Culture, Climate, and Food Security in the Alaskan Arctic (GEP 17SC)

2 credits · Undergraduate

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 Inupiat. Inupiat 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 Iñnupiat 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 Inupiat as Kikiktagrut ("almost an island"), bordering land and sea. In Kotzebue, students will have an opportunity to talk to local tribal leaders and Inupiat 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 Inupiat 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 Inupiat rely on caribou and moose hunting 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.