microenterprise among afghan women or training judges or producing radio call-in shows, you name it, somebody at the pentagon was doing it and it was half amazing and inspiring and half a little bit scary. >> after the words airs on booktv on 10 p.m. and sunday 9:00 p.m. eastern. you can watch all previous "after words" programs on our website, booktv dot-org. >> you're watching booktv on c-span2 with top non-fiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. next a discussion on the impact of climate change on greenland. then a lawyer who served time in prison after being wrongly convicted talks about helping others in the same situation. and live at 10:00 a.m., a news conference to announce a multi-state tour to redefine morality in politics.

now a discussion on global warming with an author who has spent the past 20 years observing the lives of residents in greenland. this is just over an hour. >> if you have been following gretel ehrlich's writing over the years you know her perhaps from her stunning collection of essays, the solace of open spaces, about the american west, or her astonishing memoir of being struck by lightning, match to the heart. among various awards and honors, ehrlich won the inaugural 2010 penn thorough, literary excellence in nature writing. her journeys many places around the world are physical and philosophical. her recent book, facing the wave, chronicles of japan a country which she has the deep relationship in the aftermath of

2011 earthquake and tsunami and meltdowns at the fukushima nuclear power plant. she is here to talk about green land, about climate change and about rotten ice. noted today on npr, if you think today is hot, you're right. if you think this year is hot, you're right. latest temperature numbers from nasa and national oceanic atmospheric administration say the first six months of 2016 were the hottest on record around the planet. beginning in 1993, gretel ehrlich traveled to the greenland the northern-most country of the world. every season the four months of perpetual dark, average temperature is 25 degrees below zero, constant daylight and twilight seasons in between. traveling up the west coast often by dogsled and befriending the generous in. its along the way and observing changes in their traditional

hunting. the letters from greenland, published in the april 2015 issue of harpers, what happens at the top of the world affects all of us. we're honored to welcome back gretel to allowed. with her someone she knows well, her husband. someone's voice you no doubt heard over the 36 years he spent with national public radio. neal conan worked in a correspondent based in new york and lon done and washington. covered wars in the middle east and northern ireland and olympic games in lake placid and sarajevo and a presidential impeachment. he is executive producer of all things considered. i for one certainly miss him. i miss him and you do too as long-time host of talk of the nation. lucky for hawaii radio to have him as news analyst and macadamia nut farmer. please welcome gretel ehrlich and neal conan. thank you.

[applause] >> when you first went to greenland in 1993, you brought a couple of books with you. what were they? >> they were two of the 13 volumes of the knute roth who traveled in the 1920s, 1924 from dogsled from greenland to point hope, alaska. if it wasn't for him we would know very little about arctic culture. >> what did we learn from him? >> everything. we learned that, so, inuit people originally came across the bearing land bridge from northeastern siberia and they have year by year, perhaps

20,000 years ago, first to alaska, then through the archipelago, what we call the northwest passage was really the traditional passageway east for them, and they ended up in greenland about roughly 5000 years ago. it's one language with a lot of dialects. one lifeway with some variations according to where they were and what they needed to do to get food but it's the only single culture that spans 6,000 miles, just across the top. and these people said, oh, we're not going to move to at that monica. i don't really like the beach. they didn't know there was anything else except ice. >> and we, i got to go with you to greenland a couple years ago and one of the things i was astonished by, we went to a city somewhat less than halfway up the west coast of greenland and you think you're pretty far

north but you're not. there is a long way left to go. >> right. lilysat in west greenland that is halfway down. the island of greenland is huge and long but i began, because of rothmanson i began going to northern-most villages, two of them. they're at a about 77 degrees, 77, 78 degrees latitude north. and i went there because -- >> because of rasmussen. >> because of rasmussen. and there were, there was a youngish inuit marine mammal hunter there, named from the jan danielson, for get he has danish name he is inuit. he done the same trip as

rasmussen only in the 1970s, from the 1920s. i get him to take me on the trip all the way to point hope alaska. he met him and asked him, he laughed at me. no, that trip was very, very hard. you don't want to stay, you don't want to do that. you stay here with us, you travel with us, meaning his family and you will see plenty which i did. >> could you, if you can, bring up slide 11. >> so i will tell you while we're waiting for slight 11. yeah, that is me. that is my favorite picture of myself ever. it was about 20 below that day. we had been on a long trip, coldness which was 59 below zero traveling outside. so 20 below felt really good. we decided to stop and sunbathe.

