Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Healthy You
    • Job listings
    • Q&As
    • Special sections
  • Multimedia
    • Quiz
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • App
  • FAQs
    • Advertising
    • Subscriptions
    • For APHA members
    • Internships
    • Change of address
  • About
    • About The Nation's Health
    • Submissions
    • Permissions
    • Purchase articles
    • Join APHA
  • Contact us
    • Feedback
  • APHA
    • AJPH
    • NPHW

User menu

  • My alerts

Search

  • Advanced search
The Nation's Health
  • APHA
    • AJPH
    • NPHW
  • My alerts
The Nation's Health

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Content
    • Current issue
    • Past issues
    • Healthy You
    • Job listings
    • Q&As
    • Special sections
  • Multimedia
    • Quiz
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • App
  • FAQs
    • Advertising
    • Subscriptions
    • For APHA members
    • Internships
    • Change of address
  • About
    • About The Nation's Health
    • Submissions
    • Permissions
    • Purchase articles
    • Join APHA
  • Contact us
    • Feedback
  • Follow The Nation's Health on Twitter
  • Follow APHA on Twitter
  • Visit APHA on Facebook
  • Follow APHA on Youtube
  • Follow APHA on Instagram
  • Follow The Nation's Health RSS feeds
NewsSpecial Report

US tribes working to adapt in face of climate change threats: Livelihoods, economies at growing risk

Kim Krisberg
The Nation's Health April 2020, 50 (2) S7;
Kim Krisberg
  • Search for this author on this site
Figure

Eunice Brower cleans waterfowl with her daughter in their home in Nuiqsut, Alaska, in May 2019. Warmer temperatures in the village caused by climate change make it more difficult to hunt certain animals and keep food fresh in ice cellars.

Photo by Bonnie Jo Mount, courtesy The Washingtong Post/Getty Images

Not far from the Arctic Ocean in the middle of one of Alaska’s busiest oil fields, the small village of Nuiqsut is at the epicenter of the climate crisis, facing threats from both the cause and effects of climate change.

“We’re seeing it first-hand,” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, an Inupiaq activist and member of the Nuiqsut City Council. “The amount of change we’re going through is very concerning.”

Nuiqsut is already experiencing shifts in the local environment, such as earlier thaws and warmer temperatures, which are making it harder to sustain traditional ways of survival, Ahtuangaruak said. Ice cellars, for example, which have been used for generations to safely store food in leaner months, are succumbing to erosion and flooding. Unseasonable weather is making it harder to dry fish and meat, and it is getting more difficult to hunt whales and caribou, both key sources of affordable food and nutrition.

“Because of the unique relationship that tribal communities have with the land, climate change poses a real threat to their ways of life.”

— Ivana Castellanos

The town has grocery stores, but prices are high because everything has to be airlifted in.

“You could spend your whole paycheck and still not feed your family,” Ahtuangaruak. an APHA member, told The Nation’s Health. “And it doesn’t even have the nutritional value we need for our harsh environment.”

As climate change continues, tribal communities like Nuiqsut are especially vulnerable to its direct and indirect impacts. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the changes threaten indigenous peoples’ livelihoods and economies. Such disproportionate impacts, coupled with existing disparities in health and opportunity, make climate planning and adaptation critical.

“Because of the unique relationship that tribal communities have with the land, climate change poses a real threat to their ways of life,” said Ivana Castellanos, MPH, a policy analyst at APHA’s Center for Public Health Policy, which convenes the Tribal Public and Environmental Health Think Tank. “We have to do more to be inclusive of traditional knowledge as a valued resource in the fight against climate change.”

At the National Indian Health Board, the Climate Ready Tribes Initiative, a program funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has supported 10 tribes in conducting local climate work and research, according to Angelica Al Janabi, MPH, the initiative’s public health project coordinator. Efforts range from climate-related health research to community outreach and education.

For example, Blackfeet Nation in Montana convened a climate-health advisory team of tribal representatives, and developed a climate communications plan to guide its outreach. The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in Washington indigenized CDC’s Building Resilience Against Climate Effects framework to make it more relevant to tribal needs and created modules fellow tribes can use. And the Lummi Nation, also in Washington, used funds to boost monitoring and education related to harmful algae blooms.

“In many ways, tribes are leading the way in this area,” Janabi told The Nation’s Health. “But at the same time, we do need more funding to maintain and grow this work.”

In the northwest corner of California, traditional knowledge and practices are key to the Karuk Tribe’s new climate adaptation plan, which it released last year. For example, the plan elevates traditional fire use as a solution to increasing wildfire risks, said Bill Tripp, deputy director of eco-cultural revitalization at the tribe’s Department of Natural Resources. For a century, he said, the tribe has been prohibited from maintaining local forests using indigenous fire regimes and over time, that absence helped create the conditions for massive wildfires.

“What’s unique about our plan is our proposal to once again embrace fire as a part of our natural system,” Tripp told The Nation’s Health.

The tribe’s first demonstration project, created in concert with the new climate plan, is now underway and focuses on integrated fire management.

For more on tribal health and climate change, visit bit.ly/healthtribes. For more on the tribal think tank, visit www.apha.org.

  • Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

The Nation's Health: 50 (2)
The Nation's Health
Vol. 50, Issue 2
April 2020
  • Table of Contents
  • Table of Contents (PDF)
  • Index by author
  • Complete Issue (PDF)

Healthy You

Quiz

Print
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Email Article
We do not capture any email addresses.
Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
US tribes working to adapt in face of climate change threats: Livelihoods, economies at growing risk
(Your Name) has sent you a message from The Nation's Health
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this item on The Nation's Health website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
US tribes working to adapt in face of climate change threats: Livelihoods, economies at growing risk
Kim Krisberg
The Nation's Health April 2020, 50 (2) S7;

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Share
US tribes working to adapt in face of climate change threats: Livelihoods, economies at growing risk
Kim Krisberg
The Nation's Health April 2020, 50 (2) S7;
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
Tweet Widget Facebook Like LinkedIn logo

Jump to section

  • Top

More in this TOC Section

  • All of Us participants learning about their genetic makeup: Program gives back to its volunteers
  • All of Us finds new ways to stay connected during pandemic
  • Q&A with investigator Cheryl Clark: Caring for communities, not just conducting research: Diversity among investigators, scientists part of All of Us program
Show more Special Report

Subjects

  • Preparedness
  • Minority Health
  • Community Health

Popular features

  • Healthy You
  • Special sections
  • Q&As
  • Quiz
  • Podcasts

FAQs

  • Advertising
  • Subscriptions
  • For APHA members
  • Submissions
  • Change of address

APHA

  • Join APHA
  • Annual Meeting
  • NPHW
  • AJPH
  • Get Ready
  • Contact APHA
  • Privacy policy

© 2022 The Nation's Health

Powered by HighWire