Peace Park Can Make Bering a Bridge Again

Shortly after President Reagan and Secretary Gorbachev meet in Moscow, an event of profound symbolic significance will take place at the opposite end of the vast Soviet landscape. An Alaska Airlines 737 jetliner will sojourn from Nome to the Soviet city of Provideniya on the Bering Sea. This “friendship flight” will be carrying the governor of Alaska, the state’s congressional delegation and about 100 Americans of Siberian Yupik Eskimo heritage from St. Lawrence Island and the Alaska mainland. The American Eskimos will enter this closed-to-Westerners region to visit Soviet cousins from whom they have been separated by the chill of Soviet-American relations for more than 40 years.

We hope that during the summit Reagan and Gorbachev can muster the wisdom and courage to make substantial progress toward a reduction in strategic nuclear forces and continue the nascent process of nurturing civil society.

There is no event or process taking place in the world, though, that better symbolizes the potential for the ascent of civilization than the Eskimo reunion in June and the broader concept of a Bering Strait International Peace Park. This reunion of American and Soviet Siberian Yupik Eskimos is the first step in the creation of the jointly administered park that will span the international date line and symbolically relink, in mutual respect, friendship and peace, the peoples of the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Bering Strait region is a unique and wondrous corner of this globe. The physical and cultural beauty of the area could merit national park status even without regard to its very special location and history. From Vitus Bering and the early explorers to the Gold Rush at Nome to the present Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the region has produced colorful characters and high adventure.

Today’s inhabitants of the area are a curious mix of tradition and technology where Eskimo computer operators still hunt walrus from anumiak (skin boats). The Eskimos’ courage and resourcefulness on the Arctic ice are legendary. In the ways of their fathers, they still test their skills against the bowhead, the walrus and the great polar bear, monarch of the North. The Alaska native people maintain their ancient heritage through art, dance and song.

The area is breathtaking in its stark beauty and in the rich diversity of plant and animal life. It is a naturalist’s paradise with plentiful stocks of grizzly bear, wolf, fox, lynx, moose and reindeer. Waterfowl of all descriptions are abundant and the great bald eagle can be seen, majestically soaring and surveying its domain.

The Soviet mainland and the American coast are only about 60 miles apart at the Bering Strait, and the islands that straddle the date line (Big Diomede on the Soviet side and Little Diomede on the U.S. side) are a mere 2 1/2 miles from each other. One can stand on Little Diomede and look west into tomorrow.

The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve already exists on the American side. It is being considered as a “world heritage site” ranking in importance with the Grand Canyon, the Great Pyramids and other areas of global significance.

The most significant aspect of the broadly supported movement for the creation of the Bering Strait International Peace Park is that it is a step in the right direction, of civilization animated by virtue.

In the cold twilight of the Arctic winter the Bering Strait is a frozen plain of white. It is like the artist’s untouched canvas, and we can paint the portrait we desire as our legacy. We are limited only by the bounds of our imagination in our quest for a more benevolent existence. The creativity and symbolism of the peace park is an expression of the higher goals of mankind. On the same day we can move from nuclear weapons to international peace parks, from superpower summits to Eskimo reunions. Let us again make the Bering Strait a bridge where people can reach out their hands in friendship and peace.