Sophomore College 2026: Culture, Climate, and Food Security in the Alaskan Arctic

Course Overview:

Alaska offers a unique opportunity for students to explore the intersection of Indigenous knowledge and culture, food systems, and climate change in a field-based setting. Alaska is by far the largest state in the American West (665 thousand square miles), equivalent to roughly one-fifth the size of the entire lower 48, and covering more territory than Texas, California, and Montana combined. It also has the largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the U.S. (1.46 million square miles). Taken together, Alaska’s extensive terrestrial and marine areas support a mixed cash and subsistence economy where communities rely on wild caught and commercially sold foods and other natural resources (oil, gas, mining) extracted for export and domestic use.

The Indigenous Peoples of Alaska, who comprise about a quarter of the state’s population, have depended on subsistence food systems for thousands of years, long before Alaska became the 49th U.S. state in 1959. Diets of both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples have evolved with Alaska’s economic and commercial development, and subsistence food systems have been increasingly impacted by climate change. According to the 2023 National Climate Assessment, Alaska has been warming two to three times as quickly as the global average since the middle of the 20th century, and the Alaskan Arctic has been warming roughly four times faster. In many respects, Arctic communities in Alaska stand at the frontlines of climate change, as rising land and ocean temperatures, melting sea ice and permafrost, coastal erosion, and other climate impacts escalate, and communities work to adapt.

This course will focus on food security and food sovereignty, climate change, and climate adaptation in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic Borough—a region traditionally, and still largely, inhabited by the Iñupiat. Iñupiat communities continue to rely on their deep indigenous knowledge systems and strong cultural practice of sharing to bolster food security and food sovereignty in the face of rising climate pressures on their land- and marine-based food systems. They also co-manage certain resources with state and federal agencies to sustain long-standing reciprocal relationships with animal populations, which helps to buffer the impacts of climate change and economic development on food availability and food prices. The Iñupiat have thus developed stewardship practices that are based on both Indigenous knowledge and western science. In 2014, the Alaska Branch of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) moved away from Western conceptualizations of what it means to be “food secure” (as defined by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) and adopted its own definition of food security based on environmental, cultural, and human health:

“Inuit Food Security is the natural right of all Inuit to be part of the ecosystem, to access food and to care-take, protect and respect all of life, land, water, and air. It allows for all Inuit to obtain, process, store, and consume sufficient amounts of healthy, nutritious, and preferred food– foods Inuit physically and spiritually crave and need from the land, air, and water. These foods provide for families and future generations through the practice of Inuit customs and spirituality, languages, knowledge, policies, management practices, and self-governance. It includes the responsibility and ability to pass on knowledge to younger generations, the taste of traditional foods rooted in place and season, knowledge of how to safely obtain and prepare traditional foods for medicinal use, clothing, housing, nutrients and, overall, how to be within one’s environment. It means understanding that food is a lifeline and a connection between the past and today’s self and cultural identity.” (ICC-Alaska, Food Security Project)

This definition of food security is comprised of six interconnecting dimensions: 1) Availability; 2) Inuit Culture; 3) Decision-Making Power and Management; 4) Health and Wellness; 5) Stability; and 6) Accessibility. In essence, food security cannot exist without food sovereignty for Inupiat communities. According to the ICC-Alaska:

“Food sovereignty is defined as the right of all Inuit to define their own hunting, gathering, fishing, land, and water policies; the right to define what is sustainably, socially, economically, and culturally appropriate for the distribution of food and to maintain ecological health; and the right to obtain and maintain practices that ensure access to tools needed to obtain, process, store, and consume traditional foods. Within the Inuit food security conceptual framework, food sovereignty is a necessity to support and maintain the six dimensions of food security”.

