Subsistence in Alaska's National Parks: What Iñupiat Harvesters and Park Staff Say

Why it matters

Subsistence — harvesting animals and plants to live and to carry on cultural traditions — is vital to Alaska Native peoples for food, culture, community and spirit. Today it is managed under state and federal regulations, but a long history of Alaska Native stewardship came before that system and continues alongside it.

The study

Researchers interviewed, and held focus groups with, Iñupiat harvesters in Northwest Alaska — around the Western Arctic National Parklands (Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument and Noatak National Preserve) — and National Park Service staff who manage subsistence across the state. They asked about:

1. communication and relationships between harvesters and park staff;
2. barriers to better subsistence management, and solutions.

Where harvesters and staff agreed

Both groups saw ways to improve management within the Park Service:

• pairing knowledge — the knowledge Indigenous harvesters hold with the scientific knowledge of non-Indigenous agency staff;
• tackling bureaucratic and institutional barriers to Indigenous stewardship;
• better community engagement and informal communication;
• making the public process for discussing and changing subsistence rules easier to take part in.

Specific steps both named:

• hire local and Indigenous people into park management;
• reduce staff turnover;
• visit rural villages in person more often, and change the style of engagement.

Park staff added that this needs more funding, time and people for village outreach — which could also ease harvesters' sense that the agency is slow to respond to their needs.

Beyond the current system

Harvesters also described deep power imbalances, rooted in colonization, that remain built into today's management. Self-determination and sovereignty over resource stewardship was the most common theme in their interviews, along with ways to carry on Indigenous stewardship outside the federal and state systems.

The authors conclude that the research points to Indigenous-led pathways for conservation in national parklands, and to the importance of addressing power, equity and sovereignty in managing shared resources.

Sources

Based on "Perspectives of Indigenous harvesters and agency staff on subsistence management in Alaska national parks," National Park Service, which reproduces a plain-language summary and the abstract of K. M. Green, A. H. Beaudreau, M. K. Lukin and N. M. Ardoin, "Pathways to subsistence management in Alaska national parks: Perspectives of harvesters and agency staff," People and Nature (2022); rewritten in hubnx's own words. The source's photograph, credited only to a named photographer, is not reproduced.