The Native Alaskan Survival Story That Revealed How Indigenous Knowledge Helped Humans Adapt To One Of Earth’s Harshest Environments

The Iñupiat families who had refused to join the Wrangel Island expedition in Nome had this knowledge.

They assessed the risks with the judgment that such knowledge permitted, and they declined to go.

Crawford, Maurer, and Galle had none of it.

They were attempting a 90-mile ice crossing in January conditions that experienced Iñupiat hunters would have evaluated with extreme caution at the best of times, and in conditions that were objectively poor.

The sea ice that January was likely treacherous — late winter sea ice in the Chukchi Sea is a complex, dangerous environment.

Without the knowledge to read it, they had no reliable way to know which path was safer than another, or to assess what the ice was likely to do in the hours and days ahead.