October 30, 2025 Seward Folly

by CJ Rea Film Review

On Friday night, the Just Transitions Collective brought Bjorn Olson and his film “How We Survive Diomede” to the community of Seward.

Bjorn’s skills as a filmmaker shine in this piece as he brings together the incredible ecosystem of Diomede: the walrus, the auklets, the seals, the polar bears, the people, and the weather of Diomede. Picture in the sky a cloud of birds over the ocean; imagine the walrus, each of its skin folds jiggling as it moves on the ice; the village, a group of houses perched on the island’s steep hillside. In this ecosystem, the people don’t separate themselves from the elements or the wildlife of the place. Diomede residents understand their role in this place. They live their lives knowing that they are a piece of this natural order — and they have done so for 10,000 years.

Bjorn Olson was raised in Seward, speaking here with Al Lamberson

Amazing footage of walrus and polar bear weaves throughout the story of the people of Diomede and their subsistence lifestyle. I was once taught that subsistence was “getting all you need from the land around you.” However, a clearer definition spoken by one of the many people Bjorn interviewed was: “Subsistence is a reciprocal relationship which recognizes the importance of all beings.”

The film goes on to explain the change that our Western culture is bringing to Diomede. As the climate warms, the ice that once protected Diomede from winter storms — the ice that the walrus, the polar bear, the seals, and the hunters of Diomede depend on, the ice that once provided an airstrip in the winter — is almost non-existent today.

This has a negative feedback loop effect as the skin boats (made of female walrus skin), which were safe to travel a good distance in, can no longer be maintained because the walrus population is moving north and is less available. However, without the walrus, there can be no skin boats to travel a good distance to find the walrus. Bjorn poignantly shows the youngsters of Diomede playing on the frames of old skin boats to illustrate what is being lost for this generation to come.

At the end of the film, Bjorn was asked many important questions by an impacted audience. “What can Western culture learn from the people of Diomede?” Bjorn’s response was roughly: Western civilizations are born into the idea of dualism, but Indigenous people see themselves as being one part of a community that includes the natural world. This difference leads to a reciprocal relationship with the natural world, rather than an extractive one.