Structure of the Course:

The course will consist of three parts: 1) Orientation, bonding exercises, and background lectures at the Stanford campus; 2) Field study in Alaska’s Northwest Borough, centered in Kotzebue; 3) Meetings with Stanford alumni and other Alaskan experts in Anchorage before and after the field trip to Kotzebue. Students will design individual or team projects during the course and present their findings to Stanford alumni in Anchorage at the end of the course. Students might also take a 4-day trip to visit Alaska’s wilderness, either in the Noatak National Preserve or in Denali National Park and Preserve, depending on logistics.

The field study will be centered on Kotzebue, a town known by the Iñupiat as Kikiktagrut (“almost an island”), bordering land and sea. In Kotzebue, students will have an opportunity to talk to local tribal leaders and Iñupiat inhabitants, representatives of the Kikiktagrut Inupiat Corporation (KIC), and non-indigenous residents (some Stanford alumni) who live in the region. Meetings will also be arranged with resource managers and scientists at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, and representatives of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group. Near Kotzebue, students may have the opportunity to visit and stay at LaVonne's fish camp to gain a better understanding of subsistence harvesting practices. If possible, students will also meet with Seth Kantner, a well-known author and local resident of the region who has written several books on Iñupiat life and mixed food systems in the Northwest Arctic Borough (one of the books will be assigned reading for the course). Ideally, the trip will include a trip to the Noatak National Preserve where the Western Alaska caribou migration occurs. The Iñupiat rely on caribou and moose hunting a key feature of their subsistence food system. Climate change has had a large impact on the size of the Western Arctic caribou herd, which has been in steady decline since its peak in 2003. The purpose of these meetings will be to learn how the Iñupiat and local resource managers are adapting to climate change to ensure food security and cultural integrity in the region. Students will learn about the ecosystems and animal populations supporting indigenous food systems and the ways in which humans interact with the food system in the face of economic and climate changes.

Goals and learning objectives:

The goals and learning objectives of this course closely align with the mission of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Lane Center for the American West.

Before, during, and after, students will:

• Gain understanding of the complexity of social-ecological systems and the drivers of local change through a place-based educational experience
• Develop skills in assessing food security and food sovereignty in the region based on Iñupiaq vs. Western definitions
• Explore the deep historical roots of the Iñupiat in Alaska’s Northwest Borough and the ways in which Alaska differs from other U.S. western states in historical origin and contemporary economic and cultural practice
• Learn about Indigenous knowledge practices for subsistence food harvesting and storage and how these practices are passed through generations in Iñupiat communities
• Gain understanding of what adaptation to climate change looks like in practice, considering actions and linkages across scales (local to global)
• Examine the inequitable distribution of climate change impacts on food security (e.g., ecological, social/cultural) and develop skills to address them
• Develop an ability to problem-solve to address climate-induced impacts, considering global drivers and local adaptation strategies
• Learn to communicate about food security/food sovereignty and climate-related issues to a range of audiences through various approaches
• Build leadership and collaboration skills

Course Syllabus:

Instructors:

The course will be led by Roz Naylor, William Wrigley Professor of Global Environmental Policy, Emeritus, and Founder of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford. Her research focuses on policies and practices to improve food security and protect the environment on land and at sea. She has been involved in numerous field-level research projects around the world, including Alaska, and has published widely on issues related to the economics of food systems, food policy, food-energy-water interactions, climate, and blue foods (fisheries and aquaculture).

Prof. Naylor will collaborate with Dr. Kirsten Green, PhD E-IPER (2021), whose PhD thesis focused on “Respect the land: Pathways to resource stewardship and resiliency in a changing Arctic.” Dr. Green is an interdisciplinary social scientist with expertise on coastal communities’ strategies for climate adaptation. She has 15 years of experience working with Indigenous harvesters in Alaska’s Northwest Borough and other regions to support food sovereignty and holistic approaches to ecosystem well-being. She is a resident of Anchorage, Alaska, and has extensive contacts in Alaska related to this course.

The instructors are currently assembling a growing list of contacts for this course, along with details for Alaska travel options and specific lecture and meeting topics.