.999
that has never been described before and
then getting it named after him or her.

01:05:25.000 --> 01:05:29.999
I do not get enough time on shore

01:05:30.000 --> 01:05:34.999
and I\'m soon tired of working at the ice
of the glaciers. I\'ve collected 45 mammals

01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:39.999
and 25 birds. But I fear we will not
have an overabundance of specimens

01:05:40.000 --> 01:05:44.999
collected on this trip. Albert Fisher.
They have a lot of empathy

01:05:45.000 --> 01:05:49.999
for the original expedition members in
the sense that when you\'re on this trip,

01:05:50.000 --> 01:05:54.999
you have these relatively short moments of time
where can run ashore and try to grab specimens.

01:05:55.000 --> 01:05:59.999
On the Elder, I find a
hotel, a club and home

01:06:00.000 --> 01:06:04.999
together with a floating university. I
enjoyed the instruction and companionship of

01:06:05.000 --> 01:06:09.999
a lot of the best fellows imaginable.

01:06:10.000 --> 01:06:14.999
Retracing the original Harriman Expedition
really forces you to think about hard questions.

01:06:15.000 --> 01:06:19.999
What forces you as not simply be
available time or the physical voyage

01:06:20.000 --> 01:06:24.999
up and down the coast. But bringing
together of so many people

01:06:25.000 --> 01:06:29.999
with so many philosophies and experiences and outlooks
on life, some know Alaska like the back of their hands,

01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:34.999
some have never been to Alaska. They\'ve seen it
with completely fresh eyes. This is the Kukak Bay

01:06:35.000 --> 01:06:39.999
Refuge rock site occupied
around (inaudible).

01:06:40.000 --> 01:06:44.999
The (inaudible) with along this right here. Okay. And in fact, the
fact that there\'s a rise here is because this is all garbage.

01:06:45.000 --> 01:06:49.999
You can look in this ridge here, you could see some
fairly young individual scattered spruce trees.

01:06:50.000 --> 01:06:54.999
Driftwood has been an important resource
for native peoples all over the North,

01:06:55.000 --> 01:06:59.999
who live where there are no trees. I have a really dumb
question. How do you start to find the house (inaudible).

01:07:00.000 --> 01:07:04.999
How do you look at this and (inaudible). When you\'re doing
archeology, this time you\'re basically you just have to

01:07:05.000 --> 01:07:09.999
uh… feel with your feet and if you fall in
a hole, you know, you found a house pit.

01:07:10.000 --> 01:07:14.999
Those individuals in the original Harriman
Expedition were pretty incredible naturalists

01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:19.999
and it\'s something some of us
think, we\'ve lost a little bit

01:07:20.000 --> 01:07:24.999
in this day of specialization, this
ability to… to have an overview.

01:07:25.000 --> 01:07:29.999
So it\'s good to remind yourself
what Alaska is, what science is.

01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:34.999
And this trip forces all of us out here
to… to face those kinds of questions.

01:07:35.000 --> 01:07:43.000
[music]

01:07:45.000 --> 01:07:49.999
John Burroughs. On the morning of July 8th,

01:07:50.000 --> 01:07:54.999
we tied up the pier in Dutch Harbor, Unalaska.
We were in a world of three prevailing tints;

01:07:55.000 --> 01:07:59.999
blue of the sea, green of the shore
and white of the lofty peaks

01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:04.999
and volcanic cones.

01:08:05.000 --> 01:08:09.999
Since Harriman\'s visit, the peaceful Island of
Unalaska and its port Dutch Harbor had become

01:08:10.000 --> 01:08:14.999
home to the world\'s largest and most productive
fishing fleet. At first herring and cod

01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:19.999
with a primary prey. After 1950, the
fishermen focused on a new target.

01:08:20.000 --> 01:08:24.999
Entrepreneurs back in the 60s

01:08:25.000 --> 01:08:29.999
and the crab fisheries umm…
and the state to claim

01:08:30.000 --> 01:08:34.999
they had to go out and get the
world to meet this great big beast

01:08:35.000 --> 01:08:39.999
that crawled around the floor the Bering
Sea. People found out there\'s king crab is

01:08:40.000 --> 01:08:44.999
a delicious… delicious critter. We had a gold
rush and absolute gold rush taking place.

01:08:45.000 --> 01:08:49.999
The king crab gold rush
came crashing to an end.

01:08:50.000 --> 01:08:54.999
Today, Dutch Harbor\'s economy is based on
yet another species. Scientists call it

01:08:55.000 --> 01:08:59.999
Pollachius virens, fishermen call it pollock,
but most of us simply called it lunch.

01:09:00.000 --> 01:09:04.999
You walk into a McDonald\'s
or Burger King or wherever

01:09:05.000 --> 01:09:09.999
and you get a fast food fish fillet.
You don\'t know where it\'s coming from.

01:09:10.000 --> 01:09:14.999
You have no sense that it\'s connected to this
environment that we\'re talking about in Alaska.

01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:19.999
The Pollock industry is the single largest
ground fish fishery in the United States.

01:09:20.000 --> 01:09:24.999
It has a stake of somewhere in the
neighborhood of a 1,000,000 to

01:09:25.000 --> 01:09:29.999
a 2,000,000 metric tons that represents

01:09:30.000 --> 01:09:34.999
3 billion pounds of Pollock.
Our plant processes roughly

01:09:35.000 --> 01:09:39.999
1.1 million pounds of
Pollock uh… every 12 hours

01:09:40.000 --> 01:09:44.999
and we run round the clock during the season seven
days a week. And we take the fish and separate it

01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:49.999
any bones, and skin and foreign material from
the meat itself, and then we wash the meat

01:09:50.000 --> 01:09:54.999
and refine it. The base product that we
produce here is odorless and tasteless,

01:09:55.000 --> 01:09:59.999
so you can do anything with it that you want to,
add coloring to it, texture (inaudible) it,

01:10:00.000 --> 01:10:04.999
and is frozen down to -20 degrees
Celsius in about two hours

01:10:05.000 --> 01:10:09.999
and then box and cased up.
A fish fillet weighs about

01:10:10.000 --> 01:10:14.999
one quarter pound, a hungry
human can easily two.

01:10:15.000 --> 01:10:19.999
A whole Pollock weighs two pounds. A
hungry male sea lion can eat 45 a day.

01:10:20.000 --> 01:10:24.999
People and sea lions compete for
the same fish from Western Alaska

01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:29.999
and therein a problem.

01:10:30.000 --> 01:10:34.999
One of the most important
issues in Alaska today is

01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:39.999
the conflict that is
being generated between

01:10:40.000 --> 01:10:44.999
Steller sea lions and commercial fisheries.
Steller sea lions are protected marine mammal.

01:10:45.000 --> 01:10:49.999
They have been listed as endangered.

01:10:50.000 --> 01:10:54.999
Pollock is largest single
species fishery in the world

01:10:55.000 --> 01:10:59.999
and Steller sea lions eat Pollock. A lot of
times we talk about declines in terms of

01:11:00.000 --> 01:11:04.999
10% or 15%. In this part
of the northern Gulf,

01:11:05.000 --> 01:11:09.999
the number of pups counted on (inaudible)
Island is down from over 6,000

01:11:10.000 --> 01:11:14.999
in the 1970s to less than a thousand today.

