On Little Diomede: A long wait for everything, including stable housing

By Jenni Monet |

John Ahkvaluk isn’t just from Inalik (also spelled Inaliq), or Little Diomede. He was born on the remote island, in the Bering Strait, in a sod home by the light of a seal oil lamp.  
Today, at 65, he is still living there, considered one of the most challenging places to travel to in the Arctic. It makes repairing his single-story home just as taxing.  He said he longs for the days of traditional dwellings which were built semi-underground with small doorways fronted by stacked rocks. “I watched some of those old homes come down,” he said.
The architectural make-up more than half-a-century later couldn’t be more contrasting.  Homes in the Native Village of Diomede are no longer tucked into the craggy hillside but rather are mounted there, towering some 12- to 15-feet high on stilts.
Many homes are patched-up A-frames that were constructed in the 1970s as part of a Bureau of Indian Affairs housing project. Others are hefty suburban style residences reaching two-stories high. 
All of them are teetering on the edge of one boulder or another.  The ground shifts, the foundations unsettle.  Windows and doors, meanwhile, become drafty passageways for wintery winds that can gust up to 70 miles an hour. 
Ahkvaluk’s home is one of a few structures in the village that sits lowest to the ground, just steps away from the shore. The dwelling used to be the former sleeping quarters of the Catholic nuns who once lived on Diomede. After four decades, the sisters left in the 1990s, auctioning off the property which now belongs to Ahkvaluk.  
Back in 2021, his home received fresh metal paneling to block the wind, and sturdier windows were put in place.  But the plywood floor remained uninsulated, turning his house into an icebox, which later spiked up his heating bill.  Last year, Ahkvaluk said the floor had started to crack in places. 
This summer, he was hoping that workers would return to finish the job.  But like last year, and the year before that, his home and many others have seemingly been forgotten. 
“I would do the work myself if it wasn’t for my back,” the Elder said.  Two decades ago, Ahkvaluk was injured in a harrowing bush plane crash that took four hours of waiting in minus 45°F weather before help arrived.  These days, he doesn’t like the cold.  “And it gets cold,” he said of his Arctic home. 

A Long Wait
From one project to the next, the work keeps piling up on Little Diomede: A Native store that’s taken three years to build; a washeteria that needs a new hot water hook-up; a landline telephone system on the blink.  Here, on the edge of America less than three miles to Russia, the wait is long for just about everything.  
Tribal leaders said the repairs and crew to carry out the home repairs in 2021 were supported by funding from the $350 billion American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, approved by Congress that same year.  The one-time federal allocation provided relief spending to state and tribal governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  The Native Village of Diomede was eligible for roughly $80,000, according to federal records. 
Through more cobbled funding, the tribe arranged for a small team of laborers with tools to tackle a list of languishing jobs: electrical, heavy equipment clean-up on the beach, and other village repairs.  Housing upkeep was also prioritized.  
The day the barge arrived with the workers and supplies, Diomede’s tribal coordinator, Frances Ozenna, couldn’t help but post the milestone on Facebook. “This trip will transform Diomede,” she wrote. 
It was a once-in-a-generation funding opportunity that today has become difficult to fully spend.  
Getting workers of any kind to the island is a persistent obstacle.  This includes construction crews, teachers, medical staff and repair technicians.  That’s because Diomede sits at the intersection of remote logistics: high costs, extreme weather, tight housing options, and at times, cultural limitations.
So even when funding exists, Erik Noet, Construction Manager for Bering Straits Regional Housing Authority, said that there are multiple other barriers that stand in the way—not necessarily tied to money or intent.
“The storms are getting more intense and lasting longer,” Noet said.  “You got a current coming from the south and a current coming from the north, and if it is five-foot swells, it becomes choppy as they meet.” 
Confused seas is how he describes the narrowest and shallowest of the Bering Strait. And in this confusion, there are delays.  
The BSRHA sent a three-man construction crew to the island in early October to reset a few foundations, a job that had been on the backburner for years. And because of the lateness of the construction season, Noet said other repairs to windows and exteriors will have to wait for some other return visit. 
This was disappointing news to Gerald Edward Ozenna whose home was sagging  some 20 inches lower in the front than in the back. When workers jacked up his house, doors and cabinets instantly became unaligned.  
“This is a huge weight off my shoulders,” Ozenna said about the re-leveling of his home.  He just wishes something could be done about the busted window in his living room that he said turns to a sheet of ice each winter.  
“I always thought of myself as a patient guy,” he paused looking at his taped-up window.  “But sometimes, you know, it’s just too much.” 
Villagers on Diomede say they have mastered the art of practicing patience out of necessity.  Another skillset is knowing how to avoid getting hurt, a lesson learned the hard way by one of the visiting construction workers. 
Forrest Gravetti from Spokane, Washington fell and broke his leg on some stairs the second day he arrived.  The next day, the U.S. Coast Guard denied medivac services to him because he was told his injuries were not life-threatening.  Pain medication such as codeine and morphine, meanwhile, ran out within 48 hours.  For Gravetti, it meant he languished in pain for another two days until a helicopter from Nome showed up to deliver mail and shuttle passengers off the island. 

Despite hardship, life continues
The Native Village of Diomede has access to pots of various federal and state funding to support daily life there – everything from housing to education, environmental management, to medical care.  But now some of that funding may soon be disrupted because of the government shutdown.  Federal funding for air travel in rural areas like Diomede will run out Sunday if the shutdown continues, threatening to disrupt medical appointments, work opportunities and other commercial services. 
Ahkvaluk’s niece has been anticipating an upcoming trip:  A chance to participate in this year’s annual Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage later this month.  She said she was even planning to leave Diomede earlier than needed just to avoid travel disruptions.  
In times like this, he thinks about what he considers simpler times in Diomede—of umiaqs or boats made of walrus-skin, and homes cozied by the oil of sea mammals which also fed their bellies. 
“We were told we didn’t have much, but in reality we have everything we need right here,” Ahkvaluk said. 
But he knows that no amount of reflection on the past can bring peace of mind to Little Diomede in the present.  Two years ago, the city office – a 100-ton structure – partially collapsed and had to be demolished.  And yet, villagers are in the dark about whether it was caused by permafrost melt, eroding beams, or the ground simply shifting. 
For now the ice forms later, the waves slam harder and higher, and life on the island continues.