Culture, Climate, and Food Security in the Alaskan Arctic

EARTHSYS 17SC

Alaska offers a unique opportunity for students to explore the intersection of Indigenous knowledge and culture, food systems, and climate change in a field-based setting. Alaska’s extensive terrestrial and marine areas support a mixed cash and subsistence economy where communities rely on wild caught and commercially sold foods and other natural resources (oil, gas, mining) extracted for export and domestic use. This course will focus on food security and food sovereignty, climate change, and climate adaptation in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough—a region traditionally, and still largely, inhabited by the Iñupiat. Iñupiat communities continue to rely on their deep indigenous knowledge systems and strong cultural practice of sharing to bolster food security and food sovereignty in the face of rising climate pressures on their land- and marine-based food systems. They also co-manage certain resources with state and federal agencies to sustain long-standing reciprocal relationships with animal populations, which helps to buffer the impacts of climate change and economic development on food availability and food prices. The Iñupiat have thus developed stewardship practices that are based on both Indigenous knowledge and western science.

The course will consist of three parts: 1) Orientation, bonding exercises, and background lectures at the Stanford campus; 2) Field study in Alaska’s Northwest Borough, centered in Kotzebue; 3) Meetings with Stanford alumni and other Alaskan experts in Anchorage before and after the field trip to Kotzebue. 

Travel to the Alaskan Arctic

The field study will be centered on Kotzebue, a town known by the Iñupiat as Kikiktagrut (“almost an island”), bordering land and sea (illustrated in the banner picture). Students will be interacting with cultures other than their own, including Alaska Native cultures, and people living in rural communities that rely on hunting, fishing, and gathering of animals and plants for food security and food sovereignty. Invited talks and discussions with community members during the course will include descriptions of this lifestyle; students are expected to interact with respect, and invited to engage with curiosity and receptivity.

In Kotzebue, students will have an opportunity to talk to local tribal leaders and Iñupiat inhabitants, representatives of the Kikiktagrut Inupiat Corporation (KIC), and non-indigenous residents (some Stanford alumni) who live in the region. Meetings will also be arranged with resource managers and scientists at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and representatives of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group. Near Kotzebue, students may have the opportunity to visit and stay at LaVonne's fish camp to gain a better understanding of subsistence harvesting practices. If possible, students will also meet with Seth Kantner, a well-known author and local resident of the region who has written several books on Iñupiat life and mixed food systems in the Northwest Arctic Borough (one of the books will be assigned reading for the course).

Ideally, the trip will include a trip to the Noatak National Preserve where the Western Alaska caribou migration occurs. The Iñupiat rely on caribou and moose hunting as a key feature of their subsistence food system.  Students might also take a 4-day trip to visit Alaska’s wilderness in Denali National Park and Preserve, depending on logistics.

Prepare for active, participatory travel!

This course in Alaska provides an incredible opportunity to visit remote villages, interact with local people and see wildlife. However, this also entails travel on small planes, and walking or hiking in rainy, windy or even snowy weather. Air temperatures in Northwest Alaska at this time of year are 30-40°. Students should expect to bring warm layers, comfortable hiking boots and rain gear. Snow gear is not needed. Students should plan to be able to walk between class lecture and field visit sites for 10 to 20 minutes outdoors, and participate in hiking excursions. Lodging will include hotels, dorm style housing, and, for 1-2 nights, the use of sleeping bags and sleeping pads for sleeping on the floor in an indoor location. Meals will be provided in a mix of dining establishments, as well as group cooking for meals with student involvement and participation required. 

Student Projects

Students will design individual or team projects during the course and present their findings to Stanford alumni in Anchorage at the end of the course.

What Comes After SoCo?

This course is part of the rotating series of SoCo courses sponsored by the Bill Lane Center. Alumni of previous Bill Lane Center classes have gone on to do summer internships through the Bill Lane Center, as well as:

• Produced a podcast about Native American communities in the pandemic
• Gained faculty mentors and experience in research
• Wrote thesis on denim in the western imagination that led to a job with Levi Strauss
• Majored in civil engineering and minored in urban history

Application Alert!

This course uses interviews as part of the application process—keep a close eye on your email after you submit your application.

Meet the Instructor

Rosamond (Roz) Naylor is the William Wrigley Professor of Global Environmental Policy, Emeritus, at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and founding Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve global food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She has been involved in field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on the economic, ecological, climate, cultural, and policy dimensions of global food systems. She co-chaired The Blue Food Assessment, a comprehensive scientific evaluation of the sustainability, nutrition, and equity aspects of wild and cultured aquatic foods. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), a Pew Marine Fellow, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, and the President of the Board of Directors for the Aspen Global Change Institute (AGCI).