The Pribilof Islands

 Saturday August 22nd

Overnight and on Saturday morning we traveled another 200 miles south to St Paul, the more northerly of the Pribilof Islands. It has about 400 residents. These islands are a famous birding destination during spring and fall migration, and even now in mid-summer the islands host a few species that are hard to see elsewhere. St Paul is also the location of a vast Northern Fur Seal rookery. 

We were very lucky to have clear skies and mild winds; the locals said it had been very foggy for weeks. We walked to the seal rookery, where we enjoyed watching mothers and pups. We also got to see a few males, away from the rookery, and sea birds on the cliffs.  We had hoped to cruise past the bird cliffs on St George (the other island of the Pribilofs) after dinner to see the colonies of red-legged kittiwakes, but the fog closed in, preventing views. 

The Pribilof islands were uninhabited until the mid 1800s, when Russian fur trappers brought Unangan (Aleuts) from Unalaska to work the seal processing plants. The local population rapidly merged with the Russians (many of whom were from Siberia, rather than from European Russia), creating a respected and well educated creole class. The Unangans  adopted the Russian Orthodox faith and Russian names. The church in turn incorporated many concepts from the nature-focused local religion to make the transition easier. The creoles were literate in both Russian and Aleut, and had positions of authority in the seal fur business.

That all changed when the US bought Alaska in 1867. The American government took direct control of the seal fur business and changed the Unangans into government employees. Basically the Aleuts were treated as “Native Americans”: the Unangan managers were replaced with Americans; it was forbidden to speak the Aleut language in public or in the schools, and local cultural traditions were encouraged to fade away. The Unangans were not recognized as US citizens until 1924. 

In 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor, several sites in the Aleutians were bombed by the Japanese. The US government forced anyone with 1/8 or higher Unangan heritage to evacuate from the Pribilof Islands. They were sent to a camp in SE Alaska without running water or sufficient supplies. When they returned to their homes they found they had been ransacked by US troops; even the icons from the church had been taken.

The seal fur trade was banned in 1983, and the community has struggled since then. The islands are working hard to re-establish Unangan customs and to save the language while there are still some native speakers to instruct others. Unexpectedly, the fur seal population has not recovered but continues to decline. It is suspected that a combination of commercial fishing and climate change have reduced the available food supply, and there is great concern about the possible introduction of bird flu. 

Pictured: male Northern Fur Seal, St. Paul with Orthodox Church, seal pup nursing, Horned Puffin, helmeted crab