>> what were the villages like when you first saw them? >> well, greenland is, it doesn't have a lot of villages but they were, but they were vibrant. these are subsistence villages of between 20 people and maybe 75. or maybe a few more. konak is sort of a town. the dog population was way larger than the human populations. if you can see there, we travel on big freight shreds, not like the alaskan basket shreds. they're about 10 or 12 feet long, four feet across, that we carry and they're pulled by fifteen to 20 dogs. >> in a fan, not a line. >> in a fan hitch that is why they're hitched two by. they're wild. not taken into the house as they are in alaska. so the k-9 pop in these village

was the most, it was the symphony every night. it was howling and howling. in alusa they were all, they're all kind of chained up on long chains when they're not, because they did eat a few babies in the old days when they were loose. so they, they were right against a big rock wall. and it echoed the sound of them howling and talking to each other was just delicious. you just, it was never something you tried to get away from. it was part of the music of greenland. >> i was astonished when i was there to realize how little of life is on land and how much is at sea. >> yeah. so what most people don't quite understand because greenland is a little different than the other arctic nations, all the travel is done on sea ice. so, you know, these are kind of

the davis strait and north of the kennedy channel are relatively narrow. i mean on a clear day you can see else mere island from greenland and, of course, nothing grows there. there are no berries. there is nothing. so they live on the flesh of marine mammals which they hunt with the odd rifle, rusty rifle and they -- >> where did they get rifles? >> they got them from robert bert perry as a present helping him try to get to the north pole. >> get near. >> get near the north pole. they still hunt nor wall with harpoons from kayaks. they make everything themselves except the rifles. we wear polar bear pants. seal skin hammocks and boots. the fox fur, arctic fox for anaracks. they make harnesses, they make

the shreds. they make their own kayaks. they make the kayak paddles. these are industrious villages where there is something going on all the time. >> this is conscience decision. they could have snowmobiles? >> yes. they ban snowmobiles, in that they live exactly the way they want. they chose to keep all the modern traditions and i asked them why. they said they work better. we have thrived for 5000 years in greenland. why would we change something that works so well? >> it's a communal culture. the hunters who go out, they're not hunting for themselves or their own families? >> well, they are to, they hunt in extended family groups but it's a food should have sharing society that so that everybody is fed. there is no wont in thousand villages. widows. hunters who are injured,

orphans, everybody, everybody. the danish school teacher, whoever. and anyone else like me who used to come in the springtime, we were all given food. it wasn't sold. it was given. >> you talked about the culture that unites these peoples across the top of the world. there is a concept i wanted you to talk about that you write about in some of your books. it is, i guess, in an odd way both a person and an idea, sela. >> sila. it is spelled s-i-l-a. it means both weather, not both. it means the weather, power of nature and consciousness. not just human consciousness but the consciousness of all ascension beings, including the marine mammals they eat. actually it goes beyond that. the souls of animals that appear

in the masks that they make for dances that you will see one face t could be a wolf face. but with a seal coming out of the mouth which the wolf has eaten the soul of the seal so that in a way it is a completely, all holiestic, circular world in which you know, there is no domination of one to the other. it's, you're all there, out on the ice together. >> and, that first time that you went out hunting with them, what was it like? were squeamish? >> no, not at all. there was a young woman who later became a prime minister of greenland but who had grown up in villages and i met her a few years before. she was supposed to come up as my translator, she speaks seven languages. she didn't show. it was kind of typical.

i thought, well, i come a long way, i might as well just go. so i went out with two strange men who do not speak english and i did not, and still don't really speak greenlandic. and i asked the owner of the guest house if i was going to be okay. he said, he was sort of insulting, do you think i would send you out on the ice with people who wouldn't take absolute best care of you in the world? i'm sorry, no, i don't. yes i will go. off we went, for a month. [laughter]. you know what the first question always is? excuse me. where does one go to the bathroom? you know. there are pieces of rough ice. one of them took my hand like a little girl and said, took me off to a little piece of rough ice, sort of he knew a few words. right here would be good. right here is good.