01:11:15.000 --> 01:11:19.999
Many environmentalists believe that
the way to save the Steller sea lions

01:11:20.000 --> 01:11:24.999
is to limit Pollock fishing and they\'ve
gone to court to do just that.

01:11:25.000 --> 01:11:29.999
In 1991, they sued to end fishing near sea lion
fall out in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.

01:11:30.000 --> 01:11:34.999
But the population of sea
lions continued to decline.

01:11:35.000 --> 01:11:39.999
So they sued again, the court imposed more limits on
Pollock fishing, but many environmentalists claim

01:11:40.000 --> 01:11:44.999
the restrictions aren\'t tough enough to
help. What we\'re really challenging here is

01:11:45.000 --> 01:11:49.999
the assumption that you can go into these
oceans, ignore the ecological relationships

01:11:50.000 --> 01:11:54.999
and take out a species like Pollock in
large quantities. We argued that issue

01:11:55.000 --> 01:11:59.999
very strongly because we felt they were not
in jeopardy\'s results to Pollock fishery.

01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:04.999
It\'s a familiar baffle, environmentalists
against industrialists,

01:12:05.000 --> 01:12:09.999
with each side describing it in black and white.
But scientists from the Harriman Expedition

01:12:10.000 --> 01:12:14.999
Retraced to see the problem is the
color of the Bering Sea, gray.

01:12:15.000 --> 01:12:19.999
Nowhere is anyone proven at least proven
to me that\'s for sure that number one,

01:12:20.000 --> 01:12:24.999
that the whole problem is Steller sea lions
as Pollock or number two, a whole problem is

01:12:25.000 --> 01:12:29.999
Steller sea lions is commercial fisheries.
Everything lives in the environment.

01:12:30.000 --> 01:12:34.999
The environment is changing, temperatures have
been changing. Ask anybody who lives in Alaska

01:12:35.000 --> 01:12:39.999
very long. It\'s warmer now. There
is no reason to assume that

01:12:40.000 --> 01:12:44.999
the climate now can sustain

01:12:45.000 --> 01:12:49.999
the same number of Steller sea lions have
it could sustain 20 or 30 years ago.

01:12:50.000 --> 01:12:54.999
Can the environment pull that many and
we don\'t know the answer to that.

01:12:55.000 --> 01:12:59.999
It\'s probably over simplistic to think
that simply removing the fishery

01:13:00.000 --> 01:13:04.999
is gonna bring in sea lions back, I mean, we\'re feeling
very helpless about. We… we don\'t know what to do.

01:13:05.000 --> 01:13:09.999
Umm… The fishermen are clearly bearing
the (inaudible) of it. The Bering Sea

01:13:10.000 --> 01:13:14.999
and the Gulf of Alaska ground fish fisheries
which included number of species,

01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:19.999
is the only area in the
world where there has been

01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:24.999
not one single species
listed as overfished.

01:13:25.000 --> 01:13:29.999
So to… to… to say that
somehow these fisheries

01:13:30.000 --> 01:13:34.999
are… are raising havoc with the ecosystem
and so forth is totally false.

01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:39.999
The Bering Sea cannot feed the entire world and
we shouldn\'t try to maintain that illusion.

01:13:40.000 --> 01:13:44.999
And it may very well be that, you know,

01:13:45.000 --> 01:13:49.999
uh… it\'s… it\'s worthy sacrifice to say,
\'We\'re not gonna have that Pollock fillet

01:13:50.000 --> 01:13:54.999
uh… in a fast food sandwich because there are other
things we care about more.\' To my way of thinking

01:13:55.000 --> 01:13:59.999
that\'s choosing marine mammals over humans, humans
need the Pollock fishery and other fisheries

01:14:00.000 --> 01:14:04.999
for a number of reasons. One is
they need jobs. But another one is

01:14:05.000 --> 01:14:09.999
people need the food. In order to
eat fish, you have to kill fish.

01:14:10.000 --> 01:14:14.999
In order to kill fish, you have to catch fish. If you
catch the fish there\'s something else that can\'t eat it.

01:14:15.000 --> 01:14:19.999
And you can\'t save everything, at
the same time you can\'t everything.

01:14:20.000 --> 01:14:24.999
I still think it\'s amazing

01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:29.999
that these guys can climb
up here like this.

01:14:30.000 --> 01:14:34.999
I mean, 2,000 pounds go straight up the side
of the rock. If you or I jumped off that rock

01:14:35.000 --> 01:14:39.999
or tumble off that rock, we\'d end up with broken
legs and broken arms and everything else.

01:14:40.000 --> 01:14:44.999
Instead they just come
crashing down (inaudible).

01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:53.000
[music]

01:14:55.000 --> 01:14:59.999
John Burroughs, I long to spend
some days here in Dutch Harbor

01:15:00.000 --> 01:15:04.999
in the privacy of its green solitudes. If I could
only have a few days of intimacy with nature,

01:15:05.000 --> 01:15:09.999
I should be more content. But in the afternoon,
the ship is off into the Bering Sea.

01:15:10.000 --> 01:15:14.999
At Dutch Harbor,

01:15:15.000 --> 01:15:19.999
Burroughs found a woman who could cook him great
breakfasts and he longed to be spoiled again.

01:15:20.000 --> 01:15:24.999
So he… he was about to jump ship
before they went off to… to Siberia.

01:15:25.000 --> 01:15:29.999
Umm… He was trying to leave on the
gangplank and Muir caught him and said,

01:15:30.000 --> 01:15:34.999
\'Where are you going with those… those suitcases
Johnny?\' And ushered him back on ship

01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:39.999
where poor Burroughs
suffered great seasickness.

01:15:40.000 --> 01:15:44.999
I got this miserable sore throat,
it\'s terrible. I can hardly talk,

01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:49.999
you know, talking is mostly what we\'re suppose to
do on this boat and I had my body\'s been aching.

01:15:50.000 --> 01:15:54.999
My chest is congested, coughing all night

01:15:55.000 --> 01:15:59.999
and I\'m also whining really a lot of about the
whole thing. I actually did go into town.

01:16:00.000 --> 01:16:04.999
I switch sort of go from one person
to the next and ask him, you know,

01:16:05.000 --> 01:16:09.999
it to be willing to take care, I\'m a sick traveler
from a faraway place, who\'s an enamored of

01:16:10.000 --> 01:16:14.999
the green fields of Unalaska?
Nobody… nobody bet for that.

01:16:15.000 --> 01:16:19.999
Muir chided Burroughs about his
seasickness, but poet Charles Keeler took

01:16:20.000 --> 01:16:24.999
pity on the writer and sat with him in his
cabin, reading Wordsworth by the hour.

