Climate Change

The Alaska Federation of Natives Convention came to a close with little discussion about how to respond to climate change. This year, the convention’s third day, when resolutions are openly debated, was eliminated.

Various Native organizations submitted 30 resolutions for consideration. There is no open resolution debate this year. Only one resolution briefly mentions climate change.

At a time where virtual platforms are largely becoming the norm, many Alaska Natives are entering a new era of content creation. I recently sat down with Alice Qannik Glenn and Jenna Kunze to talk about their new Indigenous-centered project on climate change.

Alaska’s summer is short, but one of the ways it softens the farewell each fall is through a parting gift of delicious berries. In the late summer and early fall, Kenai Peninsula residents regularly flock to the wild lands for salmonberries, cranberries, blueberries, and crowberries and more.

SEWARD, Alaska — Drip. Drip. Drip.

It's the sound of one glacier melting. It’s also the sound of a whole planet careening into uncharted territory.

I am crouching by the mouth of a little ice cave underneath the Exit Glacier, a huge river of ice on the Kenai Peninsula in southcentral Alaska. Ancient ice drips from the roof of the cave onto newly bare earth. Twice in a few minutes, I hear rocks fall from the freshly exposed landscape at the glacier’s snout and decide this is not the safest place to be.

Alaska’s most recent plan to address climate change was removed from the state’s website back in December. Meanwhile, some municipalities and tribal governments are moving ahead with their own ideas about how to respond to the growing problem.

On the North Slope of Alaska, the Iñupiat tradition of hunting bowhead whales has an ancestry more than 1,500 years old.

Today in Utqiaġvik there are two annual hunts when the whales pass by on their migration. The fall hunt has historically been done on open water, and the spring hunt from the ice that attaches to the coast each winter.

Aerial surveys of Sitka Sound showed a lot of active herring spawn this week, stretching over 31 nautical miles to date. But that wasn’t the only place to find roe. In the basement of the Sitka Sound Science Center  researchers are incubating thousands of herring eggs to determine the effects of warming ocean temperatures and ocean acidification on the species — now and in the future.