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In January 2023, a catastrophic fire destroyed the generator and a backup source of power for Newtok’s school. The charred remains are housed inside a metal container behind the main school building. (Photo: Emily Schwing / KYUK)

A group of Alaska Native mothers from the village of Newtok reported on deteriorating conditions in their community at the annual Arctic Encounter Symposium in Anchorage last week.

As Emily Schwing reports, climate change means the permafrost under the Alaska Native community is deteriorating and causing severe erosion.

The village has been trying to relocate for more than three decades.

The five women took to the stage barefoot, in solidarity for their friends and family members who live in Newtok. 

For many years, the village has been working with several state and federal agencies to relocate the entire community – nearly 400 people –  to higher, more stable ground at Mertarvik. It’s nine miles across the Ninglick River.

Carolyn George is a Newtok Village Council member. 

“There is no blueprint on how to do this relocation. Relocating the whole community to a whole different place and, we did not know how to do it and it’s been taking too long.” 

There are neatly 150 communities in Alaska considering partial and full relocations due to climate change driven environmental disasters.

Jackie Schaeffer is the Director of Climate Initiatives at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.

Schaeffer says lessons from Newtok and Mertarvik can inform those future projects. 

“This is just one community of many that will need to be relocated in the state of Alaska and if we can’t figure it out for a community of 400 people there’s no way when we hit Louisiana, la and all the other lower 48 communities, that we’re gonna be able to figure it out.” 

In the meantime, she says the mothers of Newtok are an inspiration.

“They’re going to adapt.”

Photo: Antonia Gonzales / National Native News

Digital Exclusive: The last day of the Arctic Encounter Symposium Friday ended with a discussion about emergency preparedness and disaster contingency.

Jill Fratis from our flagship station KNBA has more.

The panel of five included Dr. Dimitri Kusnezov, Under Secretary for Science and Technology at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); Irish Ambassador to the U.S. Geraldine Byrne Nason; and Melanie Bahnke, President & CEO of Kawerak, Inc.

After hearing the plans the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and DHS had for the future of arctic communities, Bahnke responded saying she would rather have proactive action, rather than responding after a disaster happens in the Native Village of Savoonga where she lives.

“We’re the most wealthy country in the world, and to tell me we can’t build a sea wall, but yet we’re going to respond when we have a flooded community is – I’ll say it in a nice way, malarkey.”

Britt’nee Brower is from Utgiagvik, formerly known as Barrow.

She say that the changes that are happening to the community are happening at a rapid pace.

“Growing up in Barrow in terms of the beach, we’ve had a lot of roads wash out these days, to where we don’t have a road anymore, and you have to travel by ATV or ski-doo.”

She says that, while gatherings like Arctic Encounter are a great way for everyone to put their minds together for the betterment of Arctic communities, it might too late and adapting to the changes is the way to go.

“In a perfect world, it would be ideal to have it be successful, but facing realities I feel like, within the community, I’m sure we can adapt to changes. I feel like we’ve been doing that for years now, the changes in the permafrost where our Ice sellers are melting now. We’re figuring out ways to adapt to those changes, but I’m hoping we figure something out.”

As for Bahnke, she says regardless of what happens in the future as far as climate change, she will not leave her community.

“We’re not moving. We’re not moving to Anchorage, we’re not moving to Ireland, I’m sorry, but these are our homelands. Where our ancestors have thrived for thousands of years, and all of a sudden, we’re experiencing these rapid weather events. Rapid climate change. We’re not going anywhere.”

Each year during Arctic Encounter, more than 1,000 stakeholders, domestic and international, gather to address the most pressing challenges in the Arctic region.

A formal process begins this week in Anchorage to document Native boarding school abuse.

KNBA’s Rhonda McBride reports.

The project is part of the U.S. Interior Department’s Federal Boarding School Initiative.

The National Native Boarding School Healing Coalition will conduct three days of interviews.

Although the testimony will be given in private, it will become a permanent part of a national oral history collection.

From the early 1900’s to the 1970’s, Alaska Native children from rural areas across the state were forcibly taken away from their families and sent hundreds of miles away to boarding school.

In some cases, they faced physical abuse and sexual assault.

