Supporting Alaska’s Next Generation of Indigenous Scientists: A Q&A with Dr. Courtney Carothers and Dr. Jessica Black | Article

The land that we now know as Alaska has been cared for by Alaska Native peoples for thousands of years. Eleven distinct peoples live on this landscape, representing a wide array of languages, livelihoods, and histories. Today, Alaska Natives collectively make up almost 20 percent of the state’s population. Despite the long-standing presence of Alaska Native peoples on this land, they are vastly underrepresented in institutions of power such as universities or state and federal management agencies. The exclusion of Indigenous knowledge in academic courses and resource management practices has been and continues to be harmful to Alaska Native peoples and the health of Alaska’s natural environment.

Tamamta Annual Retreat Participants and Guests at the Howard Luke Gaalee'ya Spirit Camp on the Tanana River, August 26, 2022. Photo credit: Tamamta Program.

One group working to address these inequities is Tamamta, a program within the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) funded by the National Science Foundation. Tamamta is aiming to transform graduate education and research in fisheries science by elevating Indigenous knowledge and supporting Indigenous students. EESI spoke with two UAF professors helping to lead Tamamta: Dr. Jessica Black, a Gwich’in scholar researching governance and wellbeing among Alaska Native peoples, and Dr. Courtney Carothers, a settler scholar focusing on environmental anthropology in fisheries systems.

EESI: How did Tamamta get started and what brought you both to this work?

Carothers: Before we began Tamamta, Jessica and I and a few other colleagues came together to work on projects with shared interests and build relationships across Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. My work was focused on looking at some state and federal fisheries policies that have dispossessed Indigenous peoples from their fishing rights. But the common narrative told is that these are value-neutral policies rather than products of Eurocentrism and institutionalized racism. And these were similar findings to Jessica’s work on Indigenous sovereignty, governance, and wellness. This pervasive structural racism in our institutions has lived impacts: Indigenous hunters and fishers are being regulated out of their fishing livelihoods and are ticketed, fined, and arrested for living their ways of life.

Tamamta grew out of this shared recognition that there are big transformations needed in how we teach about, research, and govern fisheries systems. The main thrust of it is to support Indigenous students to get their graduate degrees in fisheries and marine sciences as they become the next generation of scientists and managers. We are doing this work with the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at UAF to address the continued erasure of Indigenous stewardship. Where we teach is in the homelands of the Lower Tanana Dena peoples who have stewarded these fisheries, rivers, and lands for 14,000-plus years, but there is no mention of that in most of our classes. When fisheries governance is taught, it is only taught from a Western European perspective. We created Tamamta with the deep recognition of these inequities and of Indigenous students feeling like they could not even get their degree in fisheries at our university because it was perpetuating such racism and exclusion.

Black: What brought me to this work are similar things to those Courtney has already talked about, but also just my experience as an Indigenous scholar. I was often the only Native person in my classes, and I felt like I had to be responsible to carry the message of Indigenous stewardship and history. It is still my experience a lot of times. So I was thinking how wonderful it would be if we had a cohort of Native scholars going through this experience together to support one another, to bring forth the message collectively, and then infiltrate these systems of power with their knowledge systems and their ancestral wisdom carrying forth from 10,000 years. Our fisheries really depend on our relationship with the fish, but we have very little say in management, and I wanted to see that change. I like to say that it is a bundle of sticks that brought me to this work, different visions I had for wellness and healthy populations and the knowledge that my people have been here so long. And they, too, know what to do.

EESI: There have been two cohorts of Tamamta fellows so far. What has their experience in the program been like? What knowledge have you learned from them?

Carothers: All of our fellows are Indigenous students, and all but one are Alaska Native students. They have all shared their struggle with Western education and how this program has been a space where they feel comfortable to bring their whole selves. We are trying to teach fisheries and uplift Indigenous knowledge systems in different ways than has been done before, at least in our university. Our approach in this work is to recognize Indigenous knowledge systems as their own intact, inherently valid systems that are similar to Western sciences, but also very different. We also approach our classes not as instructors, but as co-learners. We have learned so much from our students—they are all leaders in their communities and are doing so much in addition to being students in this program.

EESI: Courtney, you mentioned that Alaska Native knowledge and history is often erased from coursework at the University of Alaska. How do you go about the process of working with professors to re-envision these courses so that they reflect the people who live in these communities?

