Woven Peoples and Place: Climate adaptation and resilience in Southeast Alaska

“So much of the climate change conversation, the science and the respective action has focused on monitoring loss,” says Annika Ord. “I’m hoping to change that.”

Annika Ord is a born and raised Juneauite, whose personal and professional passion for addressing climate change has taken her across the Southeast from the Home Shore fishing grounds of Hoonah to the icefields of Juneau. This year she earned a masters degree in geography from the University of British Columbia before accepting a new position as the climate adaptation catalyst for the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, hosted with the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Sadly, Southeast Alaskans know deeply and personally how the impacts of climate and environmental change can manifest at the local level. Our neighbors are grappling with the painful losses associated with landslides, floods and more, and Southeast Alaskans are stepping up to help each other recover from disasters while simultaneously addressing climate change at a systemic level.

The SSP is a dynamic collective impact network working to unite the diverse skills and perspectives of community and regional partners to strengthen cultural, ecological and economic resilience across Southeast Alaska. Partners range from tribal governments and municipalities, to nonprofits, research institutions, Alaska Native corporations, and land managers.

They are addressing climate change and the emergent impacts in myriad ways including carbon credit strategies, landslide and snowpack monitoring and community alert systems, salmon habitat monitoring and restoration, sustainable business coaching, renewable energy and food security initiatives, and the overall localization and empowerment of rural and Indigenous communities.

Partners not only focus on identifying and taking actions toward solutions, but also on building processes that center youth involvement and career pathways for the next generation of climate leaders.

We sat down with Annika to understand her incoming role in supporting this work and her vision for pivoting the climate change conversation away from a focus on loss, to a community-led solutions approach to adaptation, action and hope. We learn about her personal trajectory as a young Southeast Alaskan hoping to serve her community, the ways she believes the SSP can act as a model for change, and about her recent work supporting Children of the Taku Society and Taku River Tlingit First Nation’s efforts to boost Indigenous engagement on the Juneau Icefield.

Ord believes that understanding and taking action to prepare for environmental change can bring our communities closer, cultivate justice and healing, and lead toward an economically stronger and empowered Southeast Alaska for all.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Where did your interest in climate work originate?

I grew up spending time on the southern tip of the Chilkat peninsula, commercial fishing with my family, putting up food for winter, and paying attention to the tides and weather. These early years living close to the land have instilled a deep love for this place. I’m fortunate to have grown up on Lingít Aani, and honored to have learned so much from the land, waters, animals and people who make their lives here.

This last decade I spent a lot of time doing field work, and sharing stories about this place and climate change through my art practice. This work took me to the Juneau Icefield to study how glaciers are changing and to support educational programs, as well as to Gúskuu, a tiny group of Islands off of Dall Island to monitor a Steller sea lion rookery. I fished with my family on our commercial Dungeness crab boat and helped start the Selkie Zine [https://www.selkiezine.com], a small publication that collects and shares stories about our relationships to climate change and home.

Through these experiences I observed many changes that were concerning and I wanted to be part of helping communities respond to them. A lot of climate science focuses on monitoring loss or change, but it doesn’t necessarily contribute to helping us shape a more sustainable future. I went back to grad school to better understand how people are practicing science in ways that value local and Indigenous knowledge, and support community-led climate adaptation.

I know you are new to this position as a SSP catalyst having started only this spring, but how do you see your role?

My priorities and work depend on having conversations with and supporting local people, communities, tribes, land managers, business leaders, nonprofits and more. I’m working to build those foundational relationships in order to identify where the concerns are, what work is already happening in Southeast and where the gaps are. Within those gaps I’m working to understand how I can help — whether that’s connecting partners to grant opportunities, helping support community initiatives, or facilitating connections with researchers. I see my role as being a problem solver and a bridge between a lot of the great work already happening.

I’m excited to support opportunities for people — youth especially — to be active co-creators in how we adapt to climate change, and how we build more resilient and equitable social, environmental, and political systems.

That leads nicely into the work you are currently supporting on the Juneau Icefield, can you describe that program and why it’s important?

I have been working with Children of the Taku Society [https://childrenofthetaku.com] and Taku River Tlingit First Nation [https://trtfn.com] in partnership with the Juneau Icefield Research Program (JIRP) [https://juneauicefield.org/art] to support the first Lingít language immersion on the Juneau icefield which we successfully hosted this July [https://indiginews.com/features/amidst-the-glaciers-of-tlingit-territories-women-are-holding-the-embers-of-their-language].

The Juneau Icefield Research Program has been conducting science and education on the Juneau Icefield for over 75 years. Like most Western-based science programs, historically JIRP has not done a great job opening that space for Indigenous communities and youth to engage with the program or the glaciers that are part of their traditional territory. We’ve been working with Taku River Tlingit First Nation and Children of the Taku Society to help change that.

In July, nine Lingít language learners, a cultural workshop leader, and a filmmaker, along with JIRP support staff, traveled from Atlin, B.C., to one of the camps on the Juneau Icefield for six days, three of which were spent in Lingít immersion. It was amazing to be a part of and to help support.