of course it was extraordinary. >> the trip of course was catered? >> right. boiled sale which is actually really good. boiled, that trip we just had seal, yeah. >> yeah. [laughter] one year, so i've been doing this for 20 years, with the same family group. one year yen brought an onion. after about the second week he pulls this onion out of, a danish onion out of his backpack. we all sort of stood around it like that. he takes out his big hunting knife, drops it in the boiling water with the boiling walrus. it was so exciting. we were just, you know, pulling out little pieces of onion. of course the muktak, the skin with the little layer of fat underneath it, has all the vitamins and minerals that a

human being needs, which is why they haven't died off a long time ago. we just eat that. and then eat some meat and off we go. >> what do the dogs eat? >> same thing. they get fed first. i have been on trips where there was only enough food for the dog. i always brought packages of instant soup, so we ate soup. you won't survive without the dogs so they're your transportation. so they're taken care of beautifully. >> so you are visiting this thriving society that is in large ways intact? >> totally. language intact. life ways intact. hunting tradition. >> when did you realize things were changing? >> well it was 1996. this fellow and i were going across, there are two islands off of konak and two friends and

his wife were out there. everyone was going to join and hunt together. everybody does things as a group. on our way out, there was some, it was spring. so there was about that much snow on top of the ice. but usually the dogs can smell if there is water or something, but they didn't. suddenly i heard this crashing. you know we're just going along. i heard this crashing like goblets being smashed and i didn't really know what was happening. suddenly i saw dogs disappear. this is like 20 dogs pulling, just start disappearing and trying to get away. this hole in front of us. around the guy, the other guy jumped off the back. they used this big steel pole to test the ice. and chunk off pieces of ice you will use for drinking. anyway, he put it in the back

and wrap ad seal skinned thong around it to hold the shred back. stay where you are. just hang on, this lash rope over your load, just hanging on like that, like a cowgirl taking a deep sea before you get bucked off. the shred was inching towards this hole. the sled. he put his feet over there, leaned over the trace lines and one hand at a time started pulling dogs, out of water. one hand, throwing them like that. these are strong guys and incredibly brilliant and efficient in these kinds of emergencies. you just can't believe your eye what is they do. then he got most of them out. then he stepped off of the shred on a piece of ice that already had kind of broken off and he is big man. when he stepped on it the ice started going down like a elevator. i thought, okay, bye-bye, yensi.

he lept from that back on to the shred, and got the dogs to turn a hard left and yelled at them. and off we went. no one ever said a word. and later we traveled for a few hours. so far so good. so i asked him in my almost nonexistent greenlandic, if we were going to die? and he said, imoka, which means maybe. but then there was a little smile at the end. you know, i didn't really, i just thought, you know, i'm in the presence of these extraordinary people and there is nobody left like them in the whole world. if i die here after they have done everything they can do to save all of our lives, i happily

surrender. >> the ice was weak because warming had started to chronically mean there was less and less ice every year? >> right. yes. and that is what we didn't understand. i mean there were scientists of course who knew that the ice was thinning, but we didn't. even, you know, you couldn't, i asked, i just didn't know. but after that event i knew something was wrong. and they knew it too. they sort of said, well, find out what is going on. so i did. i started a long process of educating myself about sea ice and the greenland ice sheet which is whole another story and then about the feedback systems that create more and more warming. you know, a learning cycle which is ongoing actually every day because it is so exponential.

now just not sea ice but the entire, as you may have noticed the entire world is becoming a hot place. >> there are even days, you describe one, where it was 59 below zero but the waters are stormy, so ice is breaking up from underneath. >> yeah. >> you think that cold it would be okay. >> so yeah, that first incident was in '97. by 2004 it was basically all over, in terms of sea ice in greenland. it was yes, when we took off it, was going on for a month-long walrus hunt. it was 35 below zero when we left kan u.k. and it got colder and colder and colder. the ice is okay. the first camp we made, the ice was so thin it went like that under our feet. so we were told to walk single