01:16:25.000 --> 01:16:29.999
I think the least anybody
would do for somebody

01:16:30.000 --> 01:16:34.999
who\'s suffering as I am, would be

01:16:35.000 --> 01:16:39.999
to read me some nice poetry. And
the first start of October 25th,

01:16:40.000 --> 01:16:44.999
and raging snow, (inaudible)
rolled off the reef and sink.

01:16:45.000 --> 01:16:49.999
No one survived, no one.

01:16:50.000 --> 01:16:54.999
But they didn\'t drown. They died of
exposure, they were suffocated in oil,

01:16:55.000 --> 01:16:59.999
just time to say goodbye, we\'re foundering.

01:17:00.000 --> 01:17:04.999
Oh, man! This is what I needed, Sheila.
I realize now that,

01:17:05.000 --> 01:17:09.999
however bad I feel,

01:17:10.000 --> 01:17:14.999
it\'s nothing compared to that. Don\'t get
better soon, I\'ll read more. There\'s a threat,

01:17:15.000 --> 01:17:19.999
more death poems.

01:17:20.000 --> 01:17:24.999
[music]

01:17:25.000 --> 01:17:29.999
John Burroughs, July 8th, 1899, we ran into

01:17:30.000 --> 01:17:34.999
lowering misty weather off the Bogoslof Island. Two
abrupt volcanic mountains, one of them thrown up

01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:39.999
in recent years, the other the breeding ground of
innumerable sea lions and myriads of seabirds.

01:17:40.000 --> 01:17:44.999
Bogoslof is a place in the Bering
Sea north of the illusions

01:17:45.000 --> 01:17:49.999
where uh… this mountain came up out
of the ocean in the late 1700.

01:17:50.000 --> 01:17:54.999
It erupts and it makes the volcano and then it washes
away and then it erupts and makes a new volcano.

01:17:55.000 --> 01:17:59.999
And then it has a pointed top and then it has a flat
top. And then it has a pit and then the pit washes away.

01:18:00.000 --> 01:18:04.999
And all these people are coming and going describing
all these changes and it\'s… it\'s not your typical

01:18:05.000 --> 01:18:09.999
boring volcano that takes a
millennium to do anything.

01:18:10.000 --> 01:18:14.999
The Harriman Expedition documented
things in such a way that

01:18:15.000 --> 01:18:19.999
it provides a baseline or 100 years
later to understand change at Bogoslof

01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:24.999
for there\'s been tremendous uh… physiographic
changed as a result of that volcanic activity.

01:18:25.000 --> 01:18:29.999
Knowing what birds were there 100 years ago and
what size that island was gives us a great chance

01:18:30.000 --> 01:18:34.999
for comparing change.

01:18:35.000 --> 01:18:39.999
In the cases of most animal life, the
increase of the species is checked by enemies

01:18:40.000 --> 01:18:44.999
and by the limitations of food, but in the
case of the (inaudible) on Bogoslof Island,

01:18:45.000 --> 01:18:49.999
enemies are scarce and the ocean seems to
provide an inexhaustible store of food.

01:18:50.000 --> 01:18:54.999
The only apparent check is the
limit of available nesting places

01:18:55.000 --> 01:18:59.999
and since the birds require only a shelf
of rock, three or four inches square,

01:19:00.000 --> 01:19:04.999
the numbers are almost beyond belief.
C. Hart Merriam.

01:19:05.000 --> 01:19:09.999
Merriam, he was apparently very excited

01:19:10.000 --> 01:19:14.999
about the numbers of (inaudible) that he saw
there. I think he described him as over a million.

01:19:15.000 --> 01:19:19.999
I don\'t know what a million birds look like and it may not have been exactly a
million, but there\'s no question that there were lots and lots of (inaudible) there.

01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:24.999
And the Harriman folks were
very careful naturalists

01:19:25.000 --> 01:19:29.999
and they document it (inaudible) very well.
That was a descriptive phase.

01:19:30.000 --> 01:19:34.999
That\'s critical before you can go to the
next phase which is to start to understand

01:19:35.000 --> 01:19:39.999
the ecology of the species.

01:19:40.000 --> 01:19:44.999
Count Jeff so we know how many minutes,
how many seconds have to capture.

01:19:45.000 --> 01:19:49.999
[sil.]

01:19:50.000 --> 01:19:54.999
Thirty, it\'s done ready to go…

01:19:55.000 --> 01:19:59.999
Today because of the
technologies developed,

01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:04.999
we\'re monitoring change more, so that\'s… that\'s…
that\'s a big change in the way we\'re doing business,

01:20:05.000 --> 01:20:09.999
but it\'s based on the description that the
Harriman Expedition and others made earlier.

01:20:10.000 --> 01:20:14.999
For one member of the expedition,

01:20:15.000 --> 01:20:19.999
the rocky islands of the Bering Sea teeming
with seabirds were close kin to heaven.

01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:24.999
When C. Hart Merriam put together
the team for Mr. Harriman,

01:20:25.000 --> 01:20:29.999
he took along Louis Agassiz Fuertes. He had just
graduated from Cornell University two years before.

01:20:30.000 --> 01:20:34.999
Fuertes was lucky to have
graduated from Cornell.

01:20:35.000 --> 01:20:39.999
At one time, he was failing mathematics,
chemistry and philosophy, but in art

01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:44.999
his grade was perfect. He was passionate
about drawing and about birds.

01:20:45.000 --> 01:20:49.999
His mother had once found him in the kitchen
sketching a live owl that he had tied to the table.

01:20:50.000 --> 01:20:54.999
Fuertes had this remarkable
just photographic memory.

01:20:55.000 --> 01:20:59.999
All these little settled
cues that a bird can give,

01:21:00.000 --> 01:21:04.999
he immediately could pick up on, remember
and knew how to draw when he got back home.

01:21:05.000 --> 01:21:09.999
The birds in Alaska and particularly out in
the Bering Sea were completely new to him

01:21:10.000 --> 01:21:14.999
and he jumped at every opportunity
to capture them on paper.

01:21:15.000 --> 01:21:19.999
He got a wonderful bit of sound effect
here with the birds in the background.

01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:24.999
These were the kinds of sounds that Fuertes just
(inaudible) and when he wrote letters home to his family,

01:21:25.000 --> 01:21:29.999
he would say that, \'I can hardly hear
myself think for all the birds.\'

01:21:30.000 --> 01:21:34.999
If someone else were to write that kind of a letter,
you think it was a complaint, but in Fuertes case

01:21:35.000 --> 01:21:39.999
it was his highest form of pleasure.
He had a way of capturing

01:21:40.000 --> 01:21:44.999
a sense of an individual bird, not
just a generic one. You look at that

01:21:45.000 --> 01:21:49.999
screening humbling (inaudible) with its mouth
again, you have a certainty that he has seen

01:21:50.000 --> 01:21:54.999
that actual bird.

01:21:55.000 --> 01:21:59.999
John Burroughs. On the afternoon of July
9th, we dropped anchor of Saint Paul Island

01:22:00.000 --> 01:22:04.999
one of the Pribilof. The government agent conducted
as a (inaudible) or through wild meadows

01:22:05.000 --> 01:22:09.999
starred with flowers and covered
with grass nearly (inaudible).

