Far from the farm, Alaskans give Stanford students a window into Arctic life in the age of climate change

When most people think of the American West, "Alaska" doesn't immediately spring to mind. But here at the Lane Center, where we define the American West as the United States west of the 100th meridian, Canada west of Ontario, and all of Mexico, Alaska is as west as it gets. In fact, it is the largest state in the American Western region, with Indigenous peoples comprising about a quarter of its population.

Like most Western states, Alaska’s average temperatures have been rising. Since the mid-20th century, the state has been experiencing disproportionate climate change impacts, warming two to three times faster than the global average. The Alaskan Arctic, in particular, has been warming roughly four times as fast. Needless to say, these climate impacts are directly affecting the lives of Alaska Native communities. The Indigenous Peoples of Alaska have relied on subsistence food systems for thousands of years, and they continue to use traditional knowledge to harvest their own food from the local environment on land and at sea. Maintaining food security and sovereignty in the face of mounting climate change pressures has been challenging, but the communities are resilient and adapting. 

They also serve as instructive examples of what adaptation looks like in real life, in real time. Given the importance of Indigenous peoples to the Western region, and the centrality of climate change adaptation to the Bill Lane Center's research agenda, this year’s Sophomore College course focused on Culture, Climate, and Food Security in the Alaskan Arctic. A cohort of 12 sophomores and two student assistants embarked on their Alaska journey for two weeks in September in the very capable hands of Corinne Thomas, the Lane Center’s education manager, Roz Naylor, the course instructor, and Kristen Green, associate instructor.

Naylor is a professor emerita of global environmental policy at the Stanford Doerr School, and the founding director of Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment. Among her other bona fides, she is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a distinguished fellow at the Food Security Leadership Council. Her research and teaching focus on food systems, food security, and food policy throughout the world, and in the past, she has worked on salmon fisheries in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Green, who lives in Anchorage, received her doctoral degree from the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford. She studies how coastal communities are adapting to climate change and has years of experience working with Indigenous harvesters to support food sovereignty. The Bill Lane Center is exceptionally fortunate to partner with scholars of this caliber, affording undergraduates an immersive, educational opportunity with the best instruction Stanford has to offer.

From Anchorage up to Kotzebue and back down to Denali and Fairbanks, the students learned from Arctic communities at the frontlines of climate change – people with deep cultural knowledge of subsistence food systems and resource stewardship. Beginning their course on the Stanford campus for a week of foundational lectures and trip preparation, the cohort then flew to Anchorage where Alaskan Inuit researcher Will Lomer and his mother Pearl spoke with students about Arctic food sovereignty and climate adaptive infrastructure. Lomer shared his family’s personal experience with whaling, educating the students on subsistence food harvesting, and on how these practices are passed through generations in Iñupiat communities.

Traveling on to Kotzebue in Alaska’s Northwest Borough, the group heard from local tribal leaders, Iñupiat residents, resource managers and scientists on topics ranging from caribou management and subsistence food systems to stewardship and the transmission of Indigenous knowledge. Early in the trip, students prepared a potluck dinner for subsistence harvesters in Kotzebue, a course highlight for sophomore Chloe Hannsz. It was “heartbreaking at times,” listening to community members of a small arctic town share stories “of the intense changes that are affecting their ways of life,” Chloe recounted. Nonetheless, she left “inspired by their resiliency, hope, and dedication to building a better world.”

From Kotzebue, the group traveled back to Anchorage, which included some recreational time and many photo-worthy moments hiking up Flattop Mountain. They moved on to Denali by rail, boarding the Denali Star Train for a 230-mile ride. Out the window came a rare sighting of the Alaska Range, part of the North American West's Pacific mountain system, usually hidden by cloud cover. On view were Mount Denali, Mount Foraker, and Mount Hunter, the range’s three highest peaks.

In addition to touring Denali National Park, the group heard from National Park Service educators and enjoyed more hiking on the Mount Healy Overlook Trail.

The following day, the cohort visited Calypso Farm and Ecology Center in Fairbanks, which offers hands-on education programs to encourage local food production and environmental awareness. As global warming extends the growing season in Alaska, Calypso Farms offers training programs for rural communities on agricultural practices to support their subsistence food systems, in which Indigenous knowledge and western scientific information are exchanged.  In a lecture from Eva Dawn Burk, students learned about Indigenous representation in state and federal policy, subsistence, and local food security. An Alaska Native with both Denaakk'e and Lower Tanana Athabascan heritage, Burk has partnered with the edu

cational farm to run programs for local tribal members teaching agriculture and traditional knowledge. She is also one of few Indigenous leaders serving on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council where she advocates for fisheries management programs that support subsistence food systems and Indigenous communities. 

By the end of the course, the SoCo cohort had demonstrated deep knowledge of climate change's impact on culture and food subsistence in Alaska. For their final project, students were asked to present novel proposals at a mock Federal Subsistence Board hearing, where they represented conservation, subsistence hunter, and sports hunter interests in front of an audience of Stanford alumni from the Anchorage region. The stakes were high for the sophomores, as the mock Federal Subsistence Board was composed of Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer, director of climate initiatives for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium; Tim Fullman, a caribou ecologist at The Wilderness Society and member of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group; and Fran Ulmer, former attorney general of Alaska and former chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, who attended the event in person. After the distinguished panel commented on the proposals, the students earned high praise from Naylor. "I was truly overwhelmed and touched by your fantastic presentations," she told the students. "Your poise, grace and knowledge shined like the Northern Lights (which we will all see someday)."

By all accounts, the Lane Center’s 2026 field course in Alaska was a great success. Students conducted site visits up and down the 49th U.S. state, immersing themselves in Indigenous knowledge and meeting with rural community members, subsistence hunters, government officials, and climate and health advocates. They might have missed the Northern Lights this time around, but the places and spaces they encountered were certainly majestic in their own right. And the knowledge students gained will be carried back to Stanford and undoubtedly integrated into further scholarship and inquiry. In some cases, these kinds of immersive learning opportunities even inform academic and career choices beyond the farm. To everyone in Alaska who welcomed Bill Lane Center students, faculty and staff with warmth and spirit, Quyanaqpak (thank you very much)!