The Last Speakers (8 page)

The Yupik people have one of the most amazing survival technologies known to mankind, one that has allowed them to thrive in the world's harshest environment, the Arctic, for over 6,000 years. A tiny fraction of their knowledge of snow and ice is beautifully captured in a brilliant book called
Watching Ice and Weather Our Way,
one the snow naysayers should read. As Dr. Igor Krupnik, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History's Arctic expert, notes in his book
The Earth Is Faster Now:
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Krupnik goes on to show how native knowledge is based on principles quite different from modern meteorological science:

So what makes a Yupik such a skilled weather forecaster? In Krupnik's view, “The more words (and combinations) one knows, the more precise one's observation and forecast can be.” Now that Yupik is shifting and giving way to English, the environmental knowledge and ability to forecast weather are being degraded:

Nor does their complexity end with ice. As it turns out, the Yupik also know names for different winds. Chester Noongwook, a Yupik elder, says: “We have several kinds of winds here in Savoonga. Aywaa (Aywaapik) is a direct north wind from the sea. Nakaghya is a northeasterly wind, it comes from Nome. Kenvaq is a northwesterly wind; this is the old name, and we now call this wind Naayghiinaq (“that from Siberia”). There is also another northerly wind, Quutfaq, that can come from anywhere between northwest and northeast. Asivaq is a direct east wind,” and so on.

Besides winds, they have specialized names for many kinds of ocean currents, stars and constellations, and all manner of seasonal phenomena. All this information feeds into a sophisticated weather forecasting ability honed over a lifetime of careful observation. Its profound depth cannot be compared to what American snowboarders know about snow, not even in the slightest. And it should be of deep and urgent interest to all branches of science, not only linguistics but also biology, climatology, anthropology, and others. We are losing one of the finest, most sensitive systems ever devised to detect weather patterns and climate change. And the system can survive only in its original form, in the heads of local Yupik experts who apply it to local conditions.

Is it science? Is it systematic, falsifiable, and reliable in the way we expect the scientific method to be? Or is it just haphazard, unreliable cultural intuition that we can replace with our better science? I'll give Dr. Krupnik, the Smithsonian's Arctic expert, the last word:

To sum up, the Yupik elders are the premier Arctic observers and experts, and they possess a knowledge that is scientific in its attention to detail and ability to remember patterns, and a language that has encoded all this knowledge in complex ways in hundreds of specialized and highly descriptive words. The snow debunkers should observe the uses of these words in their native context, relying on the accounts of the Yupik elders, before blithely claiming that there is no such thing as complex snow and ice terminology, and that even if there is, it is of no interest to science. What the Yupik know about ice and snow is part of our common human patrimony. As an unparalleled repository of expertise on Arctic weather conditions, it may contain clues that could help us understand and adapt to the current radical patterns of global warming that disproportionately affect northern latitudes. We ignore Yupik snow and ice knowledge at our peril, and we stand to profit greatly from acknowledging its complexity and its antiquity.

Living in one of the harshest environments on Earth, with an acuity driven by survival, the Yupik identify and name at least 99 distinct sea ice formations. Here are a few ice descriptions from
Watching Ice and Weather Our Way:

Notice all the information encapsulated in these definitions: the dynamic conditions that cause the ice to form; its appearance, texture, solidity, and (in)suitability for walking on; the season or time of year; the usefulness for hunting; and the possibility of finding sustenance.

How many hours and days, in a lifetime of Arctic hunting and foraging, would an elder have devoted to learning the smallest nuances of ice and weather patterns? Igor Krupnik, who helped collect the sea ice terms, describes how ice-watching is “a lifelong and twenty-four-hour passion, since there is always someone checking weather, sea and ice at any given moment. In a critical time—when men go out hunting, during the spring whaling season, or when the weather is shifting rapidly, several people spend hours scanning the horizon and discussing signals (indicators) related to the status of weather and ice.”