file and very carefully otherwise it might break. during the night yenis and his brother-in-law harpoon ad walrus and brought back to camp. but the big haunch, we were staying in a little hut. sometimes they bring little huts out. we were staying in this hut. 58 dogs, eight people, to feed and this hauge watches dripping blood. i, thought of it as a metro no, ma'am marking what i thought as be a bore original time. this is time without days, without schedule. you were going between one meal before the next. hoping you find enough food for 58 dogs and eight people in the next place you go. it lulled us into a sense of, the ice is bad. it is breaking up from underneath because it is now much stormier place than it used

to be but maybe it will be okay and then it wasn't. then we went on to a village called moriy u.k. and we were supposed to go on to saunders island and there was no ice at all in the next village, none. the look on their face, i just knew they understood it was basically not only the end of ice but the end of their lives as they had known it for thousand of years. >> you mentioned morisako. >> what was that? >> what kind of village was it like? >> small. the wife was great granddaughter of robert perry. wonderful young woman. she was school teacher in town. when i asked her how many students she had.

she said, hmmm, well, two. sometimes just one. she did speak the language. i'm proud to be part american. but, you know it was north, tiny, tiny vibrant village. then should i tell the rest of the story? this isn't really, i can't believe the questions he is asking me. [laughter] this isn't how it was supposed to go at all. >> it is going very well. >> okay. >> we'll get to the rest of the story later. >> okay. >> i, you went on this trip with this big group of people. and just that one walrus? >> yeah. so, that's all the food we got. so the rest of the trip, well, as we were moving down the coast of greenland everything behind us was breaking up, all the ice. so, when we turned around, because there was no eyes in front and very little ice in the back, we had to to go up and

over part of the ice sheet which is really dangerous. it is kind of exciting. the big crevasses. dogs are going, looking at the crevasse. we sort of got to the top. we took air going off a corn necessary down the other side. we went down this streambed. it was frozen. there were big boulders and there is no brakes on the shreds. they put a little rope under the runners to slow it down but it was not enough. yenis would put the knee down to slow the shred down. his foot was hitting boulders. i was like this. anyway we got to the bottom and we did find a place where previous hunters left food on a drying rack. so this would have been dog food. they were at least relieved the dogs had something to eat because we had consumed the walrus.

then we made, we spent the rest of the month just trying to get home. it took weeks. it was at end of that, the previous slide where you see me and yens sunbathing. we finally made it out to the islands and back into the northern-most village in the world where that gentleman was from. you know, it was, it was a disaster. and the families came down to the ice and we got back and they, and they saw that there was no food for them. you know they're very cool people. there was no outward display of disappointment or anything. okay. helped us unpack the shreds and everyone went home and it was kind of quiet. >> what happens to a food sharing culture fed by subsistence hunters when there is no food and when the i.c.e. that is the transportation

system and indeed their world in a lot of ways, when that begins to go away? >> well, the culture dies. i mean, in a practical sense they, the lesser hunters, there is natural hierarchies everywhere and the lesser hunters shot their shred -- 'vette dogs because they couldn't feed them. they thought the best hunters in the village to go out and get food. that was the practical thing. that is international treasure in greenland if you're a great hunter. they were sent south to vocational school, to be a helicopter pilot, hemant lakhani trish shun, cook, teacher, whatever.

things they had no interest in doing. little by little, villages thinned out. more of them crowded into -- >> consolidated. >> into konak war there was a few more, a clinic and little villages so precious and so wonderful, just came to nothing. >> like marisu. ok. >> there is a almost a shakespearean story. everyone left except two hunters. they went out together in a boat in the open ocean. it is very hard to hunt seals when it is open and dark, you can't see the animals. they were out there and loaded gun went off and accidentally shot and killed one of the men and the other one, so distraught and so lonely, a kind of existential solitude shot himself. so morisok is no more.

