In winter, Papa would stand at the north-facing window of his home, looking to the open sky and his neighborโs sleeping garden. โAlapaa,โ he would say: โIt likes to be cold,โ in Inupiaq. He was talking about Sila, the weather.
And on January days during my childhood, when we all gathered for supper and the house shook from coastal storms and the snow berms throughout town grew and grew over the season, Papa would say something like โPiqsiฤกuktuq,โ to my Gram, mom, aunties and uncles.
In Inupiaq, piqsiq translates to โstormy.โ The syllable ฤกuk means โlikes toโ and tuq signifies โit or they.โ The string of sounds sounded familiar and comfortable, but I didnโt understand that it translates to โIt likes to be stormy.โ
Because Papa and Gram were punished, physically and psychologically, for speaking Inupiaq in school classrooms as children, they did not want my mom and her siblings speaking the language and experiencing the deep and unjust shame and pain they carried. Mom and her siblings understood Inupiaq but couldnโt speak it. I grew up not speaking or understanding it. As a kid wearing braids and bobbles, I didnโt have the knowledge that our language is imbued with the Indigenous understanding that the weather, Sila, is living with us. And Sila is boss.
Papa was born with this understanding. In fact, he understood the weather so well he was a traditional weather forecaster. I imagine he learned the signals from his dad, who learned them from his father and the generations before him who made Uลalaqลiq, the southernmost Inupiaq settlement, their homelands. What settlers changed to Unalakleet. He would stand at the beach, look out at the ocean, the current, the clouds and the color and movement of it all, and let Sila decide our days, our week ahead. If wind was coming, we couldnโt hunt ugruk. If Sila said โrain,โ we waited to fish for humpies until a good stretch of clear skies arrived for days
of hanging and drying. Sila told us, and continues to decide for us, our activities.
Our language is imbued with the Indigenous understanding that the weather, Sila, is living with us. And Sila is boss.
Papa was a slight, slender and sinewy man with a full head of gray hair and browline glasses. He moved with purpose, was comfortable with silence, never complained, and always seemed to look ahead. He wore scratchy wool plaid button-up shirts, chewed snuff, and smelled like earth, fresh air and no nonsense. He had the most wrinkled face Iโd ever seen, sported a crewcut, had large ears that stuck out, and was the type of man who, when he talked, people listened.
We often ate supper at Papa and Gramโs house. All of us. Aunts, uncles, all the cousins. So many that there werenโt enough chairs, and Papa or Dad would haul a bunch of white 5-gallon buckets from the back porch to fit as many as could sit at the kitchen table. I never wanted to sit on one of those buckets. My legs were too short for my feet to reach the floor, and the raised rims on the lids hurt my thighs.
On those cold or stormy winter days, Gram would stand at the oven and stir a pot of fresh caribou soup. The yeasty smell of baking bread wafted through their small home and softened the talk, as we knew weโd eat fresh bread slathered with Crisco very soon. The oven and all our bodies warmed the room. Some of us young cousins stole away to play in the back bedroom, reserved for grandkids who lived with them, to escape boring adult conversation and the stuffiness. I didnโt know it then, but those conversations I passively heard while thinking of something to do shape my values and mindset today.
THIS TIME OF YEAR, communities throughout coastal Western and Northern Alaska are thinking of and preparing for the coming fall storms. When I was a child, we experienced fall storms, but nothing like what weโre seeing today. I grew up hearing about a major flood in the 1960s. My dadโs dadโs house floated off its foundation and landed in the spot where it still stands, where my uncle and auntie now live. When it landed there, my papa jovially asked the man across the road, โCan I be your neighbor?โ
Last fall, Typhoon Halong started in the central Pacific Ocean, southeast of Japan. The storm traveled north and hit Alaskaโs entire western coastline, flooding and damaging 45 communities and forcing the total relocation of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok residents, turning them into climate refugees. In response, the governor declared a state disaster emergency, and the president approved a federal disaster declaration.
These floods used to occur once every 100 years or so. Today, the fall storms that bring high water are a threat every year. I chatted with Alaskaโs leading climatologist, Rick Thoman, about the frequency of storms. He said the oceans are warming. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting. โThey combined to produce a double whammy driving sea-level rise,โ he said. โCoastal erosion is aggravated by the longer sea-ice-free season. Warmer oceans can increase also the intensity of storms.โ That was likely a factor in the ferocity of the Halong flooding. He said permafrost is thawing only a few feet above sea level in places, and the sinking and settling land can cause catastrophic flooding where it might otherwise have been minor.
As we brace for whatever Sila may bring to us this fall, I often wonder what Papa would say today, looking out of his window. I wonder what heโd think when it rains for days on end and weโre unable to dry our fish like we used to on the fish rack. How we are now drying our fish inside empty bedrooms, garages or hallways, using fans. I wonder what heโd say about the ocean eating the coastline where he and Gram camped during fishing season. I wonder if, standing on the sandy beach, looking west to the horizon, he could see the messages in the signals and predict the weather like he used to. I wonder what kind of conversations I would hear, sitting at the kitchen table. I wonder what Sila would tell him.
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This article appeared in the August 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline โSila decides.โ
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