It was 2009 when I first knocked on Shelton Kokeok’s door in his village near the Arctic Circle. I didn’t know who lived inside. I was there for a CNN story on his tiny community, Shishmaref, and its plans to relocate because of the consequences of a warming planet — the thawing permafrost and disappearing sea ice.
Shelton answered the door with a characteristic smile — the kind that made his cheeks bump his bifocals. His blue house sat right at the edge of the Chukchi Sea — on a crumbling bluff that I described at the time as “falling into the water in snowmobile-sized chunks.” Inside, Shelton had hung dozens of photos of family members. Some posed with game animals common in the area: moose, caribou, seal. Others stood for school portraits in front of colorful backdrops. A wooden clock ticked on the wall and chimed the hour. A cassette-deck radio crackled with the weather forecast. The air smelled of seal oil, a tangy staple of the village.
Shelton was in his mid-60s then. He told me about how much warmer it’d been getting because I asked about that. I asked about the ice. It had been disappearing and thinning, he said. He watched that process, year after year, from his window.
I asked about relocation. The community had voted to relocate because of warming and that was the reason for my visit. That probably would have to happen, Shelton told me, but he didn’t want to leave this home. Already, he had helped his neighbors pull their homes back from the dangerous edge of the coast and toward safety.
That’s why his house was all alone on that bluff.
(The coastline of Alaska is eroding as the permafrost thaws, destabilizing the land. Sea ice that once protected the coast has been retreating for decades).
That’s the kind of guy Shelton was: Helpful, strong, capable, selfless. He told me stories about fending off polar bears and making it through winters of 40-below. About adapting to a world that always seemed to be changing too fast around him.
Today would have been his 81st birthday.
He died earlier this year at the age of 80.
Well, sort of.
No one in Shishmaref really dies. That’s something else he taught me.
In Shish, stories cross generational lines
Over the years, I knocked on the door of Shelton’s blue home many times. Whenever I did, he wanted to talk with me not about the ice but about family.
Often about his wife, Clara, who he doted over, cleaned and cooked for, and spoke to in a voice that was soft and kind — reassuring even as she lost her memory and then passed away. They spoke to each other in Inupiaq, the indigenous language that’s still taught at the school in Shishmaref (or Kigiqtaq, as the town is known in that language).
Shelton talked about his kids, too — Frieda, John, Warren and Norman. Especially Norman. We spent hours speaking about the kid nicknamed “Boy.” It was Norman’s photo that sat on his coffee table next to the radio. It was Norman who was his one biological son — the rest he adopted after his brother, who previously was married to Clara, died in a plane crash. Shelton told me their wedding was about love but also about taking care of family. About duty. About a way of remembering. Shelton named his son Norman after his brother, Norman, who died in that plane crash.
His child also would meet a tragic fate.
The younger Norman fell through thinning sea ice on a hunt in 2007.
Norman’s friends couldn’t rescue him.
That year, 2007, the ice was at a record low. Shelton blamed global warming for Norman’s death. You couldn’t trust the ice like you used to, he said.
In this chart, you can see just how much the sea ice had declined that year.
Shelton cried easily talking about Norman. And he spent hours just looking out the window from his little blue house, staring at the sea, thinking about him. After Norman’s death, and especially after Clara’s health started to decline, Shelton’s big smile and satellite-dish ears were rarely seen around this tiny village of about 500.
Little could comfort him except for an important custom.
‘What’s in a name?’ Shishmaref edition
There’s a tradition in Shishmaref that people live on through their names. This isn’t the kind of namesake thing you encounter elsewhere, necessarily. (My middle name is David, after my dad, for example, but that’s different from this way of naming). Traditionally, when someone in Shishmaref dies, the next baby born in the village is named after them. That baby takes on the name and, very often, the traits and mannerisms of the deceased person. It’s almost a form of reincarnation.
After Norman died, at least two Normans were named after him. (They’re now teenagers and I’ve spent lots of time with both of their families. At least one of the Normans wants to become a hunter just like his namesake, despite the risks). Shelton found so much comfort in the existence of these Normans — the fact that they carried on the hunting traditions that he’d taught his own son. I’m told that both of the younger Normans attended Shelton’s funeral. And that a choir sang in Inupiaq.
The ‘Shelton’ that could live to 2100
Because of how he felt about Norman — past, present and future — I know Shelton would be pleased to learn that there’s at least one child named after him, too.
That child is Shelton’s great-grandson.
The boy was given Shelton’s Inupiaq name, Ugasuk, which the family believes creates an even stronger connection between the generations than an English name could, John Kokeok, Shelton’s son, told me this September when I visited Shishmaref.
The baby boy’s name is Wade “Ugasuk” Kokeok. He was born on July 12 to Carter Kokeok and Carmen Turner. Wade, not unlike Shelton, has had a hard time of it so far. Carter told me recently by phone that the boy was born premature at 31 weeks and only was discharged from the hospital in early November, nearly four months after his birth. He’s a fighter like Shelton, though, too. “My papa was a little bit stubborn, and Wade is also kind of stubborn in a way,” he told me. He’s determined to get well.
Carter told me he hopes to bring Wade home to Shishmaref in the not-too-distant future. For now, they are staying in the Seattle area for follow-up appointments.
Can a village be reborn, too?
It’s foreseeable that Wade could live to the year 2100.
I wonder what that world will look like.
Will Shishmaref have to relocate?
So much of the climate crisis exists on timescales that stretch our imagination and understanding. CO2 stays in the atmosphere and oceans, contributing to warming, for 1,000 years. It’s like we’re alive in that future — or at least our pollution is.
I’m fond of saying that climate change is a story that lasts longer than any human lifetime. It’s one reason I think we’ve failed to do more in response to warming. It’s hard for us to feel the changes we’re unleashing in a quotidian sort of way. It’s only when we really stretch our collective memories and stand back that we can see.
Shelton’s story, and Wade’s, help stretch my memory.
In Shish, stories and people do last longer than a lifetime.
We need those stories if we’re going to make sense of what we’re doing to the planet.
There may come a time when Shishmaref, the community, can no longer exist in its precarious location on the Chukchi Sea. (This fall, nearby villages were devastated as remnants of Typhoon Halong caused widespread flooding, wrecking 700 homes and killing at least one person, according to the Associated Press. Some homes floated away with people inside. It’s estimated that hundreds were displaced).
If Shelton can be reborn, I have to wonder if the village can be reborn, too.
Thanks for taking time to read this piece. Give me a shout and let me know what you’d like to see more of as this newsletter gets moving again.
I’m so glad to be reconnecting with this community. Thank you for all the recent feedback. What I heard from you is: Keep writing, we like this! So I’m going to :)
A special thanks to John and Kate Kokeok, as well as Carter Kokeok, for reminiscing with me about Shelton and working with me to keep his story alive.
I’ll be thinking about Wade and wishing him a swift and continued recovery.
And a happy birthday to Shelton. May you rest in peace.
— John
This is beautifully wrought, John, and I'm happy to see Baseline revive and hope the film project is going well amid all. As time flows on and journalists who dare circle back to check what's been left behind, heartache is inevitable, but so are other feelings. Your name is also likely to live on in Shishmaref because of the sensitive and caring work you did there.
Thanks for helping stretch all of our memories, friend. Rest well, Shelton. So glad to see Baseline back up and running 💛