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Ultimately, Richard Glenn (at right)
abandoned the degree with only the
writing of the dissertation left to do. Partly, life became too busy
with
’Berta’s arrival and the gas field project to finish. But he also
became
uncomfortable with the idea of having the degree at all. He saw a lack
of
Iñupiaq humility in the basic assumption of his project, the
idea that he could
take traditional knowledge to a higher, scientific level. Through two
years of
study, he had discovered how little he really knew. What he had learned
instead
was that traditional knowledge existed as an organic part of a person
living in
the environment, a whole world constructed from experience, and
couldn’t be
extracted and rationalized into datapoints. “I didn’t want to become
the ice
man, the expert in a town full of experts, some kid from
California
that thinks he knows everything,” he said. “To me, it’s not so much
about
finishing a degree as continuing to learn about this life.”
As he made that statement, Richard
stood on white ice in
pale sunlight, gazing over the sea from inside the hood of his white
hunter’s
parka. We snacked on a frozen caribou haunch. The waves were up a bit,
so Savik
Crew was not boating, instead just waiting for a whale to surface
nearby, the
harpoon and shoulder gun laid out with care at a
high
point on the ice edge. Waves boomed and
reverberated
underneath, so Richard had moved the snowmachines back a little; the
camp with
the tent was well back among the multi-year ice. My questions were a
distraction from his quiet watching until I asked one that really
interested
him, made him think: which way did he know more about ice, as a
scientist or as
an Iñupiaq? He debated with himself a bit before he answered: He
knew more as
an Eskimo. Scientists, he observed, know a collection of facts about
ice;
Eskimos know ice itself. “The best ice scientist is almost an
Iñupiaq,” he
said. “If he’s a good ice scientist, then he’s thinking the way these
people
here do.”
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