01:22:10.000 --> 01:22:14.999
It\'s a beautiful spot, a
very wild amazing place,

01:22:15.000 --> 01:22:19.999
but it\'s also so important because this is where
conservation history really made its turn.

01:22:20.000 --> 01:22:24.999
This is where uh… the world agreed
that animals needed to be protected.

01:22:25.000 --> 01:22:29.999
Alaska had been American since
1867, when the Secretary of State

01:22:30.000 --> 01:22:34.999
William Seward bought it from Russia for
the exorbitant price of $7.2 million.

01:22:35.000 --> 01:22:39.999
The secretary was soundly
thumped in the Press.

01:22:40.000 --> 01:22:44.999
One New York newspaper complained,
Russia has sold us a sucked orange

01:22:45.000 --> 01:22:49.999
but the purchase included the Pribilof Island home
to the largest (inaudible) seal herd in the world.

01:22:50.000 --> 01:22:54.999
Suddenly, the U.S. was in the fur business.

01:22:55.000 --> 01:22:59.999
When the United States purchased
Alaska, just on one (inaudible)

01:23:00.000 --> 01:23:04.999
70,000 seals were taken in one
season, that\'s just in one area

01:23:05.000 --> 01:23:09.999
on the island umm… that…
that gives an example of

01:23:10.000 --> 01:23:14.999
what happened when the United States first
purchased Alaska. And they would have taken more

01:23:15.000 --> 01:23:19.999
had not they run out assault and they had
people dropping from sheer exhaustion,

01:23:20.000 --> 01:23:24.999
they just couldn\'t do it.

01:23:25.000 --> 01:23:29.999
George Bird Grinnell.

01:23:30.000 --> 01:23:34.999
All of those employed in the fur seal
fisheries of Pribilof Islands are Aleuts,

01:23:35.000 --> 01:23:39.999
who have long been under the influence of the
Russian Church. They are now Christianized.

01:23:40.000 --> 01:23:44.999
A hard working people who nevertheless
find it difficult to gain a subsistence

01:23:45.000 --> 01:23:50.000
under the increasing scarcity of
creatures on which they depend for food.

01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:04.999
The Aleuts were the backbone of an
industry that in just 10 years recovered

01:24:05.000 --> 01:24:09.999
the full purchase price of Alaska.

01:24:10.000 --> 01:24:14.999
When Harriman people got here in 1899, they found that
the fur seal numbers had been dropping dramatically.

01:24:15.000 --> 01:24:19.999
They… they had a sense of what had been here before.
There were good government reports and so on.

01:24:20.000 --> 01:24:24.999
But they were shocked to find that in the last
two years uh… the population had dropped by

01:24:25.000 --> 01:24:29.999
almost a quarter. It\'s hard to imagine
what it was that brought this whirlwind,

01:24:30.000 --> 01:24:34.999
this hurricane of hunting into this… into
this see… into the Bering Sea at the…

01:24:35.000 --> 01:24:39.999
during the 19th century. But the answer
is it was Beijing, it was Moscow,

01:24:40.000 --> 01:24:44.999
it was London, it was New York City. Everybody
wanted what these islands produced.

01:24:45.000 --> 01:24:49.999
[music]

01:24:50.000 --> 01:24:54.999
The fur seals pelt dense and luxurious was
much desired in the world fashion market,

01:24:55.000 --> 01:24:59.999
but by 1899 there was already a growing
awareness of a rising phenomenon,

01:25:00.000 --> 01:25:04.999
the extinction of species.
George Bird Grinnell had helped

01:25:05.000 --> 01:25:09.999
found the Audubon Society to halt the
wholesale slaughter of egrets and herons,

01:25:10.000 --> 01:25:14.999
whose gaudy feathers were used to trim ladies hats.
Now Grinnell directed his passionate attention

01:25:15.000 --> 01:25:19.999
to the plight of the fur seals. George
Bird Grinnell went home to New York

01:25:20.000 --> 01:25:24.999
after the Harriman Expedition and wrote an editorial in (inaudible)
Magazine and he said that, \'Unless the fur sealing was stopped

01:25:25.000 --> 01:25:29.999
or controlled within the next four years,
the species could become extinct.\'

01:25:30.000 --> 01:25:34.999
Merriam had the clout when he got back to
Washington to begin uh… changing people\'s minds

01:25:35.000 --> 01:25:39.999
and changing policies.
Eventually, in 1912 a…

01:25:40.000 --> 01:25:44.999
an international treaty was established
that would protect the fur seals.

01:25:45.000 --> 01:25:49.999
One could make the argument that had
the Harriman Expedition not stopped

01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:54.999
at the Pribilof, the fur seals
could easily have become extinct.

01:25:55.000 --> 01:25:59.999
The International Fur Seal Treaty
was a revolutionary document,

01:26:00.000 --> 01:26:04.999
the first international treaty on wildlife.
Five nations agreed to limits on hunting.

01:26:05.000 --> 01:26:09.999
The species was protected. Meanwhile,
the United States continued

01:26:10.000 --> 01:26:14.999
its commercial harvesting of seals and
the Aleuts continued to do the work

01:26:15.000 --> 01:26:19.999
under the close supervision
of the island manager.

01:26:20.000 --> 01:26:24.999
The island manager in the old days was
the ultimate authority. We would decide,

01:26:25.000 --> 01:26:29.999
for example, who would get married, when they would
get married, who they would marry. If my grandfather

01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:34.999
wanted to have fur seal pelt. He would
have to go to an island agent and say,

01:26:35.000 --> 01:26:39.999
\'Can I please have some pelts to make a
blanket or boot tops.\' We paid them in goods.

01:26:40.000 --> 01:26:44.999
If you got along with the island manager, you
got your two bags of groceries or whatever.

01:26:45.000 --> 01:26:49.999
If you didn\'t get along with him, then
you got your two cans of tuna fish.

01:26:50.000 --> 01:26:54.999
But the market for fur was in decline.
In the 1980s, the United States ended

01:26:55.000 --> 01:26:59.999
the commercial fur seal harvest on the Pribilof.
The Aleuts began to govern the islands themselves.

01:27:00.000 --> 01:27:04.999
Today, they continue a controlled harvest,

01:27:05.000 --> 01:27:09.999
taking fur seals for food. The practice is part of
the Alaskan native tradition called subsistence.

01:27:10.000 --> 01:27:14.999
Terrible… terrible… terrible word,

01:27:15.000 --> 01:27:19.999
you know, subsistence uh… one
person might think the word is

01:27:20.000 --> 01:27:24.999
just getting by, I mean,
just the bare substance

01:27:25.000 --> 01:27:29.999
to survive in a society.
Another person recognizes

01:27:30.000 --> 01:27:34.999
it as… as a way of life.
We have an (inaudible)

01:27:35.000 --> 01:27:39.999
the members of the Aleut Community of Saint Paul from Saint
Paul Sealer from the tribal Government of Saint Paul.

01:27:40.000 --> 01:27:44.999
The annual subsistence seal harvest
is happening now through August 7th.

