1      Elizabth Marino, Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground: An Ethnography of Climate Change in Shishmaref, Alaska (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2015).

2      Newtok is a well-publicized example of the lessons learned with climate-change induced relocation, although the socio-eco-nomic cost of the move itself is typically the focus in a range of scholarship and journalism, for instance: Claire Chandler, “Communication Glitches Stall Newtok, Alaska, Relocation Effort,” Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, 2005; Robin Broen and F. Stuart Chapin, “Adaptive Governance and Institutional Strategies for Climate-Induced Community Relocations in Alaska,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110.23 (2013): 9320˛25; and, Isaac Stone Simonelli, “Newtok to Mertarvik,” Alaska Business Monthly 34.12 (2018): 40-47.

3      The first studies that included these three villages were made publicly available by the mid-1980s. See for instance: State of Alaska. Department of Commerce, Community & Economic Development. Division of Community Advocacy (Formerly Department of Community & Regional Affairs). Community Profile of Newtok. Draft, 1986.

4      From the U.S. Census Bureau: census.gov/data/developers/data-sets/acs-5year.html

5      Behar, Ruth. The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1996.

6      Richard Wagamese, One Native Life (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2008).

7      Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014.), 185-91. 

8      Richard Wagamese, One Story, One Song (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2011).

9      R. Barnhardt and A.O. Kawagley, eds., Sharing Our Pathways: Native Perspective on Education in Alaska (Fairbanks: Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska, 2011).

10      Inuit Circumpolar Council, inuitcircum polar.com.


11      Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 81.

12      Inuit Circumpolar Council, inuitcircum polar.com.

13      Richard Wagamese, One Story, One Song (Berkeley: Douglas & McIntyre, 2011), 114.

14      On Indigenous knowledge in relation to botanical science, see Wendy Makoons Geniusz, Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009).

15      Terry Tempest Williams, An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.)

16      John Muir, Travels in Alaska (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915), 5.

17      John Koepke, see pages 148-54 in this book.

18      Jonathan Crary, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World (London: Verso, 2022), 43.

19      Thomas King, The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003), 106.