A new Arctic partnership

A new Arctic partnership

UTQIAĠVIK, ALASKA - Colorful sticky notes and creased agendas fluttered to the floor as 40 or so people grabbed phones and rushed to the long series of windows. A polar bear had been spotted checking out a series of empty sled dog cages nearby.

Seeing the young bear, or "nanuq" in Iñupiaq, from the Barrow Arctic Research Center was a special highlight of the four-day Arctic ACTION Workshop. The workshop took place at the end of May in Utqiaġvik, Alaska, the northernmost community in the United States.

The bright sun - which will not set again until Aug. 2 - lit up the still-present snow but didn't quite wash out the bear. A North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management staff member on a snowmachine soon nudged it away.

The workshop was convened to support the ACTION project. ACTION - Alaska Coastal Cooperative for Co-producing Transformative Ideas and Opportunities in the North - seeks ways for both Indigenous and Western knowledge to address flooding, erosion and permafrost thaw in eight Arctic coastal communities.

The project, funded by the National Science Foundation, is co-led by University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Chris Maio and a team of many - Indigenous and social scientists, oceanographers and permafrost researchers.

Community leaders in attendance included Utqiaġvik Mayor Asisaun Toovak, Hooper Bay Tribal Administrator Jan Olson and Deva-Lynn Pokiak, community liaison officer for Tuktoyaktuk, Canada, among many others.

After landing in Utqiaġvik, I shuttled to my lodging, a series of gray steel shipping containers welded together and winterized by the oil company Shell in the early 2010s. Now owned by the Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corp., the Nanuq Den is one of many structures with a strong tie to the community's research history.

Nearby Quonset huts, built by Naval Arctic Research Laboratory personnel in the 1940s, were initially constructed to support oil and gas exploration in the area. To better understand how humans, animals and plants survive in extreme Arctic conditions, NARL quickly added scientific research to its mission.

To support Western scientific research in the Arctic, NARL sought out the expertise of the local Indigenous community. This novel, more-equal partnership set a foundation for North Slope research that remains influential today.

The polar bear had ambled onto a nearby frozen lagoon by the time I met to chat with some ACTION participants about Utqiaġvik's research history in one of the facility's sea ice labs.

"They always called it the 'NARL effect,' where something about this piece of land and the facility brings people together, and you come up with solutions and ideas that would never happen otherwise," said Ben Jones, a research associate professor at the UAF Institute of Northern Engineering.

"I see the same thing with ACTION…I call it the 'ACTION effect.'"

After some quiet murmurings of appreciation and concurrence, Maio chimed in: "You can put my name on that one!"

ACTION is evolving from what NARL initiated, emphasizing Indigenous-led research driven by community priorities - not just what outside researchers are interested in learning.

Shauna BurnSilver, an environmental social scientist at Arizona State University and one of the ACTION co-leads, noted a statement shared during the workshop by Utqiaġvik's mayor.

"The days of research being powered by outsiders are done," Toovak said.

All of this reflects a significant shift in attitudes, but the work is far from over. Workshop participants emphasized that despite stronger partnerships and increased Indigenous leadership, there is still a gap between research and implementation - putting ACTION to action.

Part of this gap stems from a lack of communication between researchers and communities. In addition, decades of accumulated knowledge can be difficult for residents to access when seeking to build better on permafrost or construct effective sea walls.

My group in the sea ice lab resonated with this last challenge. A thought was shared that ACTION is really grappling with a "human problem," one centered on communication rather than a lack of climate change data.

Social scientist BurnSilver readily agreed. "It's not the carbon," she said. "Carbon doesn't talk back."

As the workshop wrapped up, I occasionally glanced out the window at the young bear run-stumbling through the rotting snow, back toward the sea ice losing its grip on the land. The workshop closed after four days spent discussing a human problem - how people share knowledge and build trust to turn research into action - while outside, the silent force driving so many of those conversations continued to reshape the Arctic.

Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has provided the Alaska Science Forum column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Sara Wilbur is a communications coordinator for the Geophysical Institute public information office.