Project Chariot — That time the government tried to nuke Alaska

Humans living in Northwest Alaska have for the past five millennia had to face and overcome challenges to their way of life and to life itself. Eking out a living in a region which can be iced over for as much as nine months of the year requires discipline, imagination, and determination. The Inupiat people dwelling there have defied everything from climate change to species depletion to the taking of their lands by outsiders. In 1957 something new came to their land: government bureaucracy gone haywire. The danger posed by the federal government’s Project Chariot eclipsed every previous threat to the Inupiat, both in its scale and its insanity.

An Inupiat whale hunter standing by an umiak, traditional seal skin boat, at Point Hope, Alaska. Image courtesy of Frontier Scientists.

There have been semi-permanent settlements in Inupiat territory for at least thirty-five hundred years, hunting seal, bowhead whale, caribou and fish to survive. Beyond simple survival they have prospered, having become adept at exploiting and utilizing their environment and much of what it offers. Using the inflated bladders of various sea mammals to help tire out sounding whales, stitching seal skins together and fastening them to…