In recent years the soaring inflation 
that has swept the lower forty-eight 
states has reached the Eskimo villages 
of Alaska, spurring an even greater 
effort among the Diomeders to acquire 
ivory. The cost of living in rural Alaska 
is exorbitant, but it pales beside the 
prices Diomeders must pay for what 
have become necessities of life. During 
the spring of 1979 gasoline cost $154 
for a 55-gallon drum; by midsummer 
it rose to $206 a drum or $3.75 a 
gallon. Butter now sells for $2.55 per 
pound, and five pounds of sugar cost 
$2.90. 
Diomede’s high prices are largely 
the result of its inaccessability — it lies 
across twenty-four inhospitable miles 
of ocean from mainland Alaska. Gro- 
ceries and mail arrive by skin boat 
during the summer. During the winter 
months supplies are brought by planes 
that land on the sea ice in front of 
the village, but these deliveries are 
at the mercy of capricious winds and 
shifting ice. 
The remoteness of the island was 
poignantly impressed upon me one 
evening as we were hunting. A friend 
from Anchorage had joined our crew. 
He urged John to accompany him on 
a fall moose hunt in interior Alaska. 
“When will this be?” John asked. 
“We’ll go in October,” answered 
Joe. 
Shaking his head, John sighed, “No, 
I have to be home in October. Oth- 
erwise I might not get in for the win- 
ter.” 
The brutally high cost of living has 
forced the Eskimos to rely heavily 
upon their one marketable commod- 
ity — ivory. On Little Diomede the 
yearly harvest of walrus has long since 
surpassed the number required to sup- 
ply the meat needs of the village. After 
each spring’s initial hunting trips, very 
little meat is retrieved from the ani- 
mals killed. Other villages, such as 
Savoonga and Gambell on Saint Law- 
rence Island, have been slower to 
change, but now they too are turning 
inexorably toward increased walrus 
hunting for ivory rather than for food. 
The two ivory tusks carried by both 
male and female walruses, and the 
penis bone (baculum) of the male are 
retrieved, but the carcass is abandoned 
on the ice or pushed into the sea. 
Ivory carvings find a ready market 
in Nome or Anchorage. The art can 
be a profitable one. A young man from 
Diomede told me he could make $260 
a day carving ivory, more if he really 
worked at it. 
Hunting as a means of providing 
an income from ivory has touched off 
a blazing controversy in Alaska, one 
that has drawn national and interna- 
tional attention. Headless walrus car- 
casses washing up on Russian shores 
have placed Americans in an embar- 
rassing light. The Soviet Union also 
harvests walrus annually, but the hunt 
is carried out under strict regulations 
and in a nonwasteful manner. 
The killing of walrus for ivory alone 
stirs passionate emotions outside the 
Eskimo community, as well as within. 
The natives commonly either refuse 
to admit the practice exists or claim 
vehemently that this is bonafide sub- 
sistence. “We have hunted walrus for 
thousands of years,” an elderly Es- 
kimo recounted. “They have provided 
us with what we needed in the past, 
and they provide us with what we 
need now.” What they need now, how- 
ever, includes snowmobiles, television 
sets, slide viewers, generators, and out- 
board motors. 
The softly spoken words of an old 
Eskimo emphasized the changes that 
have come to the villages. “When I 
was young,” he said, “the village was 
quiet all the time and the whales and 
walrus would come very close to 
shore.” He turned from the sea and 
glanced disdainfully at the roaring vil- 
lage generators. “Now we have snow- 
mobiles, generators, six-wheelers . . . 
too much noise. The game never comes 
close anymore.” 
The changes are indeed great. Al- 
though skin boats are used by Di- 
omeders and occasionally in the other 
villages, aluminum skiffs with pow- 
erful outboards have become the pre- 
ferred craft. (The skiffs are faster than 
the skin boats, but they are more vul- 
nerable to the crushing ice pack.) 
High-powered rifles have long since 
replaced the ivory lances and harpoons 
of earlier years. CB radios, binoculars, 
and compasses are acquisitions that 
have turned the Eskimo into a more 
effective hunter. 
Yankee whalers certainly set a mis- 
erable example of restraint. When 
bowhead stocks declined in the 1870s, 
the whalers took walrus by the thou- 
sands. The ivory was chopped from 
the skull and the blubber rendered 
down for the valuable oil. In a ten- 
year period 100,000 walruses may 
have been harvested by whaling crews. 
This intensive hunting sent the wal- 
rus population into a dramatic decline, 
from an estimated 200,000 animals 
to a low of 50,000 in the 1940s. The 
walrus herds were so decimated that 
it became uneconomical to hunt them 
and the industry died. Commercial 
walrus hunting was officially closed 
in 1941 with the passage of the Walrus 
Act, which prohibited the export of 
raw ivory from Alaska. The walrus 
population began to increase in the 
1950s and today the herds in the Be- 
ring and Chukchi seas number be- 
tween 140,000 and 200,000 animals. 
Walrus are “hauling out,” or resting 
on shores and islands where they have 
not been seen for decades, indicating 
a rising population. Now the conten- 
tion that the walrus population is dan- 
gerously high is voiced loudly and 
unanimously in most villages. 
With the passage in December 1972 
of the Marine Mammal Protection 
Act, the federal government took over 
marine mammal control from the state 
of Alaska. All hunting of marine mam- 
mals was abruptly stopped, bringing 
to an end the sport hunting of walrus 
allowed by the state. Eskimos, Indians, 
and Aleuts, however, were granted an 
exemption that allowed them to har- 
vest these animals for subsistence pur- 
poses or for the creation of authentic 
articles of native handicraft. In Jan- 
uary 1973, Alaska petitioned for re- 
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