The Yupik science of weather has a very different foundation than modern meteorology. Our focus is on temperature and barometric pressure, indicators that are little regarded by the Yupik. Their science relies on “an extremely sophisticated system of wind terminology that identifies some ten or twelve (or more) types of winds by specific direction and other features.” The system of information packaging that links wind types to weather outcomes has a payoff, Krupnik notes: “Each wind is known to bring a certain type of weather, snow, or ice movement. By identifying…its Yupik name, an observer can make a quick judgment and even make a basic forecast of upcoming conditions.”
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This knowledge is of immense value, both cultural and cognitive. The Yupik cataloging of local conditions gives them a sophisticated understanding of a topic that modern science is still trying to codify. Such specific knowledge extends far beyond Arctic ice, though. If we are willing to explore the margins of the world's many peoples, we find many other bodies of knowledge that are of immense potential value to humanity, all rapidly vanishing. Among them is crucial knowledge of healing.

A PLANT FOR EVERY AILMENT

The Bolivian Altiplano (high plain) is one of the most desolate landscapes on the planet. It features mostly loose clay and rocks, with scrubby vegetation growing here and there. Being a lowlander, I found it very hard to breathe at 12,000 feet above sea level. Even climbing a short flight of steps left me winded. Despite the dryness and severity of the landscape, the Altiplano is rich in culture and in biodiversity, especially animals found nowhere else (alpacas, vicuñas) and a wealth of healing plants.

I went to Bolivia in 2007, along with my fellow linguist Greg Anderson and a crew of three filmmakers, drawn by the prospect of encountering one of the smallest and most unusual languages on Earth.

We landed in El Alto, at a dizzying elevation of 13,600 feet, then descended into the deep bowl that is La Paz. Taking Diamox to prevent altitude sickness, we needed several days to adapt. During that time, we met local scholars and a group of intrepid students at the University of La Paz who were translating Windows software into Aymara, the major indigenous language (with over four million speakers) of Bolivia.

As soon we could, we headed up and out of town, in a convoy of two Land Rovers. Our destination was the mountain redoubt of Chary, where we hoped to meet the mysterious Kallawaya medicine men
(los medicos)
. These famed healers of the Andes not only possessed unparalleled secret knowledge of medicinal plants but also had developed a secret language to protect that knowledge. Handed down for at least four centuries, since the collapse of the Inca empire, the knowledge has been fiercely guarded, in part, by allowing only young male initiates to learn the language.

After eight hours on the steep, winding passes, we arrived in the tiny hamlet of Chary. Asking around, we found a man who was a local healer and claimed to speak Kallawaya. We eagerly set up our cameras, microphones, and prepared to interview him. Disappointingly, he turned out to speak only Quechua, one of the most common indigenous tongues of the Andes, and Spanish. We thanked him for his time and pressed on.

On our way back to the decrepit hotel, we passed a man bearing an enormous cloth bundle on his back. He waved us to stop, asking for a ride into town. By sheer luck, he turned out to be Max Chura Mamani, a renowned medicine man, a speaker of Kallawaya, and just the kind of person we were seeking.

As guardian of an ancient knowledge base about healing plants, Max wielded considerable power and authority. People would come from miles away to consult with him, and he was used to being accommodated. Back at the hotel, we agreed to have him perform a ritual for us, and he cast coca leaves to determine a good time and place for it. He scolded us a bit for our haste and eagerness. We gave Max money to make the necessary ritual preparations, and then settled in to wait and drink tea as the fog rolled in. More than a day would pass before Max resurfaced, as we impatiently paced the floor and wondered if we had been fleeced.

Antonio Condori (left), with his son Illarion Ramos Condori (center), both Kallawaya healers, talking with David Harrison (right) in Chary village, northern Bolivia, June 2007.

The Kallawaya have a sophisticated knowledge of pharmacology that they developed through trial and error, a method we can only consider to be scientific. Here are just two of the treasures from their pharmacopoeia that they have discovered and chosen to share with researchers:

White poppy is reported by botanists to contain many different alkaloids, a basis for creating analgesics (painkillers). Codeine, one of the alkaloids extracted from the white poppy by pharmaceutical companies, is widely used in cough-suppressing medicines. The Kallawaya knew of beneficial poppy properties long before Western medicine did, using their own process of experimentation.