01:27:45.000 --> 01:27:49.999
(inaudible) scheduled to begin at
seven a.m. Monday through Saturday.

01:27:50.000 --> 01:27:54.999
[sil.]

01:27:55.000 --> 01:27:59.999
What we are doing here is
subsistence fur seal harvest.

01:28:00.000 --> 01:28:04.999
What it all about is… is to carry
on the culture within our community

01:28:05.000 --> 01:28:09.999
and try to pass it on to the
generations that are coming up and

01:28:10.000 --> 01:28:14.999
the… it\'s my job to teach the young
people and to put it in your heart

01:28:15.000 --> 01:28:19.999
to participate in this and to continue

01:28:20.000 --> 01:28:24.999
to participate in eating
our cultural foods.

01:28:25.000 --> 01:28:29.999
Their participation is greatly needed
to carry out the community activity,

01:28:30.000 --> 01:28:34.999
come and gather meet or check with our outer
to see if they need help (inaudible).

01:28:35.000 --> 01:28:39.999
It\'s much more of an obligation,
the sharing obligation.

01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:44.999
You… you don\'t get to keep what you
catch and what you… what you harvest.

01:28:45.000 --> 01:28:49.999
There\'s a distribution responsibility.
When I was growing up

01:28:50.000 --> 01:28:54.999
seal camp was still very much a part of our
existence. We would go up in the spring

01:28:55.000 --> 01:28:59.999
uh… young kids with… with
parents and with uncles.

01:29:00.000 --> 01:29:04.999
Your main concentration is learning
how to get that nipper in there

01:29:05.000 --> 01:29:09.999
and paying attention to and once it\'s on there…
There is a powerful connection with land

01:29:10.000 --> 01:29:14.999
that people didn\'t necessarily have to articulate.
They live those values every single day.

01:29:15.000 --> 01:29:19.999
Today, we have to articulate the more. We
have to talk about them, we have to maintain

01:29:20.000 --> 01:29:24.999
in a conscious effort our
connection with native lands.

01:29:25.000 --> 01:29:29.999
Every single step in our operation
is a learning experience

01:29:30.000 --> 01:29:34.999
and you work your way up from the bottom
(inaudible) on the bottom right now

01:29:35.000 --> 01:29:39.999
is a watch boy. His next step will…
will be, you know, a puller,

01:29:40.000 --> 01:29:44.999
pulling the skins off them and… and the
next step up would be using a knife

01:29:45.000 --> 01:29:49.999
and the next step up would be (inaudible). You work
your way up the ladder and become very skilled

01:29:50.000 --> 01:29:54.999
in all the different areas and potentially
become a leader. We live in communities

01:29:55.000 --> 01:29:59.999
that have very… very fragile economies
and that harvest is critical

01:30:00.000 --> 01:30:04.999
not only to our economics but to our
social well-being. This is our food.

01:30:05.000 --> 01:30:09.999
This is what we eat and we want to
carry this on. It\'s very good meat

01:30:10.000 --> 01:30:14.999
and people who have misconstrued
by just focusing on

01:30:15.000 --> 01:30:19.999
strictly the killing in the process of killing and
when in reality this is a very organized effort

01:30:20.000 --> 01:30:24.999
as a young boy, my father brought
me out here and put it in my heart

01:30:25.000 --> 01:30:29.999
I know for fact that my son
will be here for many years…

01:30:30.000 --> 01:30:34.999
The… the building behind me here is

01:30:35.000 --> 01:30:39.999
the sealing factory on the Pribilof
Islands. This building is now abandoned.

01:30:40.000 --> 01:30:44.999
It\'s being turned into a museum.
Bear with me been a while

01:30:45.000 --> 01:30:49.999
since I blubbered.

01:30:50.000 --> 01:30:54.999
Once I get that,

01:30:55.000 --> 01:30:59.999
I turn the pelt over. And when you\'re
a blubber, you don\'t try to use

01:31:00.000 --> 01:31:04.999
too much of your arm, if you\'re gonna be here
all day. You\'re gonna be really tired to use,

01:31:05.000 --> 01:31:09.999
more or less use your upper body.

01:31:10.000 --> 01:31:14.999
These skins I got from subsistence harvest.
I take it for my own self,

01:31:15.000 --> 01:31:19.999
blubber it, salt it down and when I\'m
ready, I ship it to the tannery.

01:31:20.000 --> 01:31:24.999
One of the things that I found most
intriguing about visiting the factory here

01:31:25.000 --> 01:31:29.999
was actually watching my fellow shipmates,
many of them were horrified to see

01:31:30.000 --> 01:31:34.999
that seal skin being stripped of its blubber
and being converted into a commodity.

01:31:35.000 --> 01:31:39.999
It was also very… very clear when
they ran their hands over that skin,

01:31:40.000 --> 01:31:44.999
it felt that extraordinarily soft
surf, they wanted to own that.

01:31:45.000 --> 01:31:49.999
Roughly how much for one of
these, do you have any idea?

01:31:50.000 --> 01:31:54.999
No, I couldn\'t even venture a guess.

01:31:55.000 --> 01:31:59.999
[sil.]

01:32:00.000 --> 01:32:04.999
We have been in the Bering Sea area for nearly
10,000 years and we\'ve been on St. Paul

01:32:05.000 --> 01:32:09.999
for over 200 years. We
believe we are visitors and

01:32:10.000 --> 01:32:14.999
in fact our… our word for as
other people, other cultures

01:32:15.000 --> 01:32:19.999
or other languages say \'dine, \' really
translate into (inaudible) visiting this land.

01:32:20.000 --> 01:32:24.999
So we believe we are visitors and

01:32:25.000 --> 01:32:29.999
uh… that other visitors will come after us.

01:32:30.000 --> 01:32:34.999
John Burroughs.

01:32:35.000 --> 01:32:39.999
July 10th, 1899, according to our
original program our outward journey

01:32:40.000 --> 01:32:44.999
should have ended at the Seal Islands, but Mrs.
Harriman expressed the wish to see Siberia

01:32:45.000 --> 01:32:49.999
and if all went well the midnight
sun and toward that bear

01:32:50.000 --> 01:32:54.999
and ensure our (inaudible) was turned.

01:32:55.000 --> 01:32:59.999
The ship anchored at the Eskimo
encampment of Plover Bay in Siberia.

01:33:00.000 --> 01:33:04.999
It was here that something new started appearing
in Edward Curtis\' photographs, people.

01:33:05.000 --> 01:33:09.999
Curtis began to see the
interest in Indigenous people

01:33:10.000 --> 01:33:14.999
and began making more and more photographs of this group
of cultures that had been very little documented up

01:33:15.000 --> 01:33:19.999
until that time. Following
the Harriman Expedition,

01:33:20.000 --> 01:33:24.999
Curtis went on to take photographs of other Indian
groups and really devoted the rest of his life

01:33:25.000 --> 01:33:29.999
to documenting the life of the American
India. Had Curtis not been invited

01:33:30.000 --> 01:33:34.999
on the Harriman Expedition, I think it\'s fair to say
that his great series of books on the American Indian

01:33:35.000 --> 01:33:39.999
would never have been
conceived let alone executed.

