Our project, "Yup'ik Environmental Knowledge: The Natural and Cultural History of the Bering Sea Coast," was a major effort in indigenous observation and knowledge documentation. The project was initiated by Bering Sea coastal communities in collaboration with the Calista Elders Council (CEC) and anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan. Between 2011 and 2014 the project had two closely-related goals:

1) Work with elder experts in four Yukon Delta communities--Kotlik, Emmonak, Alakanuk, and Nunam Iqua--in collaboration with non-Native scientists and younger community members to produce a holistic documentation of their unique natural history and cultural geography, including traditional place names, weather and sea ice conditions, harvesting patterns, animal and plant communities, and related oral traditions.

2) Integrate and compare documentation of Yukon Delta natural and cultural history with existing documentation for Yup'ik coastal communities to the south, including the villages of Hooper Bay and Chevak, Nelson Island communities, and Canineq (lower Kuskokwim coastal) communities.

Residents expressed an urgent need to document their traditional environmental knowledge for two reasons. First, they recognize that documentation of unique aspects of their world view must happen in the near future or not at all. Although there will always be elders, the present generation of elder experts is the last to have received a traditional education in the qasgiq (communal men's house) before the advent of organized religion and formal education. Elders were the primary teachers in the past. Venues to share their knowledge have drastically declined, and contemporary elders are actively seeking arenas to share their knowledge.

Second, community members are deeply concerned by the unprecedented changes in climate and ecology they are witnessing along the Bering Sea coast. Community members and participating scientists feel strongly that elders' perspectives on past periods of resource scarcity, storm surges, and unusual ice and weather conditions, as well as their views on ongoing changes in the Bering Sea ecosystem, will be invaluable in preparing them for the future.

To accomplish these goals, our project combined fieldwork in lower Yukon communities during 2011 with four steering committee meetings, 17 topic-specific gatherings, and website training in Anchorage and Bethel between 2011 and 2014. Results included three books, "Ellavut/Our Yup'ik World and Weather" (Fienup-Riordan and Rearden 2012), "Erinaput Unguvaniartut/So Our Voices May Live" (Rearden and Fienup-Riordan 2013) and "Nunamta Ellamta-llu Ayagucia/What Our Land and World are Like: Lower Yukon History and Oral Traditions" (Rearden and Fienup-Riordan 2014).  The project also produced four articles (Fienup-Riordan and Carmack 2011; Fienup-Riordan et al. 2013; Fienup-Riordan 2014a, 2014b), numerous public presentations, and a website and Atlas hosted by ELOKA, including over 6,000 place names (http://eloka-arctic.org/communities/yupik/).

Intellectural Marit: The project was important because it was community based, interdisciplinary, and comparative. Moreover our methodology--fieldwork combined with elder gatherings in southwest Alaska and Anchorage--set a high standard for participatory work with local communities. Our work was a major collaborative effort between Yup'ik community members and outside partners during which we worked together to document and share Yup'ik understandings of the world in which they live.

Broader Impacts: The project was important in terms of capacity building, providing many opportunities for Native and non-Native experts, community members, agency representatives, and youth to work together. Launching of the Yup'ik place name Atlas by ELOKA was als...

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