Farewell to Shungnak

The Mine and the Meeting

(SHUNGNAK, ALASKA) — To hear Charlie Lee tell it, it was quite a night. “Day shift, night shift, day shift, we was really working,” he remembers. “It was fall time. They was about to close down the camp. At night, after everybody go to bed, I heard a lot of shouting. I thought something was wrong down there, lots of fellows hollering. The day shift had gone off. That night shift started drilling a little, and they found copper. Boy they was really happy. Go wake up the boss. Hollering, wake up everybody in camp. The boss run around with no pants on, in his underwear. Everybody happy. That was the first they find at Bornite.”

Charlie Lee is 79 now, living in the Eskimo village of Shungnak on the Kobuk River in northvvest Alaska. More than 20 years ago, he was a summer employee of Bear Creek Mining, exploring the southern flanks of the Brooks Range near Shungnak. Now a subsidiary of Kennecott Copper Corporation, Bear Creek found some of the world’s richest copper ore — 25 percent equivalent copper compared to 0.5 percent at some other sites. That was reason to be happy, if you were a copper company.

Today, Bornite is deserted. A mining tower stands over a 1,000 foot vertical shaft. A dormitory nestles into the hillside above the machine shop. Equipment stands nearly covered by huge drifts of snow. For all its promise, Bornite remains largely untapped. Homer Cleveland is the only Shungnak Eskimo who works here now, as a watchman. In the summer, Kennecott sends 20 or so geologists and technicians to keep tabs on the claims and poke around the mountains. All that rich copper ore is still buried. Why? There are several reasons. The Alaska Land Bill is as yet unresolved. There are no roads within 200 miles. The ore itself, though rich, is scattered in pockets. The only shaft at Bornite now is flooded with water, which had to be pumped at the rate of 25,000 gallons a minute \vhen the shaft was in use. Finally, world-wide coppet prices haven’t been high enough to make this all worthwhile. So Kennecott waits, while Homer Cleveland is the keeper of Bornite’s treasures.

Bornite Camp

Homer and I were finishing lunch in the watchman’s cabin at Bornite Camp when a small grey bird flew by the window and lighted on the snow nearby. Homer walked to the window, opened it, and broke a few cracker crumbs on the snow below. “I always feed these camp robbers pancakes in the morning,” he said, leaning over the sill to watch the robber come back for lunch. “Last fall, I was skinning a caribou outside, you know, and set the hide over to the side. Them camp robbers started coming in and eating the fat. So I set a mouse trap, to scare ’em. But one, I catch his leg. Now his leg’s broken, so I feed him pancakes in the morning. He still flying around.” Homer chuckled and bent his finger, broken.

“Much game around here?”

“Oh, sure…look here.” He pointed to scratches in the wall below the window. “Bear.” Homer told how a bear crawled in through the window, ransacked the place, scattered groceries all over and, as a final insult, left a calling card on the floor. “The place sure stink.” Homer said, cursing. The bear was soon back, this time at night with Homer inside, and Homer didn’t get much sleep. So he told his boss. Instead of shooting the bear, the men rigged two rods under the window and wired them to a plug. At night Homer plugs them into the electricity. No more bears.

“Caribou?” I asked.

“Must have millions of caribou here this fall. Walking right through camp. Millions.” Homer laughed, remembering how his young grandson wanted him to shoot them all. He took three for the winter, cutting them up to the camp robbers’ delight. Homer leaned back in his chair, remembering all those caribou. Outside, the sun was sliding nearer the peak of Cosmos Mountain. Already, the lower part of the camp was in shadow, although the metal-clad tower over the mine shaft caught the sun and scattered it across the snow. The view, even without “millions” of caribou, is impressive. Across the Ambler Valley to the north, the Brooks Range begins in earnest, sharp canyons, water falls sheathed in ice and snowy peaks never climbed. Nestled a little way up one of those valleys lies Arctic Deposit, also a Kennecott copper claim. The ore is not so rich, but also not so scattered and far easier to get at than Bornite.

Kennecott isn’t the only mining company up here. Anaconda has a camp not too far away, as do two other companies. Mining is a familiar companion to Kobuk River Eskimos. In the gold rush of 1898, the creeks were swarming with thousands of prospectors. Most left after one winter. Eskimos themselves have been mining and prospecting in a small way. This part of Alaska is so rugged and remote, this climate is so hostile, that much of it remains unexplored. Who knows what will be found here next year…. To all this most Eskimos turn a half-interested ear. Mining means occasional jobs. Exploration doesn’t frighten much game. Miners invariably leave for the winter, six months gone.

Homer notes that a white man was the first to find copper ore in an abandoned gold mine. He staked claim and later sold the claim for several million dollars. Until the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971, all this was considered federal land, even though the Eskimos had used it for centuries and never sold it, traded it or lost it in battle. It was open for claims and homesteads. In Eskimo society, land wasn’t owned, it belonged to everyone. A plot was “yours” as long as you used it. The value of land lay in its ability to support life. Land meant fish camps and winter camps, wolverine and caribou, birch and willow. So no Eskimo staked a single claim at Bornite camp. The only profit they stand to make from mining now will be wage labor. When NANA made its land selections, Bornite was spoken for. Yet you rarely hear an Eskimo upset about not owning all that copper. They’re far more interested in other things.

“One fall,” Homer remembers, “there was no caribou around here. Those camp robbers came to my window and one of them I tell, ‘I sure could use some caribou meat. Why don’t you go bring some nice fat bull caribou over here. I’ll let you have some of the fat.’ I tell that to my bosses and they just laugh. They don’t believe me. That afternoon, I look down the road and here come two bull caribou. One, he goes by, but the other stops and looks right at me. Then he starts walking to me….”

“I share the fat with the camp robbers. My boss, they still never believe me.”

The Meeting

Almost everyone in Shungnak came to the meeting. Adults sat in too-small school desks, knees scrunched and elbows askew. Others aligned their backs with the walls of the classroom, while kids sat on a counter in back or leaned against the door frame. The oldest villagers who could still get around were there, and the youngest toddlers, too. While the setting was twentieth century modern-fluorescent lights and formica tables — the clothing was timeless. Some wore mukluks of caribou and seal skin, hand sewn. Wolfskin ruffs framed brown faces. And some wore Levis, flannel shirts, Sorel pac boots and Eddie Bauer down parkas.

John Schaeffer was in charge, dressed in blue jeans and a collarless linen shirt. He looked like anything but what he was, the president of a $60 million corporation. And the people arrayed before him were, appearances notwithstanding, stockholders in that corporation, the NANA Regional Corporation of Kotzebue, Alaska. Schaeffer was here to present NANA’s annual report and to distribute earnings.

These Eskimos collectively own a three-story hotel, a modern Eskimo museum, the largest oil drill rig in operation on the North Slope, drilling rights in the Beaufort Sea, a private security force in Anchorage and millions of acres of prime Alaskan wilderness. Yet they are not wealthy people. They qualify, almost to a family, for low income federal housing. Some are eligible for food stamps, others for BIA assistance.