01:33:40.000 --> 01:33:44.999
George Bird Grinnell.

01:33:45.000 --> 01:33:49.999
The outlook for the Eskimo is glooming.
White men uncontrolled and uncontrollable

01:33:50.000 --> 01:33:54.999
already swarm over the Alaskan Coast.
They have taken away Eskimo women.

01:33:55.000 --> 01:33:59.999
They (inaudible) the men with liquor. Perhaps
for a while a few may save themselves,

01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:04.999
but there is an inevitable conflict
between civilization and savagery,

01:34:05.000 --> 01:34:09.999
and wherever the two touch each other,
the weaker people will be destroyed.

01:34:10.000 --> 01:34:14.999
But when the members of the Harriman Expedition
Retraced visited to remote Siberian villages,

01:34:15.000 --> 01:34:19.999
they found that the 20th century had not
produced the catastrophe Grinnell expected.

01:34:20.000 --> 01:34:28.000
[music]

01:34:35.000 --> 01:34:39.999
It was a stunning experience to come
into the beach in zodiac and see

01:34:40.000 --> 01:34:44.999
these women and men in beautiful
traditional dress and dancing

01:34:45.000 --> 01:34:49.999
these exquisite dancers and
singers these traditional songs.

01:34:50.000 --> 01:34:54.999
That\'s a small (inaudible) village
uh… called (inaudible) and

01:34:55.000 --> 01:34:59.999
very isolated, no roads. The
only way of communication

01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:04.999
by sea, by boats. In the wintertime,
they (inaudible) dogs this is why

01:35:05.000 --> 01:35:09.999
this village have so much dogs.
Six-hundred people live here

01:35:10.000 --> 01:35:14.999
uh… and more than 100 kids.

01:35:15.000 --> 01:35:19.999
[sil.]

01:35:20.000 --> 01:35:24.999
Several Eskimo umiaks

01:35:25.000 --> 01:35:29.999
came out to us to trade and before long
more than 175 persons were alongside,

01:35:30.000 --> 01:35:34.999
all we\'re holding up the
items they wish to sell.

01:35:35.000 --> 01:35:39.999
Here, when we come out at the beach, our
people selling furs, (inaudible) wolverines,

01:35:40.000 --> 01:35:44.999
the brown bear, traditional
reindeer herders clothing, hats.

01:35:45.000 --> 01:35:49.999
All of us crowded around in
this feeding frenzy curiosity.

01:35:50.000 --> 01:35:54.999
Where\'s my money, what can I buy.

01:35:55.000 --> 01:35:59.999
We have salmon caviar. They made for us

01:36:00.000 --> 01:36:04.999
uh… fish soup, made from the trout.
They harvest yesterday gray whale

01:36:05.000 --> 01:36:09.999
and we have gray whale meat
and… and the (inaudible)

01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:14.999
the blubber which is
very tasty… very tasty.

01:36:15.000 --> 01:36:19.999
We are in a beautiful day
but it\'s very rare here.

01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:24.999
Uh… The autumn, (inaudible)

01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:29.999
and winter is probably from end of October

01:36:30.000 --> 01:36:34.999
to first part of June. Snow, hardly.

01:36:35.000 --> 01:36:39.999
People here are waiting for it to get warm.
They\'re not waiting for the sun to come out.

01:36:40.000 --> 01:36:44.999
They live with this land and they love it every
bit as much in the winter, they do in the summer.

01:36:45.000 --> 01:36:49.999
They make a life out of what\'s here.
I think that\'s something

01:36:50.000 --> 01:36:54.999
a lot of the world could learn from.

01:36:55.000 --> 01:36:59.999
The Eskimos of Siberia have close
cultural and even family ties

01:37:00.000 --> 01:37:04.999
with Alaskan Eskimos. But the two groups
were separated by Cold War Politics

01:37:05.000 --> 01:37:09.999
for nearly half of the 20th century. Their
communities were only a few miles apart,

01:37:10.000 --> 01:37:14.999
but in separate countries. The modern age
had installed an iron curtain between them.

01:37:15.000 --> 01:37:19.999
The Siberian Yupik Eskimo
people who lived here

01:37:20.000 --> 01:37:24.999
day after day… after day
could look across and see

01:37:25.000 --> 01:37:29.999
Little Diomede Island and think of
their… their relatives, their kin

01:37:30.000 --> 01:37:34.999
who lived over there. And think of
their kin who were looking back.

01:37:35.000 --> 01:37:39.999
All it could be was this meeting and the
imagination that these two people could not cross

01:37:40.000 --> 01:37:44.999
this open body of water because of the
rules that people set down for them.

01:37:45.000 --> 01:37:49.999
We used go hunting after grey whales

01:37:50.000 --> 01:37:54.999
and they don\'t like it\'s going to cross
the dateline, they get made, you know.

01:37:55.000 --> 01:37:59.999
They call the probably
DC and DC calls up here

01:38:00.000 --> 01:38:04.999
and they call our village here.
You just don\'t answer the phone.

01:38:05.000 --> 01:38:09.999
What… what is it about dateline
(inaudible)? They just told like go across

01:38:10.000 --> 01:38:14.999
and they said, there is a dateline
between Big and Little Diomede here.

01:38:15.000 --> 01:38:19.999
And Big and Little Diomede
is just 2.5 miles apart

01:38:20.000 --> 01:38:24.999
and we don\'t see no dateline, we
hunt where we hunt, you know.

01:38:25.000 --> 01:38:29.999
[sil.]

01:38:30.000 --> 01:38:34.999
The tiny Alaskan communities of Gambell and Diomede
depend on sea mammals for food, but the arctic is warming

01:38:35.000 --> 01:38:39.999
at a rapid rate. As the sea ice
recedes, the sea mammals decline.

01:38:40.000 --> 01:38:44.999
The problem seems to be
reduction in the sea ice,

01:38:45.000 --> 01:38:49.999
reduction in nutrients and plant growth.

01:38:50.000 --> 01:38:54.999
(inaudible) is in the higher organisms

01:38:55.000 --> 01:38:59.999
such as the sea lions and the fur
seals, not to mention the fish.

01:39:00.000 --> 01:39:04.999
And you sort of wonder whether there\'s
communities here are not doomed

01:39:05.000 --> 01:39:09.999
under those circumstances if they… if
they\'re going to be impacted so severely.

01:39:10.000 --> 01:39:14.999
Hey, what\'s up? This is
(inaudible) in Gambell.

01:39:15.000 --> 01:39:19.999
Welcome to this most beautiful view of
Gambell, that way you could see the ocean,

01:39:20.000 --> 01:39:24.999
around the town forest, everything, you could
come (inaudible), you could feel free.

01:39:25.000 --> 01:39:29.999
If you wanna call me,
call 1800 (inaudible).

01:39:30.000 --> 01:39:34.999
[sil.]