>> over time you've gotten to know more and more about the science that is behind all of this. if we could bring up slide three if we get a chance. you gotten to know some other people who work on the ice, glarologists, including, well when we see, this is sort of the dean of glaciologist. and that striking handsome soundman. >> he was at university of colorado for years. he has gone back to his native switzerland. but he, he told us astonishing things. water vapor is now the most prolific greenhouse gas because permafrost around the top of the world, both terrestrial and beginning which will be a disaster if it really happens, completely is the frozen ice rates under the sea are melting.

there are 570 sites on the east coast and atlantic ocean that are bubbling up methane. it is everywhere. so, things are melting and then it lifts moisture up into the air. and this moisture travels across the top of the world. and changes, you know it is not all about global warming. it is also about climate chaos of, i'm sure you, those of you keep up with the news. . .

nine months for these hunters to travel to their various hunting grounds to find the walrus, to find the seal. there is now as little as two. >> so the icy to come in mid-september and go out in mid-june. when i first went there, you never thought about the ice. it was just there. and now yes, sometimes, sometimes in march, sometimes in april, sometimes in a, sometimes in january. this year it was kind of a cold year and everyone was excited and they maybe had three or four months of hunting. but then i got a tweet from jason, who works on a sheet, he said i don't know what's happening but this only be

shaped clump of warm air is heading north up over greenland. and in a friend of ours said yes, on april 8, this mess of warm air came in all the ice melted, see ice melted that the. it was over. it doesn't really matter whether it one month or six months. they can't depend on it. it would be like if every grocery store and l.a. was closed indefinitely, or everyone's and while they opened. everything starts coming apart. >> what does it matter for us here, that this fascinating and vibrant culture is dying? >> well, you know, the pairing of climate and culture, that

cultural diversity is as intertwined as important as biological diversity. so that having these people who are come against all odds in the 21st century are living a traditional life, but fully cognizant of the modern world, that with a link which impact. they have a way of knowing themselves and their world with the language that, as they say, it not only describes the place that tells you how to behave when you get there, how to behave in front of the weather, how to make sure that the concept is alive in everything you do, that this awareness of consciousness all around you is alive and, therefore, there's a sense of respect and dignity and

of action that makes a culture thrived. you lose that, which is to me immense. because we mostly care -- killed off all the ancient cultures we came across in the lower latitudes. so makes it even more precious that there are some still alive. also in terms of just our weather, i call it bad weather. i'm so sick of the word climate change. i just call it bad weather. that the arctic drives the climate of the world. the most important word is albedo coming from latin which means white. so the reflectivity of snow and ice all over the world, and it could be in colorado, it doesn't just have to be the arctic, radiates 80% of solar heat back

into space to the arctic has been keeping our latitudes temperate. it's unnatural air-conditioner. it's been functioning for a long time, 10,000 years this way. and as things start to melt, as the siesta disappears, as the ice sheet collects ash from wildfires in the west and so it from industry in china -- soot -- it darkened. they can absorb more heat and it deflects less heat. so we have all these feedback systems that seem kind of insignificant and fragile. but when they start adding up, you get a hotter and hotter world exponentially as we are all experiencing. and so the arctic is important in just about every way you can imagine. >> u.s.-backed agreement in

2012? what was it like? what a change? >> everything. when we got on these hunts, even in 2004, people who were still jolly. there was lots of kidding around i'm like all the rural communities. lots of teasing each other and fun and the prospect of getting food for your village and the dogs are great. they were beautiful and it was just great to be out at the village and living on the ice. in 2012 i went in may, which they only had eyes for that month, but we're all going to the ice edge which is a time of celebration. the ice starts to come apart in these kind of wide canals of open water and it's where life comes. there was a pot of beluga wales and walrus and ducks live in a

little -- it's just a choice because it's during winter. it is a frozen sheet, or used to be, where we just didn't see any life. but it was just not a happy time. there were no jokes, no one was laughing. i traveled with his brother-in-law. he had a shattered ankle when across the i sheet by himself to a muskox because there was nothing else to feed his dogs and he shattered his ankle and it took two weeks to get to the hospital. so he wasn't in great shape. so we went to the ice edge. the younger guys, his younger brother, his two younger brothers got a couple of walrus, and then we made camp.

