It’s time to enjoy the present

For most of my life I have studied and treated the human condition. Thirty years of medical school and clinical practice has taught me much about illness, disease and unhappiness. For the past 15 years I have studied the mind and what makes us happy.

I often wonder if am I happier than my Viking ancestors, whether I’m on a yacht under full sail or sitting by an arctic fire? Are modern Ma¯ori happier hunting food in the supermarket than their tupuna were chasing moa? Are Chukchi people happier with central heating and TV than chasing mighty mammoth just a few thousand years ago on the steppe?

My recent Arctic trip gave me a chance to compare and contrast two indigenous communities on either side of the Bering Strait. This relative recent marine gap between Russia and Alaska was once a land bridge that carried the local people and now extinct Megafauna such as the Mammoths. In both villages I spoke to elderly women who lamented their recent past and reminisced about the old days.

The Russian people were displaced from Cape Deshnev in 1954, the easternmost part of the Eurasian continent marking the Bering Strait. Moving from the rich waters of the strait to a Soviet-style housing block in a calm bay made marine mammal hunting problematic. The museum curator was 9 years old when they were relocated for strategic purposes and she fondly remembers her childhood, as many of us do when times were simpler.

The Chukchi in the town of Teller, Alaska, look across the strait toward their Siberian Naukan neighbours. Describing herself as an Eskimo, this now grandmother also reminisces of times living in igloos and the huntergatherer lifestyle her people had back then.

With a population of 236, the town of Teller would appear desolate to many of us. As the locals prepare for another long night of winter, we are told of the joy of the seasons, the new dawn and the tens thousands of birds that come in the spring. Picking wild blueberries and hunting fat salmon and reindeer is normality here.

It is hard to imagine being happy here because many of us are not used to this way of life. Limited wi-fi, no shopping or restaurants – just the Arctic wilderness and tundra as far as the eye can see.

My impression was that Chukchi were happier being in their ancestral home, rather than being relocated to a purpose-built town or reservation. Like many indigenous people, speaking the local language was frowned on. One now-legendary woman was told never

TOM MULHOLLAND Do the locals in Teller, Alaska hanker for the good old days? Like many of us in NZ, probably. But what’s important is being happy in the present.