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By KATE ASPEN GAVENUS
Project director, Children of the Spills

Early in my work with Children of the Spills, one of those children--Micah Ess of Homer--affirmed the importance of sharing stories from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill: "everybody has a different story with the spill, but it's nice to hear people who have similar stories … a big component to my emotional suffering from [the spill] was kind of feeling a little bit alone."

Photo: Cordova fisherman Makena O'Toole describes his memories of the oil spill. Photo by Katie Gavenus.

And so, in search of these stories, I have followed the path of the oil to the communities of Cordova, Seldovia, Port Graham, Nanwalek, Kodiak and my own hometown of Homer. It is obvious that the oil affected these coastal places, forever changing ecosystems and economies, communities and kids.

Though only five at the time of the spill, Mike Mickelson of Cordova explains, "When people talk about the oil spill, my blood pressure rises … it's almost like having someone or some family of people you know die, and there was just no conflict resolution."

Ess understands this sense of loss. Twelve at the time of the spill, he spent most of his summers trapping shrimp on his family's houseboat in a remote part of Prince William Sound. The trip from Homer to their houseboat following the spill was unnaturally quiet. He saw only a few of the animals he had come to know as childhood friends. The biggest shock was to find the houseboat full of oily material stored there during clean-up efforts. The family turned around and went back to Homer, never returning to their houseboat. Instead of anger in the face of these injuries, Ess tells his story with surprising grace and strives to learn from his experiences:

"When you're out there and you get kind of taken without any warning, it is a wonderful lesson in looking for the good and to see what's next," he explains.

Makena O'Toole was three at the time of the oil spill. He grew up in a fishing family in Cordova and saw his family and friends struggle with the financial and emotional toll of the oil spill. Yet, he always knew that fishing was next for him.

In high school, he was the first Cordova kid in a long time to risk buying the permits, boat, and equipment necessary to get into the commercial salmon fleet. "I think that it was just always something that I wanted to do. My dad tells a story about when I was a little kid … just kind of like sleep talking, saying, 'My daddy's a wisherman and I'm gonna be a wisherman too.'"

O'Toole has worked tirelessly to become the fisherman he always dreamed he would be. Loss of the Prince William Sound herring fishery (something many blame on the spill) has forced him to spend his winters and springs fishing elsewhere throughout Alaska and the West Coast.

For a number of coastal towns and villages, the spill also curtailed important subsistence traditions. Port Graham Elder Simeon Kvasnikoff remembers the pain he felt when he took his children to the beach after the oil spill and had to tell them not to touch some of the bidarki chitons, clams, or mussels: "You want to live? Don't touch anything on the beach … they've got oil, and oil kills." Kvasnikoff explains, "You can see they really wanted the food down on the shoreline, they wanted that food, because they lived with it, they were raised with it… tell your little one, 'you are not to eat the candy that's there,' they get hurt." A number of people in the villages like Port Graham feel that this oil killed some of their subsistence traditions forever.

It seems inevitable that, in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, jealousy, anger, frustration, and bitterness would develop. Surely it did, but the young people I have interviewed have been able to learn from the oil spill and move forward as much as is possible. For some, the oil spill serves as motivation for the work they are doing now. For others, the oil spill is a reminder to cherish what exists now and to plan wisely for the future.

I will be taking the stories from Alaska with me this spring when the project travels to the bayous of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi to work with young people affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.