suddenly during the night these other hunters, and can't in back of us. that's just never done. they were usurping our hunting territory. but the greenlanders are cool. they never say anything. the next day i hear all the screaming and a dog howling, and this man is beating his dog with a snow shovel just over the head. i have never seen any violence towards animals of any kind ever in 20 years in greenland. i jumped up and tried to run over, i don't know what i was going to do, grabbed my arm and said no, no, no. you might be hurt if you go there. actually the dog survived but nobody, you know, the mood just

really changed. very early in the morning we packed everything up and just got the hell out of there. they were so horrified by what we've seen. then on the way back, they were trying to untangle the trace lines, stopped the middle of these because the dogs go underneath each other all the time and they have their own society. just kind of untangle them in the dogs ran ahead and caught his leg, his bad leg and he was dragged for a long way. i tried to stop the dogs but because they didn't know me, they didn't stop. i couldn't stop the dogs. finally, they stopped. it represented to me the end of

life on the ice, the end of their culture, the end of the days when everything was, even when things went really wrong, which integrate quickly in the arctic because you're at the mercy of the weather, it was always come even that was always a joke like oh, yeah, we were caught in a blizzard, we had to go home. but it was always happy because they knew they would be able to go out another day and everything would be all right. that was just gone your it was a really sad day. >> they told you something about the ice. >> yet. when they we're standing there. standing there looking at the ice and he said i don't see the ice wanting to come back. the ice is everything we are. without it it will be a

disaster. without ice we are nothing at all. >> in a couple minutes we will take questions, if you would like to join the conversation. did we mention paris? >> but first, as i think you'd, but first we saw mamaret in pairs. we all went for the climate change conference that started in early december just after the terrorist incidents in pairs. in fact, they were there. >> yes. can i talk about it? we were going to do several events in a small film and which we brought a dog sled to paris and yence and mamaret and we had a dog trainer in france train 10

standard white poodles to pull the sled. [laughter] it was in jollier times before the savagery in paris, and we thought people might at least find a slightly interesting. then yence is going to give up and give a talk about how the arctic drives climate of the world europe what has happened to his culture. so it was meant to raise awareness while having a slight having fun with it. well of course, the horrible things happen. we were all staying in -- were just a few blocks from the places where people were mowed down. and poor yence and mamaret were just terrified. these are, you know, these are courageous people but they didn't, he said i don't understand why people have nothing to do with each other, who came from another country are killing people here. i don't understand why they

would be killing each other. that was hard to explain. so i rented a six bedroom loft, and we ended up just, we were told to stay in our neighborhoods, which we would anyway. anything else would be a sort of the trail. we ended up, i got to cook for them, and jason cain and david from cape farewell came to stay. so i cooked between five and 15 people every night i'm which is a pleasure in paris because the food is so great. i would say we're having solid now. jokingly. i always have lots -- it was

sort of a wonderful exchange, given all the sadness in what was going on in the world at every level. i have been eating walrus and seal for 20 years and now they had to eat my food. they just, they just remind us that they had been displaced in a way that many people already are displaced, not only from wars and political oppression but also from climate, that many, many of us will be climate migrants, and we were just so astonished at how gracefully they accepted their fate. >> it's interesting, some of the people who are the engine of the agreement that was final reached in parish were marshall islanders end of the islanders

in the pacific who we will see integrated would come too late for them, that even if we shut off the carbon generation right now, there's enough baked into the system that it will be too late for them. is it going to be too late for greenland? speak was yes. it's too late for all of us really. we can do things. we can slow things down. we can work on things, but it's not going to be the same world. we have lived in this interglacial paradise. absolute paradise. and that paradise is, as milton would say, now lost. and it is going to be a different world, a challenging world. and many great things will be lost. many cultures, many cities, many people. but as the head of the lazy

apologist -- glaciology at cambridge went and said it's too late to stop global warming, what's left to do this to do with the consequences and we just have to work very, very hard at that, very diligently and very compassionately. because there's going to be social justice problems that will go beyond what we've imagine so far. okay, can i end it now speak was young. >> there was one wonderful japanese man who came fair following a claim or in the early '70s and just they don't. i went to see him. he's just a wonderful man. i said, it is now on two people

left which used at 65 or 70 people. i said, how are you going to survive? he looked up and he said, i don't know. perhaps just on beauty. has to look out as ice breaks going by in the open water. so i end on that. we live in a beautiful world. it might look different but it's still beautiful. [applause] >> and i think this depth is going to come around with microphones. -- the staff. >> actually three questions. are there any pictures of the town? i can imagine what it looks like when you actually land in the town? any slides of it? >> no.

