Ceiba Ili
At the 12th World Wilderness Congress last month, I had the opportunity to interview Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson, a Yup’ik traditional medicine practitioner, educator, bird advocate, and human relative from the Southwestern Bering Sea Coast community of Hooper Bay. She shared her wisdom on the importance of migratory birds in her community’s cultural and spiritual life. With over 220 species of nesting birds that arrive in her homeland each year from all over the world, the significance of these birds extends beyond their physical presence—they are vital to the community’s identity. Some of Thomson’s work focuses on advocating for migratory birds as global citizens, reminding policy makers and western scientific communities that birds, unbound by human borders, must be treated as integral parts of the ecosystem, not nuisances to be managed.
Her advocacy work extends beyond conservation. It is about the spiritual connection her people have with the natural world and the need for Western societies to recognize and respect this holistic relationship. Thomson has spent years impressing upon both Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders the need to shift their mindset about how we interact with wildlife. Her work speaks to the tension that exists in seeking common ground between Western scientific practices and traditional ecological knowledge systems and practice. While both sides aim to protect wildlife, they often have different priorities and methods, which can lead to conflict. This advocacy carries important lessons for South Texas, the Gulf Coast, and the Borderlands, where environmental and wildlife policies are often at odds with Indigenous practices. Thomson here reminds us that borders are irrelevant to the natural world. The question she poses is a challenge for us to decide if we can learn to live with the land, and not against it. Her words are a call to action for all of us, urging a deeper understanding of the relationships between humans, non-human animals, and the land.
Below is a transcript of two interviews with Thomson where I sought to explore her perspective on migratory birds and draw connections to San Antonio, where birds are viewed as pests or nuisances by the city and developers. The second longer interview is also captured in the video above.
Ceiba Ili: We are here at the Indigenous-Only Caucus at the 12th Wilderness Conference. Can you please introduce yourself and your work?
Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson: My name is Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson, and I am Yup’ik. I am a representative of my village, the Native Village of Paimiut, on the southwestern Bering Sea coast of Alaska. I am a Tribal leader and I spend a lot of time in advocacy for migratory birds because our birds are so important to us culturally and spiritually. We have over 220 species of migratory nesting birds that come to my lands and raise their young. One of the things that I’ve been trying to impress upon, leaders, policymakers, and people of the western scientific community, is that our birds are global citizens.
They don’t hold allegiance to any boundaries, any laws, or anything besides the fact that they need to migrate, procreate, and raise their young. The thing that many people in policy, in governments, in western communities do not recognize is the fact that these birds don’t care what laws you make. They don’t care what boundaries you draw. These boundaries, these imaginary lines that were put up, in places that have been gentrified and also developed. It wasn’t a choice given to the birds where you built your neighborhood.
No one asked the birds. And so what I encourage people to do is to not look at them as a nuisance, but a part of the environment that was already there.
When you go into a new place, especially as an Indigenous person, you don’t disturb it. You acknowledge what’s there, and you try not to disturb those beings, those plants, the landforms, anything. In many cases, what that’s done is made western people believe that when they come into this new space, that there have never been people there.
The truth of the matter is, as Indigenous people, we understand that we need to work with our relatives: our plant relatives, our animal relatives, our bird relatives, fish, the water, and all. We believe that everything has ears as well. So we have to be careful what we say about these birds, what we say about these animals, what we say about the land, and we do not strive to be in command of it. Any arbitrary laws that are put in place regarding these creatures of different nations is kind of comical, actually. What folks need to understand is that we need to figure out ways to live in relationship with them where we do not disturb them, where we do not disrupt their life, their life ways as birds, but to come up with solutions that honor the fact that they were there before you ever were.
And to the organizers and community that are advocating for these birds, what would you say to them?
I would say that we need to look at all of our relationships. When Indigenous people introduce themselves, they give their lineage so that the people around them can understand and try to figure out what sort of kinship, what sort of relationship we have, so that people know who is speaking and how to relate to them. As far as the relationships that you may build with these somewhat disparate organizations, they can be very different from the way Tribal people organize themselves. You have to know where you’re coming from and find that ground that is common, to find that ground that you’re both willing to work on.
You look at the animal world, and you can see predators and prey coexisting in the same space. They know what each other is supposed to do, and they, more or less, leave each other alone unless one needs to be fed or one needs to flee. But they share that space, and they walk through that space and not disturb the other as much as possible. And, that’s what most western organizations need to learn how to do, is to coexist, knowing that these other organizations exist, who may have differing viewpoints and different agendas. But to be able to coexist like that means that they’re giving each other space to do what they need to.
What would you say to like the Indigenous groups that are so divided by many different histories and differences that they’ve had. It seems sometimes like veryone’s working for the same thing or everyone wants the same thing but not everyone gets along with each other. What would you say to them?
I think the one important thing that we as Indigenous people have to remind ourselves is that we do not need to comply with any system that was put upon us. We don’t have to follow any sort of ways of organizing or recognizing ourselves. For me, as a Yup’ik woman, my grandmothers, great grandmothers would tell me that life is a spiritual practice. And everything that we do in our life either feeds that practice or it takes away from it.
