What Skagway and Nome Residents See Changing: An Oral History Project

Environmental changes are happening faster in the high latitudes of the Arctic than anywhere else on the planet, according to the National Park Service. Most people have heard about melting glaciers, bigger wildfires, fiercer storms and thinning sea ice. Few know what Alaskans see in their own surroundings every day, or how it affects their lives.

A fish camp near Nome damaged by Typhoon Merbok in September 2022. Photo: FEMA / Jeremy Edwards.

A project built on local witnesses

The Park Service’s Alaska Region teamed with the Oral History Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Project Jukebox) to record people in two coastal areas with very different conditions and histories. Conversations were held in 2018 and 2019 with long-term residents and Park Service employees in Skagway and Nome. The project is called Observing Change in Alaska’s National Parks, and the complete interviews are on the Project Jukebox site.

The Park Service argues that people with deep ties to land and sea are key witnesses to environmental change. Their accounts help show how things have changed and how people are affected, and they help with planning to adapt. Recording traditional local knowledge is also critical for interpreting scientific data collected earlier.

Two places compared

Both communities talked about shorter, warmer winters, new animal species arriving with warmer temperatures, the spread of different vegetation, and how people are adapting. The Park Service says finding such connections builds understanding between people in different places.

The series

The series has further pages on subjects the interviews cover: weather, seasonal change, ice conditions, permafrost, vegetation, wildlife, life in coastal Alaska, climate change and Alaska’s national parks, and climate change and the reader.

The project was a joint effort of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program and Project Jukebox. A grant from the Park Service’s Ocean Alaska Science and Learning Center, aimed at baseline data gaps in Alaska’s coastal parks, paid for it.

Sources

• National Park Service, Conversations About Change, part of the series Observing Change in Alaska’s National Parks; rewritten in hubnx’s own words. Other pictures on the page are left out.