>> no worries. >> you can go online. >> and our people immigrating in large numbers to other going? >> they are not leaving. they are just going south. >> and neil, can i listen to your show on the internet? is there an app for your station? >> thank you. you can go on hawaii public radio. it's, especially if you sleep in late. >> i do, actually. >> catch the morning edition. i want tuesdays, wednesdays and thursday. >> fabulous, thank you. >> fascinating talk and so good to have the respective histories in the both of you. i was wondering if the greenland government is sort of trying to, obviously they can change all of global warming, but perhaps they

will say will try to maintain some of the hunting, et cetera, so to supporting it in which is because it is such a precious and unique culture? >> no. and they would need to because it's the greenlanders themselves who dictate how things are going to be. because it's, visual themselves. they will have a lot of people like us telling them what to do. actually yence is in charge of maintaining traditional. you can't do it without ice. it's not there. people like yence and his family will stay there to do better in -- the bitter end no matter what. it's just the younger people are leaving. >> the greenland conflict is leasing areas and the davis strait and other places to search for oral, there's quite a bit of extracted industries on land in terms of iron ore, that

sort of thing. >> the name of greenland has always sounded like marketing or euphemism. and now, well, i wonder if any what refers to greenland, the territory by that name or some variant on that name? if it is going to get greener as climate change -- >> it is getting greener. i'm thinking of moving to south greenland and growing hay and raising sheep. it means big island. it was a viking name the translation of a viking name. trying to lower -- >> iceland didn't work out so well. >> eric the red was trying to lure people there. silly guy. >> i would just like to thank you very much for your time.

i really did enjoy i enjoyed your anecdotes. i had a question about the happier times, 20 years ago. i had a question about how is it like being a child to adolescence growing up in the village? >> fantastic. it's a childhood i think anyone would've wanted. partly because there's six months of 24 hour for daylight. and also they are are no cars in the village. little ones. so children can wander anywhere. there's nothing that will hurt them. polar bear mike cunning, but you know. they know how to behave. during the summer they are out. there's no restrictions on have to go to bed or anything. when they get tired of they call home and go to bed. or if they get out if they go to bed and eat something. i never a child complain no

matter when. even 30 below zero on a dog sled. numbers are. a five year old. at one time cookies pointed at his feet, cold. so his grandmother who was sitting next to me just whipped up a pair of boots and while the dogs of us to moving put them overseas and then he just smiled. and also they were taught how to do everything. so by the time they were seven they could handle a whip. it was just an auditory signal. they could throw a harpoon. they get fired a gun. if fish were caught they knew how to prepare them to be. they knew how to do everything. >> i guess the less, could you touch on how like romance happened or how relationships are formed? >> well, it's a village. actually it's interesting.

in a slightly larger town they had a little house which was just for teenagers. no adults were allowed in the. they teenagers could go -- could go there, i don't know, probably any time. they went to school and stuff but on the weekends, they would just were allowed to do whatever they did. it's kind of a wonderful society. you are a little out there on the ice so the were not too many bad things that could come in. children and young adults were really respected. >> my question is, what do you cook with? how do you cook it and in what? what do you burn? i'm assuming that oil or something. >> we have these old-fashioned swedish stoves, sort of camp

stoves but not small like a backpacking once but pretty big, single flame. they carried a big like a spaghetti pot in the back of the sled. this is modern hunting society. and then, yes, they brought white gas whatever it is for it, which all is imported from denmark. but to get water, the old eyes, the multi-year ice out on the top of the new ice, that we would go by a piece with a dog sled, took the iron bar, take a big chunks, put them on the sled and custom of smaller and put them, the first thing you do when you make it is turn it on and put in a chunk of the guys in the pot to melt for water.

first you drink because strangely you get very thirsty out there. more was put in for cooking, everything was boiled. >> so what did they do before all these modern conveniences? >> ate it raw. they still do, i was, you know, two women on the beach at about, i don't know, three in the morning, i saw them butchering a seal, and they took out the oliver like that ever holding it up and beckoning me to take a bite. it was still steaming. >> what did they do for water and for that? >> that's a good question. yes, blubber lamps, thank you. blubber lamps. >> come on up. >> i've been traveling for about a month.

