All of Us

In Alaska, Indigenous communities are prohibited from fishing while commercial trawlers tow nets that catch everything in their path — discarding the salmon that is caught in the process. 

“I grew up on salmon, which we consider a relative. When they're not doing well, neither are we, physically and culturally,” said Dr. Jessica Black, who is from Fort Yukon and the village of Nana. “In the Yukon River, populations of Chinook and chum salmon have almost collapsed. When you’ve made the people of a place invisible or excluded them, there are severe consequences.”

Alaska needs a paradigm shift that centers Indigenous perspectives. Led by NCEAS in 2016 and 2017, the State of Alaska's Salmon and People (SASAP) bridged Indigenous and Western science knowledge systems to create an equitable decision-making platform for salmon management and set a shared research agenda with efforts that continue today.

The relationship between salmon and Alaska Native people stretches back over 10,000 years, but Western salmon management ignores millennia of traditional knowledge. It harms Indigenous people through policies like criminalized subsistence fishing and revoked rural fishing rights. 

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation invested $2.3 million over two years to synthesize knowledge about the interconnected relationship of people and wild salmon in Alaska. Over 100 researchers, practitioners and Indigenous leaders formed eight working groups to focus on social, legal, cultural, economic and environmental concerns. 

Drs. Jessica Black and Courtney Carothers of University Alaska Fairbanks, along with Dr. Rachel Donkersloot of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, led the “Sociocultural Dimensions of Salmon Systems” and “Well-Being and Alaska Salmon Systems” SASAP working groups. These went beyond traditional ecology to elevate the values and human relationships that are marginalized in quantitative research. Researchers collected and analyzed oral histories, archival records and Indigenous knowledge to create new conceptual frameworks. All working groups came together at NCEAS to collaborate and exchange knowledge. 

“When the working groups convened at NCEAS, we crossed disciplines and cultures and ages and career stages. From the first welcome, we felt included. As a host institution, NCEAS supported disrupting the presumed hierarchy of Western science,” said Carothers.

Participants brought with them feedback collected from Indigenous Alaskans through events and conferences. Community surveys informed the content and format of the information shared on AlaskaSalmonandPeople.org data portal, a key SASAP tool. The online resource aggregates western science and Indigenous knowledge with the aim of making salmon decision-making more inclusive and equitable.

As part of this process, NCEAS launched a Data Task Force to wrangle 9GB of disparate datasets into standardized, searchable formats for more efficient working group research. This “search and rescue” effort changed the game by offering a comprehensive view of the entire Alaskan system. The data is available in the online portal for all salmon stakeholders.

"The challenge for any private funder is the perception that Alaskan salmon systems and salmon people are in much better shape than in the rest of the world. Despite this perception, people are experiencing salmon loss. There's a need for more up-to-date information and a coherent Alaska salmon research agenda,” said SASAP co-principal investigator Ian Dutton, who formerly led Nautilus Impact Investing.

Many voices contributed to SASAP work, and many more projects have stemmed from it. Black and Carothers continue their work through Tamamta, an NSF-funded graduate research traineeship to reverse the near-complete absence of Alaska Native people in resource management. Along with colleagues in the Indigenizing Salmon Science and Management project, Black and Carothers return to NCEAS for an annual writing retreat. 

“These projects [take the same] participatory approach that enabled us to come together through SASAP,” said Carothers. “We’ve been back to NCEAS three times with our own projects, along with Indigenous Elders and others who wanted to gather again in the meeting space and be part of the NCEAS community.”

Through SASAP, NCEAS has built capacity for further transformational work in Alaska salmon systems.