| NSF Org: |
OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 23, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 20, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 1737643 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Liam Frink
lfrink@nsf.gov (703)292-0000 OPP Office of Polar Programs (OPP) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $636,988.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $636,988.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2018 = $405,484.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2145 N TANANA LOOP FAIRBANKS AK US 99775-0001 (907)474-7301 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
AK US 99775-7880 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | ASSP-Arctic Social Science |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.078 |
ABSTRACT
This project brings together Alaska Native community partners and university researchers to develop shared research priorities, guide collaborative data collection, and interpret findings about issues of broad public and theoretical concern. Specifically, this project prompts collaborative engagements with the increasing challenges to fossil fuel development in northern Alaska, including: eroding coastlines, petroleum-dependent subsistence activities, plans for new offshore drilling, dwindling dividends,and unprecedented environmental shifts. Seeking to involve Native communities within wider conversations across research and policy around these concerns, this project is inspired by innovative community efforts to secure subsistence, insure wellbeing, and create viable cultural futures in a context of rapid change. By building a unique regional research alliance around these insights, the project also aims to revise common understandings about some of the most pressing topics of our times, including health and wellness, inequality, changing ecosystems, and the prospects of a petroleum-based social contract in Alaska. This project will directly benefit partner communities, science and scientific communities, policy-makers and efforts to strengthen American democracy.
The project makes three primary contributions to publicly relevant social science research focused on Arctic futures. First, it develops a collaborative method that empowers Alaska Native community research partners to design, coordinate, and implement research questions and activities within their own communities. Second, a decolonizing methodology endeavors to rethink the analytic lexicons of Arctic social science research, and thus to revise scholarly approaches to some of the biggest issues of the present, including the ways that knowledge about Arctic futures is negotiated and co-produced. Finally, this project maximizes the broader impacts of this knowledge by laying the foundation for a wider research network that brings Indigenous and scientific insights to bear on the most critical public problems in northern Alaska today. Findings from the study will also advance conversations in several bodies of scholarship concerned with decolonizing methodologies, shifting Arctic ecologies and economies, and Indigenous wellbeing. In such ways, the project will engage current debates by creating a more inclusive exploration of the Arctic and its open-ended futures.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This award supported three Alaska Native community-driven research projects that all utilized Indigenous research methods to document Indigenous knowledge and disseminate self-determined Tribal data and findings. related to environmental change, social sustainability and community well-being. Community Project 1: Arctic Village Community Engagement in an Indigenous-led Research Project: Sustainable Futures through Language. The goals of this project are centered on building healthy sustainable futures for Gwich’in people and communities through rigorous documentation and Indigenous-knowledge driven examination of the Gwich'in language and its mechanistic connections to environment, spirituality, holistic well-being and collective adaptation and resilience. The project worked with and under the guidance of Gwich’in Elder culture-bearers and first language speakers from the communities of Vashrąįį K’oo (Arctic Village), Vįįhtąįį (Venetie), Tseeduu (Beaver), and Gwichyaa Zhee (Fort Yukon). The work had three primary outcomes: language documentation through Elder interviews and storytelling, ecological observing through language and mapping of ancestral place names, and Indigenous knowledge-driven analysis of Gwich'in terminology and traditional instructions. Community Project 2: Emmonak Community Engagement in an Indigenous-led Research Project: Climate Change Impacts for Community Strengths and Well-being. The goals of this project were to engage young people, adults and Elders in subsistence activities that include real time observations of changes in the environment and weather systems and examines the impacts of these changes on the ability to sustainably practice traditional hunting, fishing and gathering. A primary outcome from this project was the establishment of a local Elders Climate Change Observing working group and an increased utilization of a statewide Local Environmental Observing (LEO) Network database. The project also documented the implementation of youth-produced and managed community greenhouses as an alternative economic and subsistence strategy during the salmon crisis. Community Project 3: Beaver Community Engagement in an Indigenous-led Research Project: Sustainable futures through economic and educational self-determination. The goals of this project were to work in close collaboration with the Beaver Tribal Council to develop and conduct a youth leadership mentoring program that would include a community-wide survey and multiple townhall discussions to identify priority areas for economic growth and educational sovereignty. Results from the project informed the Tribal leadership of targeted strategies to retain family residence that included specialized and expanded educational curriculum and economic opportunities for youth including expanded roles in Tribal government in the community. This project has broaders impacts for Alaska and the Arctic by building out from local community perspectives to wider concerns and engagements across Alaska and the North, this study will shift the power dynamics inherent in research, problemsolving and policy negotiations involving multiple key stakeholders in the Arctic. We aim to utilize a decolonizing research framework that positions Indigenous community members as primary agents of research, change and action for the conservation, continuity and sustainability of Alaska’s and the Arctic’s essential resources and lifeways.
Last Modified: 02/10/2024
Modified by: Stacy M Rasmus
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