01:39:35.000 --> 01:39:39.999
Here are people living in one of the
rawest, most challenging environments

01:39:40.000 --> 01:39:44.999
anywhere on the planet. People who\'ve adopted
a number of features of modern technology,

01:39:45.000 --> 01:39:49.999
but in some fundamental ways are still living lives
they choose to live as their ancestors have lived

01:39:50.000 --> 01:39:54.999
for a very long time. The
hospitality they showed us,

01:39:55.000 --> 01:39:59.999
the generosity with which they share their lives
with us, the smiles on those children\'s faces

01:40:00.000 --> 01:40:04.999
are almost brought tears to my eyes.
How those people

01:40:05.000 --> 01:40:09.999
can continue to live the lives
they want to live in this land,

01:40:10.000 --> 01:40:14.999
I think is everybody is important as the
question of how do we protect wilderness.

01:40:15.000 --> 01:40:19.999
[sil.]

01:40:20.000 --> 01:40:24.999
After being on the expedition for
two months, it was clear that

01:40:25.000 --> 01:40:29.999
Harriman was growing restless. On one occasion,
he was sitting on one side of the boat

01:40:30.000 --> 01:40:34.999
when one of the members of the expedition
on the other side came running and said,

01:40:35.000 --> 01:40:39.999
\'You ought to come over and see the scenery over
here, some of the grandest that you will ever see.\'

01:40:40.000 --> 01:40:44.999
And Harriman just sort of growled. \'If I never see
another piece of damn scenery again it\'ll be too soon.\'

01:40:45.000 --> 01:40:49.999
Edward Harriman missed this
telephone, his telegraph, his office.

01:40:50.000 --> 01:40:54.999
The moment the Elder turn toward home,
Harriman\'s attention turned back to his work.

01:40:55.000 --> 01:40:59.999
But as the ship neared southeastern Alaska,
he heard something that piqued his interest,

01:41:00.000 --> 01:41:04.999
the report he heard and the actions
that followed would have reverberations

01:41:05.000 --> 01:41:09.999
for a full century.

01:41:10.000 --> 01:41:14.999
Frederick Dellenbaugh. I met
a man who told me about

01:41:15.000 --> 01:41:19.999
a deserted Indian village full of totem poles opposite
St. Mary\'s Island. We looked it up on the chart

01:41:20.000 --> 01:41:24.999
and found an Indian village
marked Cape Fox. Just after lunch

01:41:25.000 --> 01:41:29.999
we arrived and we could see houses all in a
row plainly from the ship. It must have been

01:41:30.000 --> 01:41:34.999
a fantastic site. They were amazed
to see a line of totem poles

01:41:35.000 --> 01:41:39.999
right on the shore line in the sand. It\'s
a (inaudible) village. Umm… At the time,

01:41:40.000 --> 01:41:44.999
the people who are living
here in about 1894,

01:41:45.000 --> 01:41:49.999
there\'s about 250 Tlingits.

01:41:50.000 --> 01:41:54.999
There were several clan houses. The village was
made up of three clans. There were 13 houses

01:41:55.000 --> 01:41:59.999
and about as many totem poles. It was a
question with us as to why the village had been

01:42:00.000 --> 01:42:04.999
so completely deserted and
apparently all at once and suddenly.

01:42:05.000 --> 01:42:09.999
In 1894, they had moved to (inaudible)

01:42:10.000 --> 01:42:14.999
40 miles north of here. They had
wanted to move to someplace

01:42:15.000 --> 01:42:19.999
where there was a… a… a school.

01:42:20.000 --> 01:42:24.999
The Tlingit people of Cape Fox Village
did not consider the village abandoned.

01:42:25.000 --> 01:42:29.999
They were coming back
to get the totem poles.

01:42:30.000 --> 01:42:34.999
Mr. Harriman had a gang take down some of the totems and as
they were 20 to 40 feet high and three or more in diameter,

01:42:35.000 --> 01:42:39.999
this was no light task.

01:42:40.000 --> 01:42:44.999
To the mentality of a scientific
expedition at the turn of the century,

01:42:45.000 --> 01:42:49.999
this is not so much souvenir
collecting as artifact gathering,

01:42:50.000 --> 01:42:54.999
stuff that was not going to go home and go up on the
wall, but it was going to go home and go into a museum.

01:42:55.000 --> 01:42:59.999
At that time non-native people,

01:43:00.000 --> 01:43:04.999
uh… Euro-Americans auditing towards
native people was not one of equality

01:43:05.000 --> 01:43:09.999
and you could see it in the writings of
Harriman, where they talk about savages.

01:43:10.000 --> 01:43:14.999
I think it was this attitude
that allowed them to think well,

01:43:15.000 --> 01:43:19.999
uh… they don\'t even have the concept
of property. So they went ahead

01:43:20.000 --> 01:43:24.999
and removed those objects. And there is
a pole at the Field Museum in Chicago.

01:43:25.000 --> 01:43:29.999
There\'s a pole at the (inaudible), two
poles, maybe three poles at the Smithsonian.

01:43:30.000 --> 01:43:34.999
We\'re looking for (inaudible)
blanket, masks, bentwood boxes,

01:43:35.000 --> 01:43:39.999
box drums, dancing sticks. We found masks

01:43:40.000 --> 01:43:44.999
and other paraphernalia which we put on the
beach and then photographed and took on board.

01:43:45.000 --> 01:43:49.999
Meanwhile, Curtis took a very large negative of the
whole party with the totem poles in the background.

01:43:50.000 --> 01:43:54.999
John Muir was not in the picture.

01:43:55.000 --> 01:43:59.999
The outspoken Scott was the only member of the
group to protest the taking of the sacred objects.

01:44:00.000 --> 01:44:04.999
In 2001 the Harriman Expedition Retraced

01:44:05.000 --> 01:44:09.999
to post for a similar photograph
under very different circumstances.

01:44:10.000 --> 01:44:14.999
The Tlingit\'s of Cape Fox had successfully
filed for the return of the objects

01:44:15.000 --> 01:44:19.999
under the Native Repatriation Law.

01:44:20.000 --> 01:44:24.999
Retracing expedition in this instance

01:44:25.000 --> 01:44:29.999
meant undoing it. The totem poles
and other objects were brought back

01:44:30.000 --> 01:44:34.999
on the Clipper Odyssey to the docks in
(inaudible) and a welcoming ceremony took place

01:44:35.000 --> 01:44:39.999
on the beach at Cape Fox.

01:44:40.000 --> 01:44:44.999
It was a very powerful moment
to land at that beach and then

01:44:45.000 --> 01:44:49.999
to move ourselves backward in
time to a hundred years ago.

01:44:50.000 --> 01:44:54.999
There was the welcoming of the guests.
They granted us permission

01:44:55.000 --> 01:44:59.999
and they invited us to come onto their
land. And even though I\'m a Tlingit,

01:45:00.000 --> 01:45:04.999
I\'m… I\'m not of that clan
nor of uh… those people.

01:45:05.000 --> 01:45:09.999
So even myself, I had to be uh…
allowed and welcome to come.