The session begins with opening ceremonies Monday at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Sacred Mato Paha is now part of Bear Butte State Park in Meade County, S.D. (Courtesy Jerrye and Roy Klotz, MD)

40 acres near Bear Butte have been purchased by an Indigenous-led organization in the hopes of teaching the next generation about traditional values and land stewardship.

The group’s leaders say it’s also a chance to reclaim a piece of what was stolen after colonization.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s C.J. Keene checks in.

The Cheyenne River Youth Project has purchased the Black Hills land adjacent to a culturally significant site – Bear Butte.

Group CEO Julie Garreau says when reservations are hours from these important places, it becomes a matter of access.

“It’s also really a practical thing to do, because the Black Hills and those sacred sites are extremely important to the connection to Lakota people. Being able to access them is critical in terms of raising healthy, young Lakota children. It is, for us, a place we can call home in our traditional homelands.”

More than that though, Garreau says reclaiming this space after over a century of broken treaty obligations stirs deep emotion.

“The Supreme Court already said that land is ours, they wanted to pay for it, and we won’t accept it. Is it unfair that we had to buy it? Yeah, it is, but we did what we had to do because the kids that we work with are so important. It was overwhelming and highly emotional within our own team, and when the announcement came out, I think everybody here was as emotional as I was.”

In turn, Garreau says they can deepen the well of cultural programming they offer.

“We want to teach kids about what the land can offer them in terms of foods and medicinal plants. I think a lot of people refer to the plains as food deserts, and I don’t really believe that’s what that is. I think we have a lot of our traditional foods, we just can’t access them because we don’t have access to the land like we used to.”

The land dedication ceremony will be held in private at the end of the month.

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Dignitaries, high ranking military officials, and Indigenous leaders from across the Arctic are in Anchorage this week.

As KYUK’s Emily Schwing reports, they’re here for the annual Arctic Encounter Symposium – the largest annual Arctic policy-focused gathering in the United States.

Pearl Brower is the President and CEO of the Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corporation (UIC).

She says the people who live every day in the Arctic should be the focus beyond this week’s discussions.

“When you’re thinking about the Arctic while you’re here, think about us, think about the people and that’s, I think, really the key critical component. As policy makers, as people working within the region, thinking about the arctic, we think about the people first, because that’s what it’s all about.”

(Photo: Antonia Gonzales)

Brower, who is from Utqiaġvik, was among six Indigenous leaders from across the state who took to the main stage at Anchorage’s Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center to kick off this year’s symposium with a conversation about their visions for success into the future.

Roy Algoinga grew up in White Mountain. He was recently named the President and CEO of the First Alaskans Institute, a policy and advocacy non-profit organization that also focuses on building leadership skills among Alaska Native youth. He says any future success must include younger generations.

“I look at our youth as the starting point of new discussion of change, of functionality of being capable to move forward with all of the things that we need in our community.”

Among the long list of topics on the Arctic Encounter agenda this week are discussions on sustainable energy, infrastructure investments, and emergency preparedness in the Arctic.

Jill Fratis from our flagship station KNBA spoke with some Arctic Encounter attendees about top priorities facing their regions, as speakers Wednesday from around the world discussed topics such as Arctic energy investments, and climate change, something a majority of attendees, especially in Alaska say they are impacted by.

Britt’nee Brower from Utgiagvik, formerly known as Barrow, says growing up, the land was lush, and spread out.

As the years went by, she noticed many changes due to climate change.

“There’s been a lot of changes going on in Barrow in terms of the beach. We’ve had a lot of roads wash out these days, to where we don’t have a road anymore, and you have to travel by ATV or ski-doo.”

Brower says that while there have been projects in the past to try to rebuild the roads after the erosion, it’s short lived.

As far as hunting, she says hunters are struggling.

“Over the past 20 years that I’ve witnessed we’ve lost a lot of our beach. I think some of the hunters have to go further out with the ice and the walrus.”

Emmalina Gayayok is from Togiak, and while erosion is also a problem in her village, the berries too have taken a hit.

“Our rivers that laid out to the ocean also changed drastically, and our berries on the tundra kind of dried up, and they’re really scarce.”