Culture is a practice, just like spirituality is a practice. You have to keep doing it in order for you to, to continue on in that path and in that way. So for those people that are fighting, you have to ask yourself, what are you fighting for? Is it something that we question inherently as, Indigenous people, or is it something that somebody told you that you should be fighting about? And so our identity is not based upon some arbitrary rules, arbitrary laws.
We are just like the birds in that sense. We are global citizens. These borders that were imposed upon us by these systems and societies that don’t belong to us, have no bearing in our lives. We as Indigenous people need to go back to that understanding that we are of the earth, we are of the place, we are tied to the land, we are tied to that community, those relationships in the land that we are from. And regardless of who or what is in that land, we have to figure out peaceful ways of coexisting within those relationships and to kind of forget those things that don’t belong to us.
In my culture, we have this belief. We brush things off. Evcuk. But it’s, it’s practice. When we go into a place or we leave a place, we don’t want to take anything that does not belong there into that place, whether that be perceptions or beliefs or something that may have inadvertently attached itself to us. So we brush ourselves off.
We brush our minds. We brush the top of our head. We brush our mind with the thoughts that don’t go on there. We brush our eyes to clear away the lenses or perceptions that may color the way that we see things. We brush around our mouth and pull that energy away, the negative words, the criticisms, the things that may be hurtful. And, we continue to brush our body, brush our heart so that we clear away anything that may be a barrier to us relating to that person through our heart. And that’s how we should lead our life is walk through life with our heart leading and brush everything away from our body that may be restraining us from accepting.
And then as we leave, if there are conflicts, like, within the space that you’re sharing with these different groups with different opinions, you can brush those negative words and such off. And that was another thing. Here at this gathering, one of the things we, one of the moderators, has mentioned is that we don’t go into these spaces with the determination to be negative. We go into these spaces to understand and to to integrate this knowledge of being shared.
Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson speaking with Deceleration at the World Wilderness Congress
Recorded August 29, 2024
Ceiba Ili: Thank you so much for meeting with us here with Deceleration. We are here at Wild 12 in South Dakota on Lakota territory. Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?
Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson: My name is Angutekaraq Estelle Thomson (Yup’ik Paimiut). That’s my calling name. It’s the name that I’m given, at birth. It means the one who’s supposed to be a man or the one who will provide. My language doesn’t have gender, so I am the provider. In addition to my calling name, I have other names that support that because of the work I do, because of who I am, and what I was born into.
I have to continuously get names for the rest of my life so that my spirit is strong enough to uphold the work. We want to be able to tell our story about what is happening with our people, to our land, and to encourage people not only to partner with us, but also to become more cognizant of the effect of climate change on Indigenous peoples.
That is amazing work. And I’ve also gotten a chance to talk to you about your work, specifically with the birds. In San Antonio, we are doing a lot of work to protect the migratory birds there. Can you share with us what has been your work with the migratory birds, and why do you feel called to do that work?
Absolutely. My village is actually nestled in the habitat for over 220 species of migratory nesting birds from all over the world. We are part of the Pacific Flyway, so we get so many birds from everywhere, and each of those birds has a story. For us, you know, we’ve depended on the birds for food and for clothing and things for 1000 of years.
In recent years, one of the things that we’ve noticed is that we’ve seen declines in specific populations of birds. One of those birds is the bar tailed godwit. We call it cugerpak or tevetakaq, but, one of the partners that we recently gained are actually in New Zealand, the Maori call it kuaka. This bird has this incredible journey that it undertakes over the course of 9 to 12 days, and this is as a 3 or 4 month old chick. Mhmm.
So, once the eggs are laid and they’ve been incubated, and the chicks start to feed on their own, the parents take off. And, the chicks continue to feed and they continue to grow. And once they reach a certain part in the season, they automatically feel this draw to leave. And we don’t know exactly why they have to leave, what makes them go or how they navigate themselves as 3 or 4 month olds. But they undertake this journey of 7 to 8000 miles in one shot.
These migratory birds, they’re small shorebirds. Right before they take off for their migration, they kinda look like little footballs because they’ve been eating so much that they’ve gained so much weight. They’re just plump. And, once they take off, they don’t stop. So they fly for 9 to 12 days straight, 24 hours.
They don’t have the proper plumage, the right feathers to actually be in the water, so they have to continue to fly. Throughout that flight, that bird will turn off half it’s brain to rest and clean its brain, half of it at a time. So it’ll turn off half of its brain for enough time to regenerate and clean it, and then it’ll turn the other half off when one side is done. And it does this over the course of those days.
In addition, this bird’s digestive system will also kind of come to a halt. It’s not hungry. It’s not eating. It’s not really doing anything except for burning power because it’s flying. And when it lands in New Zealand or Australia, it is so exhausted it can barely keep its wings up. It staggers around and is so, so tired. But within a few days, it perks back up. It’s eaten. It’s rested.