01:45:10.000 --> 01:45:14.999
Which taken a hundred years to sort through this issue
of the taking of the objects from Cape Fox Village

01:45:15.000 --> 01:45:19.999
umm… and today that circle has been closed.
The objects have been returned.

01:45:20.000 --> 01:45:24.999
And members of the Harriman Family came.
Who\'s very important to the clan

01:45:25.000 --> 01:45:29.999
to have the Harriman family members;
(inaudible) Friedman and her child Ned here.

01:45:30.000 --> 01:45:34.999
She was standing there, holding
her baby uh… on her power pouch.

01:45:35.000 --> 01:45:39.999
We acknowledge their welcome.

01:45:40.000 --> 01:45:44.999
Thank you for welcoming us to your land.

01:45:45.000 --> 01:45:49.999
I know that today is a special day for you.

01:45:50.000 --> 01:45:54.999
We will be feeding the spirits.
Rosita has something for you

01:45:55.000 --> 01:45:59.999
to come and help us. Having objects
removed and then coming back home

01:46:00.000 --> 01:46:04.999
with non-Tlingit people, there\'s
something new. We all agreed that

01:46:05.000 --> 01:46:09.999
they should participate in the ceremony.

01:46:10.000 --> 01:46:14.999
And it was not just objects
that we\'re returning,

01:46:15.000 --> 01:46:19.999
but actual ancestors that
were coming back home.

01:46:20.000 --> 01:46:24.999
We wanted to feed our ancestors
and so we built a fire,

01:46:25.000 --> 01:46:29.999
fire being the medium to transfer
food into the Spirit World.

01:46:30.000 --> 01:46:34.999
Their culture has this duality; we have
eagles and ravens, we have guests,

01:46:35.000 --> 01:46:39.999
we have (inaudible) and we have
to have what we call balance.

01:46:40.000 --> 01:46:44.999
This duality has its meaning in terms of

01:46:45.000 --> 01:46:49.999
our relationship to those objects.
It\'s a real bond,

01:46:50.000 --> 01:46:54.999
a physical bond to ancestors,
but now it also becomes a tool

01:46:55.000 --> 01:46:59.999
for teaching our young about
history and also their culture.

01:47:00.000 --> 01:47:04.999
Our sacred objects and ceremonial objects,

01:47:05.000 --> 01:47:09.999
today are more important to our
identity because our identity is

01:47:10.000 --> 01:47:14.999
under more stress. Today,
some of the objects

01:47:15.000 --> 01:47:19.999
that were traded a hundred
years ago actually have

01:47:20.000 --> 01:47:24.999
much more significance
to us than at the time.

01:47:25.000 --> 01:47:29.999
After two months at sea,

01:47:30.000 --> 01:47:34.999
the George W. Elder steam back into Seattle.
The expedition had made quite a hold,

01:47:35.000 --> 01:47:39.999
over a hundred trunks of
specimens, birds, mammals,

01:47:40.000 --> 01:47:44.999
sea creatures, pottery, carvings, fossils.
The artists had made over

01:47:45.000 --> 01:47:49.999
5,000 photographs and paintings.

01:47:50.000 --> 01:47:54.999
E. H. Harriman never did anything by hands.
Having launched and funded

01:47:55.000 --> 01:47:59.999
and carried out this expedition, he was going
to make sure that everyone remembered it.

01:48:00.000 --> 01:48:04.999
He told everybody on the expedition that he
wanted all the photographs that everybody took

01:48:05.000 --> 01:48:09.999
because he wanted to put them together
in some sort of Momento. The Momento was

01:48:10.000 --> 01:48:14.999
a leather bound souvenir book of the expedition.
Harriman presented a copy to everyone on the journey.

01:48:15.000 --> 01:48:19.999
Then, he hired C. Hart Merriam
to edit the scientific findings.

01:48:20.000 --> 01:48:24.999
It would take Merriam a dozen
years to finish the task.

01:48:25.000 --> 01:48:29.999
In the end, the scientists produced
enough data to fill a 11-large volumes

01:48:30.000 --> 01:48:34.999
describing 13 new genera and
nearly 600 new species.

01:48:35.000 --> 01:48:39.999
To try to grasp this whole tremendous range

01:48:40.000 --> 01:48:44.999
in physical diversity and biological
diversity in a single cruise

01:48:45.000 --> 01:48:49.999
is… is almost overwhelming.
Today, our scientists have

01:48:50.000 --> 01:48:54.999
species expertise and regional
expertise, and it would be very rare

01:48:55.000 --> 01:48:59.999
to find a bird biologist or marine mammal
biologist to study their particular animal

01:49:00.000 --> 01:49:04.999
all the way from Seattle, Washington
to the northern coast of Alaska.

01:49:05.000 --> 01:49:09.999
That\'s what those individuals in the
original Harriman Expedition did.

01:49:10.000 --> 01:49:14.999
The four people who have

01:49:15.000 --> 01:49:19.999
the strongest place in history
from The Harriman Expedition

01:49:20.000 --> 01:49:24.999
are John Muir, the great
naturalist, writer,

01:49:25.000 --> 01:49:29.999
conservation activist; John
Burroughs, great writer, naturalist,

01:49:30.000 --> 01:49:34.999
conservation activist; C. Hart
Merriam a great naturalist

01:49:35.000 --> 01:49:39.999
and biologists and Edward
Curtis, one of our most famous

01:49:40.000 --> 01:49:44.999
and renowned photographers. All people
associated with the natural world.

01:49:45.000 --> 01:49:49.999
The moral of that story is history
may not remember you well

01:49:50.000 --> 01:49:54.999
for what you\'ve done for industry,
but history has always treated well

01:49:55.000 --> 01:49:59.999
the person who said,
\'Protect this wild place.\'

01:50:00.000 --> 01:50:04.999
What\'s so powerful about Alaska is
that it is not just about nature,

01:50:05.000 --> 01:50:09.999
it\'s about people. How
do we protect this land,

01:50:10.000 --> 01:50:14.999
how do we protect the nature that we
find in this land, how do we fashion

01:50:15.000 --> 01:50:19.999
a way of living where
people can both make a home

01:50:20.000 --> 01:50:24.999
and not so transform this land that it\'s
destroyed. That\'s not just a problem of Alaska,

01:50:25.000 --> 01:50:29.999
it\'s not just problem of the United States, it\'s a problem
of the Brazilian Rain Forest, it\'s a problem of Indonesia,

01:50:30.000 --> 01:50:34.999
it\'s one of the central dilemmas
of… of the entire world.

01:50:35.000 --> 01:50:39.999
We had three tons of coal
left in our bunkers,

01:50:40.000 --> 01:50:44.999
but of our little stock farm down
below only the milk cow remained.

01:50:45.000 --> 01:50:49.999
She had been to Siberia and back, and had
given milk all the way. No voyagers were

01:50:50.000 --> 01:50:54.999
ever more fortunate than we. No storms,
no winds, no delays or accidents

01:50:55.000 --> 01:50:59.999
to speak off, no illness. We
had gone far and fared well.

01:51:00.000 --> 01:51:05.000
John Burroughs.

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