Carothers: The students themselves are bringing their perspectives and knowledge systems into the classrooms. But it has been really hard. They endure a lot of emotional labor and potentially trauma as a result of having to be that voice in the room that is trying to represent some of what is not being taught, like Jessica said. Over the years working with our faculty, I have felt that a lot of this stems from the invisibility of these inequities, which is also reflective of the persistent Eurocentrism and racism in Alaska. With Tamamta, we invite elders to speak in classes. We also want to develop a curriculum that we can share with faculty. We are hosting racial equity dialogues with First Alaskans Institute, sharing our lived experiences as a way to learn. Once you know this kind of exclusion is happening and that you are perpetuating this system of racism in your classrooms, most people want to change. But it is deep work. It is not like ‘here is this paper,’ it is reflecting on the whole paradigm of how and what we are teaching.

Black: To add to that, one thing I try to do is engage in personal conversations, emphasizing to my colleagues the importance of learning about these different Alaska Native peoples and knowledge systems. I would not say I am trying to convince them, but I am trying to help them recognize the truth. It is very shocking for some, because they have learned about science and their specialty from a point of recent history, and so, in a way, we are shattering everything they have learned. Having those conversations is like a marathon. Sometimes I send them a paper to get grounded in what I am talking about, and then answer their questions. But I also ask them to do their own work. I will say, ‘why don’t you start with this dialogue, or this reading, then let's have a conversation.’

EESI: What kinds of research projects are Tamamta fellows and faculty involved in?

Carothers: We have some projects like the Indigenizing Salmon Science and Management project that Jessica leads and that several of our students are engaged in, as well as other projects led by other Tamamta-affiliated faculty. But students also come to Tamamta at a Master's or PhD level and have funding to do their own projects. So we are encouraging students to work with their tribe to co-develop a project that is beneficial for their communities. For example, asking elders in a tribal fishery to give input into some key questions that can help guide research. That is part of our work trying to indigenize and decolonize the research process. There is a history of extractive relationships in research, and learning about that is part of the process for non-Native faculty and students. So we are putting a lot of thought into what research is and what ethical research looks like.

Black: We do provide guidance to all of our students because Tamamta really is about centering Indigenous knowledge, uplifting it, and putting it into its rightful place. Some of our students have gone through such a journey. I know, because I did too. You are so trained in Western thinking through school that you sometimes have to compartmentalize your life. And we reassure them that you do not have to do that. We encourage them to uplift their ideas and their elders’ ideas. We invite elders to sit in on the calls with us. We have a couple of students who are doing more Western science studies, but we encourage them to also bring in Indigenous perspectives. So we play a delicate role of advising and encouraging them but not pushing them to do what we want them to do.

EESI: Jessica, you talked about disrupting systems of power around natural resource management in Alaska. Has Tamamta been working towards this? How do you envision making inroads into federal and state management programs?

Black: It is really hard to make change within those systems. I want to say dang near impossible at times. The root systems of racism and oppression are very real and entrenched. I try to go to as many Board of Fisheries or every Board of Game meetings that I can and testify exactly to the points I am making here. There is a cadre of us at Tamamta and other partner organizations that push government entities to do the work to be more equitable, such as racial equity dialogues and honoring policies that uphold subsistence ways of life. But it is really hard to make change and the pressure is very real. And that is why a program such as Tamamta is so important. Because if you have a group of students who become working professionals in these systems, it may not change overnight, but the presence and the advocacy start to make substantial and systematic change. As faculty, we are protective of our students and we do not want them to be oppressed or on the receiving end of racism that is very insidious at times. I would say that we are also targeted for the work that we do, in small but calculated ways. But because we have each other, we are in lockstep to push our goals forward.

EESI: What do you envision for the future of Tamamta?

Black: That we uplift Indigenous knowledge systems and peoples to their rightful place in institutions of education and governance. As a person from the Yukon River, seeing our fisheries completely collapse under state and federal management is one of the biggest heartbreaks of my life. And I know it would have never been that way had Indigenous peoples been in charge because we live in such a close relationship with the land and animals. And so we need to rectify and have conversations about those past wrongs and current wrongs and recognize tribal sovereignty and stewardship. It is not something that is going to take away from anyone, it is only going to make the systems better and bring them back to a healthier place. I want to see my students thrive and be valued for what they know and bring to the institutions from their elders and their ancestors. I want to see institutions of education treat Indigenous knowledge equitably and not subsume it under Western science. I want to see my elders feel like they can come to campus anytime they want and walk into a class and share what they know. It can really go a long way to healing generational trauma caused by education. That's my vision.

This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Interview by: Emma Johnson