She ended up spending $273. And that is just for a few days worth of food. But that's just life in the Arctic Circle. This is town sizing, a podcast from HGTV all about small town living. And I'm your host, Ann Hill in Peterson. Kavahine is a new Piac, which is one of the main tribes in Utkievik, Alaska. Some people might recognize its previous name, Barrow. But in 2016, the village decided to restore its native name. It's small with just about 4,000 people, and many are from families like Kavahine's that have been there for centuries. Others have come to work in the oil industry. Like a lot of small towns, you don't end up in Utkievik by accident. It's a place with very little greenery. And for people who don't live there or who haven't grown up there, it might be generalized as a whole lot of nothing. But not to Kavahine.

My name is Michelle Joy Kavahine Kalumana Nata Uro-Danner. And I was born and raised here in Utkievili, Alaska. I have a really long name.

Who says that name should be short or long? Maybe the name length is arbitrary.

Yeah, so everyone calls me Kavah, which is like a short nickname of one of my middle names. My mom, she's Inukbab, which is an Alaska native tribe here in Alaska. And that's where we're based. And my dad, he's Hawaiian, but he came up here because his parents were educators. So in other

parts of the United States, it has only recently started to be cold or like dark. So what's it like outside right

now? It's really cold right now. It's really windy. We are entering into December, which will be super duper cold. We'll hit the negatives pretty soon. For a lot of people up here, it's not that cold. A lot of people, when they travel for vacation, they'll schedule it November, December, because in other places, it's not very hot, which is perfect for everyone coming out of

Kavahine. And my friend came to visit from Anchorage in August, came to Seattle. And it wasn't that hot. It was like maybe in the high 70s. And she's like, this is too hot

for me. People don't understand too that we are very used to the climate. We've had about 10,000 years to adjust. But we are very used to the cold. And we like the

cold. What does the town look

like? It is

mostly residential homes.

We have a few stores. We have a very nice hospital here and a few playgrounds. We don't have trees. We don't have very much greenery. There's a lot of family. There's a lot of friends. It's very vast. So when we go hunting or go out on the Nuna, which means tundra, it's very, very vast. And there's a lot of wildlife. So it's beautiful to us. It might be very different to someone who's just visiting, though. And who's used to seeing trees or greenery or things of that nature.

There's so many different definitions and understandings of beautiful. And if you grew up with it, like, of course, it's beautiful.

Yeah. And we are totally over mute, which means we're sea coastal people. And so in the summertime, most of the time spent this home of water, whether it's kayaking or a seal hunting, we just spend a lot of time in the ocean, even though it's freezing cold. We have a really deep connection to the ocean

and it's beautiful. Everyone knows, like, Alaska, there's a lot of wildlife, right? Like, they just kind of know this. Don't ask me if I ride polar bears. Yeah, I'm not going to ask you about riding them, but what about the existence of polar bears? They are very present here on the North Slope. We have signs

everywhere for our wonderful newcomers in town that they need to be on the lookout. In other villages, they are more present. They are not afraid to get into the dumpsters. Here in Utcalfa Lake, we are no exception. They will come down the street. Mostly on the other side of town, it's like a two-minute drive, a 10-minute walk. What is unfortunate about climate change is it changes the relationship we have with polar bears, meaning they are scavenging more. And so, from what I heard from my grandparents is they act very differently than they did back when they were younger. They're not afraid of people because they need to eat. So, I think that's what is so unfortunate about climate change is it pushes not only danger, but stress on us. And I don't like it when people say, if you've had a relationship with the animals for thousands of years, why do you eat them? And that's such a silly comment because the biggest threat to sea animals is not what we're doing as a new people. It's what we're doing as the so-called Western society. Sometimes I do get frustrated with the comments I get and I put out an art piece about the harm that Western society has done. I embrace those conversations with nothing that we're doing is harming these animals. It's only climate change and it's only what people who don't live here are doing.

I can just see how people could fire off an Instagram message just like, how dare you?

And that's where it's like a lot of that is born from ignorance and just not knowing. Or sometimes actually it's even born from, I don't know, choosing not to see what's right in front of you. I just let them roll right under the bridge. Keep on

keeping on. What was it like when you were growing up? Did you ever yearn to like go to the big city or did you really like where you were? We traveled a lot.

And I think that's one of the big misconceptions when I talk about Kjagovic as people think we're here and we all stay here all the time. But like most people, I got homesick every time I traveled when I was a kid. Being in such a small place is kind of like the equivalent of being in like a homemade hut. I don't know if you ever made huts when you were younger. Very comfortable. Feels very safe. That's the feeling I described to people. Even when I travel now, if I'm two days in a big city, maybe it's in part that there's a lot of stimulation because it's a bigger city. But I always miss being home, like right here in my house and in this small town because it feels very safe and it's very comforting.

It's like a gravity,

right? Like it wants to draw you back in and you can feel when you're far from it. Yeah, exactly. For example, I'm working on a tattoo of someone who worked here for a few years and needs to tattoo

himself permanently

to stay connected to Kjagovic. It's that homey feeling that I think is so relevant for small places. And so for Kjagovic, same effect.