Page 29 - Point Barrow News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Vietnamese, filipinos, white, mexican. a little bit of everything. >> i didn't hear black. you have black? >> yes. >> who? >> dwayne. my dwayne is good. >> 75% of the time dwayne is a black guy. >> when i came to barrow there was about a half as dozen non-nightive. now it's 6262% native and 38% everybody else. >> so multi cultural that in the last five decades, the population has more than tripled. >> ethnic diversity has expanded beyond the inupiaq natives to over 20 races that call barrow home today. >> it's only 62% native. how do you feel about that? >> well, i know the mighty dollar bring...

Natives of barrow afford to lose the ways of their culture that's kept civizatn here going for thousands of years? it also made me realize, uh-oh, my camera crew is going to be pissed that they can't buy alcohol up here.

>> what i did is learned from them. they've been living on the tundra for probably 10,000 years >> so a lot of reasons that people move here is to get jobs in the oil industry, right? >> oil industry or just the infrastructure jobs that make barrow what it is. >> so when you think about the future of barrow, like what does the future hold for this place? >> when i got up here kids would go out and hunt ptarmigan. now they've lost the ability to go out and fend for themselves. have you shot a caribou? i don't need to. i can go to the store and get a hamburger. have you learned how to survive if...

It's so remote that it feels like anything can happen there. like walking around barrow, the streets of barrow, it feels like you could run into jim morrison, tupac, amelia earhart, and elvis. sharing a four-bedroom house. just like what up? what? we've been here the whole time. nobody comes up here. and it feels like in barrow that's kind of the culture. nobody would tell you they're there. it feels like alaska's america's no snitching state. nobody's talking. ♪ >> it's another beautiful but brutally cold morning in barrow. and instead of walking around town risking hypothermia i decided to...

Oh, god. my first stop is the local weather station. if this is the real alaska, i want to find out how cold it actually gets here. even though i'm sure the answer is you don't even want to know. >> dave anderson. welcome to the weather service in barrow. >> it's cold outside, sir. >> yes, it is. but are you enjoying the weather, though? >> no. not at all, actually. like most people when they don't enjoy the weather, they blame the weatherman. >> that's right. that's what we're here for. >> all right. well, what else do you do here besides get blamed by random people who walk into your office?...