Environmental Change, Indigenous Knowledge, and Subsistence on Alaska’s North Slope

Context and Methods

Located on the coast of the Arctic Ocean and extending south up to several hundred kilometers to the Brooks Range, the North Slope Borough is a petroleum rich area covering the northernmost section of the state of Alaska. The North Slope Borough is the largest political subdivision in North America, encompassing fifteen percent of Alaska’s total land mass, with a total of 89,000 square miles, an area just a bit larger than the state of Minnesota. Approximately 74% of the North Slope’s 7,555 residents are Iñupiat Eskimos, the indigenous inhabitants of the land, and close linguistic and ethnic relatives of the Inuit of Canada and the Kalaallit of Greenland. The Borough is primarily rural, although it includes the city of Barrow (the Borough seat, population 4,429), seven smaller villages, and Prudhoe Bay, the petroleum/industrial complex at the top of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System. Also included within the boundaries of the North Slope Borough are areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and a 23-million acre area designated as the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), where oil exploration and drilling are administered by the federal Bureau of Land Management in accordance with the Naval Petroleum Reserve Production act of 1976.

The landscape, climate, and native species of the North Slope have been objects of intense study for decades, for alongside the economic and political interests in its resources and “strategic” location, the region’s unique geographic, atmospheric, and biological features are of great ecological and scientific significance. An extensive Naval complex (the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory) was constructed just north of Barrow in the mid 1940s to serve oil exploration, and until 1980 it also served as a base for conducting biological and geological research in the Arctic. ¹ The current occupant of the site of the former Naval complex is the Barrow Area Science Consortium (BASC), a science facility funded by the National Science Foundation, formed through a partnership of the North Slope Borough, The Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corporation (the corporation representing the economic interests of the Iñupiat of Barrow), and Ilisagvik College (the region’s tribal college). Since 1995 nearly all of the scientific research conducted near Barrow has been done under the auspices of BASC.

The existence of a science station with firm ties to sturdy sectors of the local community helped create the conditions for the development of our research. For several years some members of our team had been studying the “thaw lakes” and drained lake basins that together cover about 46% of surface of the Western Arctic Coastal Plain (see Figure 1). Thaw lakes are formed when water ponds atop underlying, impermeable frozen ground, or permafrost, and they are the dominant geomorphic features in the northernmost regions of Alaska, Siberia, and Canada. A thaw lake drains in response to ice-wedge erosion, bank overflow, stream piracy, or breaching of the lake margin (see Figure 2). Drained lake basins are among the primary reservoirs of carbon in northern Alaska, and so understanding the lakes, and how they form and drain, is necessary for determining how carbon accumulation rates respond to regional changes in climate, and the extent to which warming temperatures will result in releases of greenhouse gases into the global atmosphere. Our team’s research utilizes the sophisticated tools of physical geography, including high-resolution multispectral satellite data, ground-penetrating radar, extensive coring, radiometric dating, and microfossil analysis, to estimate the amount of carbon sequestered in the drained basins. ²

In 2002, one scientist on our team gave a community presentation in Barrow on thaw lake process as part of an NSF-funded community outreach project. The subsequent discussion elicited a helpful response from an Iñupiat elder who worked as community liaison for BASC. She remarked that local understandings of thaw lake drainage differed somewhat from the scientific theories, and suggested talking with local elders. Prompted by that suggestion, in the following field season we conducted videotaped interviews about the lakes and landscape of the surrounding areas with several elders in Barrow and Atqasuk, a small inland village sixty miles to the south of Barrow. ³ In the initial interviews, some recalled family stories of rapid lake level changes near traditional summer hunting camps, and others described drainage events that were induced by their own activities, such as bank breaching.

In interviews, elders shared scientifically interesting and consequential information about thaw lakes. They also volunteered personal memories and accounts of cultural traditions, and responded to general questions about local environmental conditions with engaged and detailed accounts of changes in the landscape, animal migration patterns, and weather. As in many indigenous communities, Iñupiat elders hold a repository of knowledge about traditional culture and local history entwined with their knowledge of the landscape. Northern Alaska has experienced rapid and dramatic change in the last century, and there is a strong sense that elders’ unique knowledge is extremely valuable but in danger of being lost. Interviewees and their families therefore expressed positive feelings about having interviews recorded, and encouraged us to make videos of interviews available to younger people in their communities. Videos and other documents are thought to be useful for preserving the traditional, cultural, and historical knowledge possessed by elders, as well as their memories, stories, and linguistic expertise. Because the North Slope school system places some emphasis on teaching traditional knowledge, there is an existing context available for sharing archived materials.