>> there's almost no wind whatsoever. would is very precious. >> there is no would. there is an alaska, not greenland. >> there was some would. very precious. >> blubber lead. blubber, it's how they kept warm and it just gives off a little bit of a falling. but in arctic canada there are people who still, women who still tend blubber lamps out that camp. somehow that was kind of lost in greenland, but they had vikings to help them. the inuit people have slightly different influences. >> a couple things. did you say that greenland is going to be drilling for oil? >> they have let out leases for exploring.

the last i heard they had not found any but yes, they have leases to explore for oil. >> many of us thought this was a terrible idea. they can do what they want. >> okay. i was wondering about the would. the sleds were made of wood, weren't they? >> brought in by ship from denmark. when i first went there was a once a year supply ship to the northern villages, and i spent one summer with a man and his daughter and son, little kids. he had built his own little shack. he was a danish guy buddy kind of dropped out, and he said i was halfway through building my house and the supply ship couldn't get it because it was too cold. it iced up to early. so we have no nails in the entire village for a whole

nother year. >> it teaches patients. finally, the inuit's across the north, are they in communication with each other as a culture across the different countries speak with this. there's the inuit circumpolar conference that happened every three years in some arctic nation to it's like they let me go. i came with the greenland contingent. it's not really open to other people but it operates just like the human. if one has on headphones because the dialects are so extreme. then the russians who speak russian, so includes all the way. it's a very dynamic. they are very much involved. >> i would like to thank both of you and congratulations for the excellent presentation.

i have a question. according to the ms., man has taken advantage of all the resources -- to the minors -- they thought the world would end in the year 2000. but after 2000 your according to the lazy i'll just come is there an estimate about how long the world will be able to survive if we still tried to make it survive? thank you spent if there is, they haven't told me. i would be the last to know. i don't think so. >> one more.

>> i was wondering, did you find that the cultures working anywhere superstitious or did anything that sort of ideas were on the outside of the normal? >> well, i mean, -- >> tell the story about the shaman, about the polar bear. >> yence is a special person. he has, he has some special, he's a natural leader. he would never call himself a shaman. he thinks that's not appropriate for the 21st century, but one time when we were holed up in a weathered in summer, he began telling a story. when he talks everybody falls silent. so he said i was in my tent. normally when the intense that i put up over two put together,

old battered canvas tents. i was in my tent and the dogs started barking and i went outside and i saw those the polar bear up on this piece of ice. so i grabbed my rifle and i went running, running towards the bigger. and suddenly i'm there was at the top and suddenly the bear turned around and i saw that it had a human face. and so i went away. he said, several times that they are -- that bear as the committee come with a. i am a modern man and i couldn't leave my family and i couldn't leave my society in a time when so much has, we are trying so hard to survive in the modern

world. it just wouldn't be right, so i couldn't do it. >> so instead of going over the hell with the bear you became -- >> the equivalent of a senator from northern greenland. he said a politician, but a good one. so he goes to conferences all over europe. but he loves nothing more than being out with his dogs. he still has all his dogs, and that to him is nirvana. >> thank you all for coming. [applause]

>> [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> today religious leaders hold a news conference in washington, d.c. to cook off a national tour on faith and morality in politics. the goal is to encourage people of faith to be more vocally opposed to harmful policies that impact affordable communities. you could watch it live at 10 a.m. eastern here on c-span2.

>> booktv an c-span to focus is on the latest nonfiction book releases for author interviews and book discussions. our signature programs our in depth, like to our look at what authors work with questions from viewers. it airs the first sunday after the month at noon eastern. afterwards is a one-to-one conversation between an author of the newly released nonfiction book and the interviewer was is a journalist, public policymaker or other such familiar with the topic. enough with an opposing viewpoint. it airs every saturday at 10 p.m. eastern and will take across the country visiting festivals, author events and both parties were authors talk about their latest works. booktv is only national network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books. booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> jarrett adam serve 10 years in prison before he was exonerated with the help of the wisconsin innc