It has been over a year since a group of partners hosted a two day symposium centered around the theme of “Tradition, Science, and Stewardship” in the Copper Valley. Organizations and agencies included Ahtna Heritage Foundation, Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission (AITRC), Copper River Watershed Project (CRWP), Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), Wrangell Institute for Science and Environment (WISE), Wrangell Mountains Center (WMC), Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (WRST), Prince William Sound Science Center (PWSSC) and the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).

I touched base with representatives from some of these entities to talk about their relationship to the tradition, science, and stewardship theme, and how the symposium impacted their work and collaborations over the past year. 

Lasting Lessons

One year on, it was interesting to see what lessons participants still found to be impactful. Dr. Barbara Cellarius, Cultural Anthropologist/Subsistence Coordinator for the WRST Resource Stewardship & Science Team remembered Ahtna, Inc Special Projects Manager Bruce Cain's presentation on working with indigenous communities in the Ahtna region. In an email, she said, “Although I've sometimes encouraged outside researchers to share their results locally, I hadn't thought as much about the need to encourage researchers coming into the area for a natural or physical science project to take the time to reach out to and get to know and engage with the area communities before and during a project.”

Dr. Mark Miller, the Team Lead of Resource Stewardship & Science and Research Coordinator at WRST, said he was particularly impacted by the opportunity to hear from Alaska Native elders during the symposium. 

Both WISE Executive Director Robin Mayo and WRST Team Lead for the Division of Interpretation and Education and Public Affairs Officer Carrie Wittmer still vividly recall linguist and UAF Professor Emeritus with the Alaska Native Language Center James Kari’s presentation about Ahtna place names. These place names contain rich information about a place’s past and current geomorphology, animal, and human land use. 

Mayo also recalled being impressed with the power of interdisciplinary work evident in several presentations, citing WRST geologist Mike Loso’s collaborative work with WRST archaeologist Lee Reininghaus as an example. 

Continuing Collaborations

“Not any one group or one perspective can tackle all the challenges we face as a region alone,” said Kate Morse, CRWP Program Director. “Resources are getting slimmer, challenges are getting greater, equipment and other stuff is getting more expensive. People need to work together if they’re going to get it done.” Although many entities were already cooperating, the hope was the symposium would lead to even greater collaboration. This does appear to have panned out. 

WRST’s Miller highlighted the collaboration between WRST and ADF&G, UAF, and PWSCC. These partners have joined forces on three Copper River sockeye research projects. He said, “two of these projects include components that will help us reach out to local community members and share information about the research projects and how results can be applied to management decision making.”

ADF&G Area Manager Mark Somerville said ADF&G’s work with PWSSC has increased since the symposium. “We’d already started working a little bit together. We’re certainly collaborating a bit more. They’re much better at finding funding sources that we’re not able to get as a department, but the department has expertise, equipment, and personnel.”

WISE’s Mayo said she utilized her symposium connections to add to the WISE Science Lecture Series, a channel through which researchers can communicate their results directly to the public. “I met so many people who we’re now able to use as educational resources, whose names I had heard but not met.”

CRWP’s Morse said that although some collaborations were in place, getting to work together with AITRC during the symposium strengthened the relationship between them. Their work at the symposium grew into proposals for new projects. Morse also said CRWP’s relationship with WISE and NPS was strengthened. In addition, the event was helpful for introducing the organization’s new executive director to partners and the public in the Copper Basin. 

WRST’s Wittmer highlighted the opportunity to connect with members of the local public, including people who might be interested in applying for jobs in interpretation and education. She added, “The symposium was also a chance for long-term relationship building between local residents who care about park lands.”

Reflections on Tradition, Science, and Stewardship

Mayo said that at WISE, “We really see stewardship as an ethic that can be taught. How do we teach it? Usually just by doing things. First you need to understand something. Then you would learn to love it and then to respect it. It’s hard to change that order. It’s hard to say, ‘OK, kids, let’s save the Earth.’ You start by saying, ‘OK kids, look at how amazing this butterfly is.” 

Mayo continued, “To me, science and tradition all point to the same end. The best scientists I know got into it because they already cared about the resource. So many fisheries biologists got into it because they already loved fish. That knowledge is something that feeds into it. Not just, ‘Let’s take care of it,’ but ‘This is what this looks like to take care of it. This is what this needs.’”

ADF&G’s Somerville highlighted the importance of science: accurate data collection, and having good data over a long period of time, in order to inform the agency’s job of managing the fishery. He sees his role as a steward above all, and everything else he does as subservient to that end. 

Somerville acknowledged the role of traditional knowledge is minimal in day-to-day management of the fisheries, which relies on established protocols and mandates. He said that traditional knowledge does come into play in the big picture. “We use traditional knowledge from Athna elders to understand where we are compared to where we used to be, to look at long term trends,” he said, “I can look at numbers from the 1970s and that tells me one thing, but knowing salmon used to be in certain streams, or knowing something’s changed in a drainage can give us an idea of where we’re going in the future.” 

Somerville gave another example, “A gentleman up in Chistochina told us his grandparents told him they used to walk across all the rivers here. The flows were that low. It was colder; the glaciers weren’t melting as much. Now our paradigm has been you don’t walk across these rivers. As the glaciers recede the flows will go down and we’ll be in the same paradigm his grandparents were in. That’s where the traditional knowledge comes in.”

I talked at length with Somerville about how he has established relationships with a cross section of the community to learn more about past and present fishery use. He remarked, “You don’t just walk up and say ‘What’s changed? OK, thank you, bye.’”  He described spending time sitting at fish wheels, attending cultural events, even seeing people at the store. 

Somerville acknowledged it was a good question when I asked, “What happens when you retire?” He is hopeful that the people who are currently coming up through the Department will continue these relationships, but also reflected that people tend to move from job to job more now than they did in his or his parents’ generation. That can make it harder to build trust with local communities. “The constant is the data, analyzing it the same way,” he said. 

CRWP’s Morse said, “I feel like the theme of the symposium is the theme of the work we try to do: Listen to the community concerns and knowledge gained by observations made living and working in the region, tie in the science, especially knowing the impact of science on management, and then apply it to the stewardship.” 

Morse acknowledged that sometimes elders have been wary of efforts to engage traditional users. She shared a comment from one elder saying, “‘I’m so tired of people telling me, ‘We’re here to help you, we’re here to save you,’ when we didn’t need your help until you showed up.’ There’s a lot of history there that has created a sense of distrust for the people trying to engage local people.” Still, Morse said continuing to seek input from throughout the community including elders is a crucial part of her work. 

WRST’s Miller spoke about how stewardship plays into the National Park’s responsibility. In an email, he said, “I am charged with acquiring and providing the best available scientific information to support decision-making and the stewardship of park resources and values. We use the word stewardship deliberately as acknowledgement that we are stewards of natural and cultural resources and values on behalf of the American people, including future generations,” He also stated that “Acknowledging the value and relevance of traditional knowledge is itself a form of stewardship.” 

The Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission (AITRC) is widely recognized for its model of empowered resource management. The organization’s central mission and projects embody the combination of tradition, science, and stewardship. However representatives from AITRC were not available for comment on this article. 

All involved acknowledge the value of continuing these events in the future. Informal connections between people formed at meals and other social events were an important part of the last symposium. Here’s hoping those conversations will occur again soon. 

Article by Allison Sayer