We were able to corroborate the timing of observations of past lake drainage events using satellite imagery, confirming our sense that the elders had a wealth of relevant knowledge. The combination of compelling data and community needs led us to develop a research project that would bring together experiential and scientific knowledge to answer specific questions about thaw lakes on the North Slope. Another primary goal was to help document elders’ experiences, reflections, and ecological wisdom in a way that would be useful and accessible to their community. As an interdisciplinary team, we also had questions and research interests beyond the explicit focus on thaw lakes. For example, we were interested in the ways that interviews with Iñupiat elders might contribute to better understanding of environmental ethics in the Arctic, where an exceptionally demanding context has led to the development of human cultures that seem to exemplify “wise use” paradigms for relationships with nature. And although information about gender was not likely to be central in our findings about the thaw lake cycle, we saw this project as an opportunity to implement feminist methods, such as collaboration across epistemic and cultural differences, and the intentional inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented perspectives. Our own perspectives are informed by the view, most fully articulated in feminist philosophy, that members of distinct social groups have “epistemic authority,” or unique and important knowledge about their own lives, their social and environmental contexts, and the issues with which their material and emotional experiences put them in close contact. ⁴

Feminist theories of the epistemic advantages of marginalized or subordinated perspectives emerged in the late 1970s as women began to apply Marxist theories of the advantaged and revolutionary perspectives of workers to the state of women in sexist societies. As Nancy Hartsock succinctly put it, “Each division of labor, whether by gender or class, can be expected to have consequences for knowledge.” ⁵ Gendered differences in knowledge or access to knowledge are not considered natural or absolute. Rather, they emerge from the material conditions that are created and enforced through divisions of labor.

The material specificities of regional and cultural differences also have consequences for knowledge. On the North Slope, indigenous elders and others with experience on the tundra have epistemic authority regarding the environment where they have lived, learned, and traveled for many years. Important knowledge about the state of that environment will be neglected if those local experts are not consulted. In addition, history shows that unequal power dynamics are replicated when local knowledge and impacted communities are not considered worthy of respect by powerful agents (such as government-funded scientists). Regarding the potential role of science itself in disrupting unequal or damaging dynamics, philosopher Sandra Harding writes, “It is scary to contemplate how the power that Western sciences and technologies make available is likely to result in increased destruction to humans and our environments—and especially to economically and politically marginalized humans and environments—unless this power can be harnessed quickly to work on agendas for more democratic world communities.” ⁶

1. M.B. Blackman, Sadie Brower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1989.[↑]
2. J. G. Bockheim, K.M. Hinkel, W. Eisner, and X. Y. Dai, “Carbon Pools and Accumulation Rates in an Age-Series of Soils in Drained Thaw-Lake Basins, Arctic Alaska,” Soil Science Society of America Journal, 2004, 68:697Ð704; W. R. Eisner, J. G. Bockheim, K.M. Hinkel, T.A. Brown, F.E. Nelson, K.M. Peterson, B.M. Jones, “Paleoenvironmental Analyses of an Organic Deposit from an Erosional Landscape Remnant, Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 2005, 217: 187-204; R.C. Frohn, W.R. Eisner, K.M. Hinkel, “Satellite Remote Sensing Classification of Thaw Lakes and Drained Thaw Lake Basins on the North Slope of Alaska,” Remote Sensing of Environment, 2005, 97 (1), 116; K.M. Hinkel, R. Beck, W. Eisner, R. Frohn, F. Nelson, “Morphometric and Spatial Analysis of Thaw Lakes and Drained Thaw Lake Basins in the Western Arctic Coastal Plain, Alaska,” Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, 2005, 16 (4), 327, 341; K. M. Hinkel, B. M. Jones, W.R. Eisner, C. J. Cuomo, R. Beck and R. Frohn, “Methods to Assess Natural and Anthropogenic Thaw Lake Drainage on the Western Arctic Coastal Plain of Northern Alaska,” Journal of Geophysical Research—Earth Surface, 2007, Vol. 112; Eisner et al 2008.[↑]
3. The Atqasuk region is of particular geological interest because it includes an ancient backshore beach dune complex, which forms the boundary between the inner (older) and outer (younger) Arctic Coastal Plain.[↑]
4. See Discovering Reality, eds.Merrill B. Hintikka and Sandra Harding, New York: Springer, 1983; Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 1991; Linda Alcoff and Elizabeth Potter, Feminist Epistemologies, New York, Routledge, 1993; Sandra G. Harding, ed., The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, New York: Routledge, 2004; Marianne Janack, “Standpoint Epistemology Without the ‘Standpoint’?: An Examination of Epistemic Privilege and Epistemic Authority,” Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 12:2 (Spring 2007): 125-139; Chris Cuomo, “Critiques of Science” in Women, Science, and Myth, Sue V. Rosser, Ed. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Press, 2008, 365-371.[↑]
5. Nancy Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism,” in Discovering Reality, eds. Merrill B. Hintikka and Sandra Harding, New York: Springer, 1983: 283-310.[↑]
6. Sandra Harding, “Introduction: Eurocentric Scientific Illiteracy: A Challenge for the World Community,” in The “Racial” Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future, Sandra Harding, ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993: 1-22.[↑]