Arctic regions are disproportionately impacted by climate warming at twice the rate of non-Arctic regions, according to the Arctic Encounter.

Speakers in the afternoon consisted of scientists, ambassadors, and senior advisors.

They discussed the future of the climate and how to navigate the changes happening in such a rapid pace.

Brower worries about what will happen when the permafrost continues to melt, and for the future of her community, but she says they will always work together to roll with the tide.

“I feel like within the community, I’m sure we can adapt to changes. I feel like we’ve been doing that for years now.”

The Arctic Encounter continues through Friday.

LISTEN to this Arctic Encounter web extra from NNN anchor Antonia Gonzales and NNN reporter Rhonda LeValdo

O. Patricia Lekanoff Gregory, Board Vice President, Aleut International Association

The Anishinaabeg have a long history of harvesting maple sap, then processing it into syrup and sugar. Traditional technology included sumac branches used as spiles, pictured here, which would be tapped into trees. A paddle is used to work the sap down to sugar over heat. (Photo: Ellie Katz / IPR News)

Several Anishinaabe tribes in northern Michigan decided not to tap their maple trees this spring after an unusually mild winter.

The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians is one of those tribes who’ve decided to let their trees rest. Despite that, the band was able to continue with parts of the tradition at their sugar shack, using maple sap that had been saved or traded for.

Interlochen Public Radio’s Ellie Katz spoke with Tera John, who works on restoring traditional foodways and food sovereignty for the Grand Traverse Band.

Kathleen Smith works for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, which represents eleven Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Smith, whose title in Anishinaabemowin is ganawandang manoomin, or “she who takes care of the wild rice,” does a lot of work with traditional foods in the upper Great Lakes. And she says some places went ahead with sugar bush.

“The areas where I have harvested and helped, the sugar bushes, they’re doing quite well. They were offering themselves up.”

Smith is a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.

She’s helped out with sugar bush in a few places in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and northern Wisconsin this year, where she says they had signs to harvest, like heavy snowpack over the winter and good freeze-and-thaw conditions in early spring.

But with steadily warming winters plus challenges like disease and pests, Smith says it will become more and more important for tribal communities across the Great Lakes to talk with each other and keep rebuilding foodways and traditions.

“So for instance, like the black ash [tree and] the emerald ash borer … we had relatives downstate that were asking us for black ash, since we didn’t have [the borer] yet. I think it’s important that communities that still have sap running – maybe we could trade for something later on. Because we need to bring that back, we need to be able to help our relatives out as well, that weren’t able to do sugar bush.”

Back at the sugar shack in Peshawbestown, Tera John pulls out a few bottles of maple syrup harvested nearby that she was able to trade for.

She pours the liquid into a cast iron pot over the fire and starts stirring.

“I’m boiling it down. I’m going to sugar this.”

After several hours of careful stirring, the syrup will thicken, eventually reducing down to a granular, golden-brown sugar.

John has led a few sugar bush workshops like this one to teach tribal and non-tribal community members about the tradition. And the band’s agriculture department says they’re aiming to tap 600 trees next year, up from around 300 last year.

They’ve invested in new equipment and home tree-tapping kits to give out to families, thanks in part to a big grant aimed at reinvigorating food traditions for tribal members.

Tera John opens a bottle of syrup. Though the band’s agriculture department decided to let the trees rest this year, John is still leading sugarbush workshops to teach tribal and non-tribal community members about the tradition. The workshops, along with new sugaring equipment and at-home tapping kits for families, are thanks in part to a grant the band is using to reinvigorate food traditions for tribal members. (Photo: Ellie Katz / IPR News)

Later in the afternoon, the sun comes out and more people have joined around the fire.

John says this – the act of showing up to sugar bush with intention, being outside the sugar shack and near the ininaatigoog, the sugar maples – is vital during this year of rest, for the people and the trees.

“I’m going to sugar this down and show these guys that I mean business to take care of them. This is what I’m intending for them – to occupy this space throughout the year, to host workshops, or harvesting, or teachings, storytellings right here so we can live life with these guys.

“They miss our laughter, and our arguing, and our kids running around. They’re supposed to be part of our lives … we’re coming back. We’ll learn how.”

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