Can you share a little about what that experience looked like on the ground?

Well, on the whole, it really exceeded our expectations. It was an amazing experience and, as a non-Indigenous person, being in that space was just such a privilege and an honor.

None of us really knew how it was going to go because it was the first partnership between all of us and the first time that Children of the Taku had done a Lingít language immersion with non-Lingít speakers present. While we were in Lingít immersion their newest speakers gave us non-Lingit speakers lessons, which was really special to have that space be so welcoming for people of all learning levels.

How was the program shaped by the landscape itself?

To be surrounded by glaciers that are actively shaping the mountains, hearing ice fall and sitting within vast expanses like that, is just deeply moving. This landscape is dynamic — both physically and symbolically — and it is an environment that the Indigenous peoples of this region have navigated for millennia. For many tribes in this region glaciers are part of their histories and territories. Lingít oral histories speak to how people navigated glaciers to access salmon, to travel, to trade, to migrate. I think it was really special for the language to be brought back to that place, for the participants and for the place itself. And it’s really a big step forward for JIRP in supporting more Indigenous leadership and engagement on the icefield.

In what ways do you see this program relate to your climate work?

In a practical sense, when it comes to the research that happens on the icefield, supporting community rooted initiatives helps build trust and relationships that have not been present historically. Moving forward we’re excited to work towards research and programs on the icefield that better reflect community climate concerns and engage local youth.

I also think that part of climate resilience is about supporting cultural resilience. There’s been so much violence and trauma against Indigenous peoples and cultures for so long. Supporting a safe space to live in the language and to learn and engage with a part of their territory, I think, is part of healing and can help with reconciliation. Having strong relationships to place, to language and to culture is an essential piece of climate resilience.

And with over 10,000 years of history in this place there is a lot for all of us to learn from the Indigenous communities of Southeast Alaska about adaptation, movement, and rebuilding through environmental change, advancing (or retreating) glaciers, and so much more. There are so many Indigenous leaders who can speak far more deeply to that, but I think it’s important for anyone working in climate science and adaptation to honor and recognize.

What does the concept of “sustainability” mean to you? How does that connect to climate work?

I think the way that SSP approaches the concept of sustainability is really powerful because it takes a holistic approach. Rather than focusing only on environmental impacts and energy systems, the SSP emphasizes how cultural, environmental and economic sustainability are all connected.

Sustainability and being capable of addressing rapid environmental change requires having strong communities that are connected to place and able to practice their traditional ways of life and support each other. It includes relationship building, reconciliation, and uplifting rural and Indigenous caretakers who are working to ensure future generations can live off this land — harvest salmon, halibut, berries, shellfish, seaweed, deer and so much more.

How does the work of SSP regionally connect to international climate conversations?

When we think about climate change globally there are really big structural and societal changes required that take a lot of political and societal will. But when it comes to the manifestations of climate change, those impacts are happening on a local scale and they look different in each place. We need strong national and global transformations, but we also really need to support healthy, local, and regional networks and collaborations. I think SSP is doing that really well.

A good demonstration of how that’s been put to work in the past includes how the SSP network was able to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic — connecting resources, building strong local support programs, getting food and fish moving across the region to those in need, and doing this all rapidly. That’s possible because of relationships, local know-how, and having a network of empowered communities that are strong in their values and commitment to place and to one another.

That’s what we need to continue to nurture here, and while every network needs to reflect the unique qualities of a place, there are lessons to be learned from what the SSP is doing in Southeast Alaska and there’s already movement and attention in replicating elements of this work elsewhere in the state.

In the Tongass we live in this rare and abundant landscape. The forest provides us with so much — it sequesters a huge amount of carbon from the atmosphere, supports rich plants and animal communities, and provides us with food and inspiration. It’s quite unique to still be able to harvest so much of our food from the land. We can learn so much from the people who live and harvest here about the changes that are occurring and how best to support healthy lands and waters globally for future generations.

To summarize such a complex conversation and approach…I’m wondering if you can share a few words or values that summarize your approach to climate work?

Relational: Our relationships to each other and to the land and waters are foundational to our ability to adapt and build resilience to climate change. Understanding the ways our communities, the lands, and the waters are interwoven is at the root of this work.

Courageous, creativity: We need to not shy away from the hard questions and the hard work. Addressing climate change can be daunting, overwhelming and sobering. We have to be willing to imagine what that future could look like and what we want to build. This means not living with our head in the sand, as well as being creative and imaginative in how we restructure and what we build. There is a huge opportunity in this process. We can choose to put on band-aid repairs or we can rebuild and restructure our communities in ways that not only better prepare us for climate change, but that bring more healing, equity and balance in our day to day lives as well. To do that we need to be courageous and we need to be creative.

• “Woven Peoples and Place” is the monthly column of the Sustainable Southeast Partnership (SSP). SSP is a dynamic collective impact network uniting diverse skills and perspectives to strengthen cultural, ecological, and economic resilience across Southeast Alaska. Follow along at sustainablesoutheast.net; on Linkedin, Instagram and Facebook at @sustainablesoutheast; and on YouTube @SustainableSoutheastAK.