On the shores of the Chukchi Sea in far northwest Alaska, climate change is already impacting the traditional way of life of the Iñupiaq people. The inhabitants of this region have lived off the land for thousands of years, hunting caribou and bearded seals, fishing for salmon and sheefish, and foraging wild berries and plants. But as the planet warms and Arctic sea ice thins, accessing and harvesting these traditional foods has become more difficult.
“The Arctic is a place that’s experiencing very rapid climate change, which is affecting people’s livelihoods and the way they interact with the landscape,” said UW Professor of Marine & Environmental Affairs Anne Beaudreau. “People have seen big changes in the past five to 10 years.”
To better understand the practical impacts of these changes on subsistence harvesters, Beaudreau partnered with Stanford doctoral candidate Kristen Green to interview more than 70 residents of the small, coastal towns of Kotzebue and Kivalina, Alaska. Their research highlighted the significant challenges these communities are facing, and revealed opportunities for agencies like the National Park Service to incorporate traditional Iñupiaq values and practices into their management of subsistence resources.
Rotten ice and shifting shores
One of the most visible impacts of climate change in the Arctic is the shortening of the cold season, with later autumn freezes and earlier spring thaws resulting in thinner, “rotten” sea ice for parts of the winter. Hunters rely on this ice to reach marine animals by snow machine, and when the ice is unstable it can create serious safety issues.
“The quality of ice has deteriorated,” said one harvester from Kotzebue who was interviewed by the research team. “I’ve heard a lot of hunters say that they’ve gone out and shot their seal, but they can’t get to them because of the … bad ice. Or they’d see one, but they wouldn’t shoot it because of the bad ice, the quality of ice.”
Rising sea levels and more frequent extreme weather events have also begun to erode the Arctic landscape. Significant erosion along the coast has made it harder to travel long distances, further limiting the abilities of harvesters to reach certain animals.
“We’re seeing a lot of land erosion,” one interviewee recounted. “Years ago we could go all the way to [the] Arctic Circle with four wheelers along the beach. Nowadays you can’t even do that. There ain’t no more ground.”
Changing migrations
Perhaps most concerning, though, are changes to the migration patterns of species that used to be very predictable. Harvesters have seen the bearded seal season shift nearly a full month earlier in the year, which has had immediate effects on their ability to properly process and store the animals’ meat and oil.
“There is no ice to put [bearded seals] on to get them ready to put … in the boat,” one harvester from Kivalina said. “Two weeks ago we got a bearded seal 10 miles out, and we couldn’t harvest the inside because [it had] already spoiled before we even got to the beach.”
The warmer weather has forced harvesters to spend more time processing the animals, which means less time for hunting and smaller overall yields.
“People are still able to access and harvest the species that are important for subsistence, but we don’t know how that’s going to change in the future,” said Beaudreau. “It seems like every year we’re breaking some new record low for sea ice formation, and we expect that will cause significant impacts on the marine mammals in particular.”
Despite these challenges, the people of Kotzebue and Kivalina have remained resilient. While modern technologies are helpful — for example, power boats make it easier to hunt and fish in the lengthening open water season, and social media allows people to quickly communicate ice conditions and the locations of animals — traditional Iñupiaq values and practices have made it possible to weather the many uncertainties of climate change.
“Something that came through in a lot of these interviews, and that is central to Iñupiaq culture, is the idea of sharing both the harvest and knowledge,” Beaudreau said. “These practices uphold one of the core values people talked about, which is keeping people safe, both in general and when they’re out in the country.”
Community voices at the forefront
Respect the Land (Kamaksriłiq̣ Nunam Irrusianik), a film that explores Iñupiaq harvesting values, was created as a collaboration between the community of Kotzebue and the research team
From the outset, Green and Beaudreau felt strongly about designing their study in close partnership with these communities. “We wanted to engage in a really collaborative, participatory research process that was tailored to the interests of the communities,” Beaudreau explained.
They worked closely with the research coordinator for Kotzebue’s Tribal government during early phases of the study, but the bulk of the feedback they received throughout the project came directly from the residents of Kotzebue and Kivalina. “You have to make sure that at every single stage of the work, there are multiple opportunities for people to weigh in,” Beaudreau said. That meant lots of home visits, community meetings, flyers, social media messages, and even announcements over Kotzebue’s CB radio, all with the goal of sharing their results as widely as possible and gathering new ideas.
New ways forward together
Because these communities are located near Cape Krusenstern National Monument, some hunting and harvesting areas are managed by the National Park Service, which has not always included Alaska Native people in its decision making processes.
“For thousands of years there was no Park Service, so people could live off the land in the way that they knew best,” Beaudreau explained. “Now that there are all these overlapping jurisdictions, it gets really difficult to mesh them.”
One goal of the research was to explore community perspectives on how the Park Service can improve access to subsistence resources, and better interweave Western management approaches with traditional values, practices and knowledge.
Recommendations from interviewees included hiring Alaska Native staff from local communities, improving access to public meetings and designing management objectives around traditional hunting practices. The Park Service could also increase use of educational materials such as the Respect the Land (Kamaksriłiq̣ Nunam Irrusianik) film — a direct product of Beaudreau and Green’s study — to increase cultural competency of staff who come in from outside those communities.
Siikauraq Martha Whiting, a resident of Kotzebue who is interviewed in the film and co-authored one of the team’s publications, explained that a collaborative approach may be the best way to adapt to the rapidly changing Arctic landscape.
“I think it’s really important for us to just walk in each other’s shoes and accept each other,” she says in the film. “And look at the strengths that we all have to offer so we can have a better product at the end, and at the end the better product is always about land, or fish, or caribou, and we want to have that for generations to come. We are caretakers. We don’t own it. Let’s do a better job in taking care of that resource so our grandchildren have it forever.”
Green and Beaudreau have published two studies so far on climate change stressors in the Arctic and Iñupiaq values in subsistence harvesting, which you can read in full online.