AK CASC Tribal Liaisons and Researchers Lead and Learn at Historic Tribal Climate Conference
Indigenous climate adaptation and resilience shine at Anchorage gathering
Hundreds of Indigenous leaders, knowledge holders, artists and scientists, along with many non-Indigenous partners, were welcomed to Anchorage in September for the National Tribal and Indigenous Climate Conference (NTICC), the first ever national tribal conference addressing climate change held in Alaska.
Close to home, the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center (AK CASC) and International Arctic Research Center (IARC) had strong representation among the nearly 800 participants present. Across four days, AK CASC members helped enrich the conference’s theme — “Shared Responsibility for Indigenous Climate Resilience” — by both leading and participating in a series of workshops, booths, presentations and field trips. The week was a reminder that climate change impacts Indigenous and rural communities first, and intimately. Meanwhile the exchange of laughter, meals and dance grounded the gathering in persisting messages of resilience and joy.
Malinda Chase, a tribal liaison with the AK CASC and whose home village is Anvik, and Jerilyn Kelly, an assistant tribal climate resilience liaison from Quinhagak, along with Austin Ahmasuk with Native Movement, led a well-attended morning presentation titled “Lessons Learned in Tribal Climate Adaptation Training.” They spoke about the work of the Tribal Resilience Learning Network and its Strengthening Resilience Today (SRT) training. Several tribal communities — Unalakleet, Hooper Bay/Paimiut, Igiugik, Kokhanok and Klawock — participated in the training between the spring of 2023 and the summer of 2024, and noted that discussions of community wellness and trauma were some of the most important content areas.
Before a mixed national and statewide audience, Chase emphasized the recent history and current climate reality of Alaska’s Indigenous people. She shared about Alaska’s cultural diversity, extractive industries and vast ecological changes. Whereas sea ice loss is affecting lifeways in villages in one region of Alaska, landslides are devastating homes in other areas, thousands of miles away. Even those with generational knowledge for how to move across the ice and waters that have always been part of their lands, she said, when confronted with rapidly changing conditions, are losing their lives in accidents.
Ahmahuk shared how Typhoon Merbok, a storm exacerbated by the effects of global warming, destroyed his house in Nome in 2022. “I often say, sadly, that I’m a climate refugee,” he said.
After the presentation, the broader TRLN team and Alaska CASC communicators were invited to participate in the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Regional Tribal Climate Resilience Liaison Network workshop. The session offered tribal liaisons from across the country an opportunity to connect with each other, meet members of other regional CASCs, and share what particular climate challenges and successes they are experiencing in their local communities.
“It was uplifting to see this vast network of people focused on tribal climate adaptation and feel supported in this difficult, critical work that we do,” said Kaitlyn Demoski, formerly an Alaska CASC assistant tribal climate resilience liaison, and who is now a biologist with the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society. “I’m grateful we had a space to come together, meet, listen to our youth, Elders and other Indigenous people.”
Later in the week, Nathan Kettle, the deputy director of the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP) and science lead for IARC’s Experimental Arctic Prediction Initiative (EAPI), joined Roberta Tuurraq Glenn-Borade, a project coordinator and community liaison for the Alaska Arctic Observatory and Knowledge Hub (AAOKH), and Billy Adams, an Iñupiaq observer for AAOKH in Utqiaġvik, in presenting on how the National Weather Service (NWS) is working to improve its communications on sea ice conditions in coastal Alaskan communities — crucial information for the safety of fishers and hunters.
“I’m Iñupiaq, I’m from the North Slope, we are whaling communities in Arctic Alaska. We go whaling, my dad was a whaling captain,” Glenn-Borade told the room. “When I was growing up, when the National Weather Service forecasts came on the radio, if you’re driving around town, people might slow down and turn the volume up. They give information that dictate daily or weekly activities, whether or not someone goes out on the water, or on the sea ice, or on the land.”
In a rapidly changing Arctic, these weather broadcasts need to be more precise and communicated efficiently. For nearly 20 years, on-the-ground observers working with AAOKH, including Adams, have been collecting local and specific weather data in Utqiaġvik and Kotzebue. This information — in addition to place-based, generation-spanning knowledge — when shared with Kettle and Glenn-Borade, offered several forecast improvements the NWS can make.
Hunters said that an emphasis on using Iñupiaq place names and words to describe specific ice types and conditions – qiñu (slush), sikuliaġruaq (ice more than 1.5 feet thick), sikuliaq, (young ice formed at the edge of older ice), piqaluyak (multi-year ice), ullit (rising waters) and qaamit (the revelation of wet snow on top of ice and water through concealed cracks), to name a few — would greatly benefit the community. Residents also said that focusing more on wind and coastal river forecasts and delivering this information through existing Facebook channels and radio stations, would best meet communities’ needs.
On the conference’s final morning, Micah Hahn, a senior scientist with the AK CASC, moderated a panel titled: “Using Indigenous Health Indicators as a practical tool for community decision-making about climate and health priorities.”
During the session, Colleen Merrick, Derrick Sinyon and Lishaw Lincoln from the Copper River Native Association and Native Village of Gakona; April Hostetter from the Tribal Village of Igiugig; and Tirzah Bryant from the Louden Tribe spoke on the importance of defining health from an Indigenous worldview. Rather than prioritizing metrics such as blood pressure or weight as health indicators, the panel shared, the Indigenous definition of health might include values such as knowledge, land, sharing, respect, family and Elders. These Indigenous Health Indicators (IHIs), once defined, can be used as a tool for community-driven climate adaptation planning.
“This project has been an amazing opportunity to turn the traditional research model upside down and support our partners in doing climate adaptation in their communities,” Hahn said after the conference. “As one of our community partners said, ‘Indigenous Health Indicators give us a way to voice the way we already think.’”
Outside of the presentations, the AK CASC hosted an informational booth with the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP). The sharing of Alaska Climate Stripe stickers — in which each bar represents a year, with color indicating that year’s average temperature — were popular amongst attendees.
And for those in attendance who weren’t presenting, including AK CASC fellows, managers and climate adaptation catalysts, the week-long discussions of community adaptation, sea ice loss, landslide preparedness, subsistence harvesting and cultural burning offered meaningful education.
“It was great to hear Indigenous fire knowledge and strategies being shared between tribes,” said Spencer Vieira, an ORISE fellow with the AK CASC who is researching climate change impacts in Alaska, including wildfire. “I gathered that legal pathways need to be created to support more Indigenous fire use across the state, for fuel reduction, yes, but also for cultural practice and resilience. I have a lot of gratitude for having been welcomed into this space to listen and learn.”
“The best way to get this complex work done is together, we need to hear from each other to build capacity and improve the systems we have in place so we can see active management of climate impacts sooner,” said Demoski.