banking. His bond with the Akha representative Wicha Promyong, a savvy blend of monk/hippy/venture capitalist, becomes an intimate story within the story. Darch is convinced he has an alternative capitalism model: eq- uitable profit for growers and roasters. It helps that the Akha are peaceful workaholics. The Akha Way combines spiritual rituals, shamans, a mostly patriarchal yet egalitarian lifestyle and a wealth of oral myths with a history of crop rotation and a willingness to work with machetes on a steep Thai mountainside. Fortunately, their new crop plan attracted the attention of a uni- versity agronomist, who taught the tribe how to plant and harvest productive trees. The Akha memorized her lessons because they lack a written language. As adept farmers, the Akha readily mastered the crop. Be pre- pared, for instance, to learn the ultimate secret of premium coffee: wild civet cat poop. A civet looks like a skinny raccoon but has a di- gestive system that makes its fecal output gold to coffee growers. Rather than cage the civets and collect their poop, the Akha simply allow the cats to roam the groves and eat the fallen beans. Although the Akha continue to face stiff competition in the world of fine roasted coffee, and struggle to reap the promised profits, they’ve wisely diversified their income stream by also marketing honey-scented soaps.


As the book concludes, with the author moving to journal-style first person to share his thoughts about his final research trips and conversations, you’ll be left wanting even more follow-up on the Akha and this compassionate capitalist.


JoAnn M. Valenti is an emerita professor of communications at


Brigham Young University, a founding SEJ academic member and an SEJournal editorial board member.


Future Arctic: Field Notes from a World on the Edge By Edward Struzik Island Press, $22.65


Reviewed by TOM HENRY


The Arctic has a stark beauty. I fell in love with its treeless tundra in 2008, when my newspaper sent me to Greenland for 10 days to research what ultimately became a four-day, nine-story series. I found people there to be sweet and hardy, living on a


landscape that is biologically complex and amazing. A lot has been written about the region, which, as most people


know, has long shown more obvious symptoms of climate change than what’s been seen in other parts of the world. But now we’re taken there again by Alberta-based Edward Struzik, an award-winning writer-photographer-explorer and a fellow in the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, whose taut overview, “Future Arctic: Field Notes from a World on the Edge,” deftly hits the nexus of science and politics. Struzik gives a largely unemotional, straightforward assessment of the challenges the Arctic faces and what’s at stake as various na- tions struggle to gain a foothold, suggesting the politics of the Arctic are becoming almost as complicated as its science. He offers glimpses into rich cultures and traditions of Inuit com-


24 SEJournal Spring 2016


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A journalist tracks wolves, goes to “primitive skills camp,” and rafts through the Arctic to explore whether anything remains that is truly wild in the Anthropocene.


munities, as well as the region’s biological and historical roots. He shines light on the region’s vibrant life, giving the Arctic better treat- ment than that of a stereotyped, desolate wasteland. Struzik also shows the region’s wild nature, from getting caught up in a cyclone to surviving a peregrine falcon attack. His tale is a noteworthy one, being from a writer who has cov-


ered Arctic issues more than 35 years, including 30 years of covering polar bears.


As he says, the Arctic “isn’t so much a geographical place as it is an idea, a cultural artifact, a metaphor for human perseverance and ingenuity, and a reminder of what we have done to the wilderness down south.” Struzik offers a grim, yet painfully realistic assessment of what’s at stake through stories of rare plants, caribou and unique people. The United States, Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark all


belong to the Arctic Council that “loosely oversees the exploita- tion and conservation of a changing landscape in the polar world,” he writes.


They are in a race to claim a million square miles of the Arctic that belong to no one, with China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, India and Italy being granted observer status after years of trying to join the council.


“Creating a road map to the future in this part of the world is not going to be easy when three provinces, two territories and the Canadian government are often at odds with one another over en- ergy development, water conservation and environmental protec- tion,” he writes. “Cultural considerations are also problematic. The history of


the Arctic is also one in which Inuit and First Nations interests have played second fiddle to economic, military and sovereignty imperatives.” Struzik offers some hope, but raises many hard questions worth


asking. Tom Henry is SEJournal book editor, a member of the magazine’s


editorial board and a former SEJ board member. He has covered environmental and energy issues at The (Toledo) Blade since 1993.


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