This is the eight article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#8: Ilarion Merculieff (Unangan)
      (Chapter 3, pp. 30-47)

Ilarion ‘Kuuyux’ Merculieff was born and raised on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea, where his people the Unangan (Aleut)—the name means “the people of the sea”—have lived for more than ten thousand years. When he was four years old, he received his traditional name ‘Kuuyux’ from the previous Kuuyux, to become the carrier of ancient messages for his people into modern times. After living half of his life on the island, he now resides in Homer, Alaska, where he welcomed Dahr and Stan for their interview.

Ilarion is the founder and president of the Global Center for Leadership and Lifeways. He was the first Alaska Native commissioner of the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development, a state cabinet position. He has given keynote addresses at the National Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting and the White House Conference on the Oceans. In 2009, he chaired the Indigenous Knowledge sessions of the Global Summit of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change. Among his numerous awards is his lifetime achievement award for Environmental Excellence from the Alaska Forum on the Environment.

For more than five decades, Ilarion has worked with the traditional knowledge, wisdom, and spirituality he has received from the elders, and in sharing with culture bearers worldwide. He says of his traditional upbringing (p. 33): “[They were] very present in the moment and in the heart. Through that place of the heart, it tells the mind what to do, not the mind telling the heart what to do.” He adds that the great imbalance playing out across our planet stems from the fact that “We left our hearts. And when we left our hearts, we left ourselves.”