It winters, either in New Zealand or Australia for several months, 4 or 5 months before it comes back home. One of the things that our partners found is that, they tend to leave on exactly the same day every single year like clockwork, and they tend to come back exactly the same day like clockwork. So, we’ve developed strong relationships with our Maori partners and some of our Australian partners now. The reason that it’s become such an important part of my work is because we’ve seen the decline of our salmon. (We’re salmon people, as you can see).
Salmon are very important to me. And the salmon, we depend on them so greatly that at one point in time, I would eat salmon every single day, as part of one of my meals. Since we’ve seen the rapid declines, we see that other animals within our ecosystem are starting to show the effects of climate change, this climate crisis that we’re undergoing. Birds are also super important to us. And as I said before, each bird has a story.
We look at our birds as global citizens. They don’t have allegiance to the country. They don’t subscribe to these imaginary borders. They are just birds. And we’re learning the cultural story from the Maori standpoint.
The kuaka, the bar tailed godwit, is incredibly important to Maori culture. From what I was told, they are credited with actually helping the Maori find New Zealand. When they were seafarers, long, long ago, about a 1000 years ago, they heard and saw these little shorebirds that didn’t belong anywhere near the water. So they followed this bird to find out where it went because they knew that there was gonna be land nearby. And when they reached this land, they saw this long white cloud hanging over it.
So that’s how New Zealand became the land of the long white cloud. The stories that we’ve been able to share, the history, the knowledge that we’ve been able to to pass back and forth has been incredibly informative, not just to us as Yup’ik people, but also to the Maori.
And what caused you to do this work? What drives you to share these stories or work with birds?
Well, honestly, I don’t feel like I have a specific reason why I feel like I have been called to the work itself. There are a lot of things in my life and the work where it has chosen me regardless of if it’s a leader from my village or if it’s from traditional medicine. I have unexpectedly become a spokesperson, not only for my people, but also the animals, the wildlife, the fish that inhabit our land. The thing that I think is really important for most people that don’t understand what an Indigenous life is like is that they don’t understand how integrated everything is, how everything is connected. I will tell people time and time again, and I will continue to tell them that everything is about relationships.
Life is bound by relationships. These, these connections that that have, that impacts on other things regardless of whether you think they’re connected or not. So in my life and my teachings, the things that I was brought to believe is that everything in our lives are part of our spiritual practice, and everything within that practice must remain in balance. We have choices that feed that practice, so we have choices that take away from that practice. And maintaining these relationships with our with our nonhuman relatives is one part of that, because we know that if we cannot take care of the the the animals that feed us, the land that that, houses us and and we belong to, the waters that that bring us our salmon, the air that bring us our birds, the land that gives us our food, the waters that that quench our thirst, then we won’t be alive.
The work that’s happening here at WILD 12 is starting to reflect some of the things that are happening here in the United States as a whole. Over the past few years, the federal government has started to institute programs and policies related to co management and co-stewardship of lands, waters, and also, managing agencies. The reason that they’ve done this is because, frankly, everything that they have done up until now, these agencies, these institutions has not worked. One of the big problems with with management, is the fact that it doesn’t take into consideration that it’s and I think that that all the like, I call them all the ‘ologists,’ all the people that study things, are starting to realize that the indigenous knowledge that we have had and held, has actually, been the right way to to to work with our natural world.
And I think from what I understand, not only as an Indigenous person, but also, somebody who has been mentored and taught traditional medicine that, we’re getting to this point in our history where it is now our time to teach the non Native people how to be real human beings again.
Since we’re taking this back for San Antonio, for anyone who watches this, what would be something that you could share with, you know, either the politicians and legislators, because they’re not here. They’re not listening. Or maybe something for the activists, the people on the front lines, the people who care, who sometimes feel so, you know, hopeless because nothing seems to change. You know, you’re like a migratory bird traveling everywhere.
We do not control the world. We do not control things aside from what we choose to do, what we choose to think, and what we believe, that type of stuff. We are actually part of this ecosystem. We are animals, albeit, you know, may have a little bit more complexity in thought and some of the critical thinking skills that, you know, humans can have.
However, we cannot be so arrogant to think that we can control everything. And understanding that instead of trying to regulate what birds do or, you know, wildlife, instead of trying to regulate that, control it, and and push them towards behaving more like humans, I think that perhaps people need to start to adapt their thinking, adapt their understanding, and and realize that, especially in places that there’s more development happening. You’re moving into a habitat for an animal, for a bird, for plants, for natural things. And the earth is not going to take into consideration their homeowners association or the regulations for your municipality on littering or whatever.
You know? These are natural things. These are things that are going to exist whether or not we are here. Right. And being such, they cannot be controlled.
What we need to do as human beings is learn to regulate ourselves, learn to regulate our reactions to what animals naturally do, and also to understand that there are a lot of things that we can’t control in this world. We can’t control the weather. We can’t control fire. We can’t control a lot of things.
What we can control is how we look at things, how we approach things, how we talk about things, and also the actions that we do.
