Indigenous Elder Perspectives on Bering Sea Environmental Change, 2019

In 2019, ten Elders from eight Indigenous communities gathered in Nome, Alaska to share their experiences. The dataset likely contains their transcribed perspectives on rapid environmental changes, including unprecedented sea ice loss in winters 2018 and 2019. It was created through a partnership between the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) and the Bering Sea Elders Group (BSEG).

Use Cases

• Analyze qualitative themes of environmental change impacts based on Elder observations and stories.
• Study the relationship between sea ice loss and community food security as described in the narratives.
• Model socio-ecological resilience based on Indigenous knowledge of shifting travel and infrastructure conditions.
• Compare local observations of winter storm activity and air temperature increases with instrumental records.

Strengths

• Directly captures perspectives from ten Elders representing over 70 Indigenous communities.
• Focuses on a documented period of unprecedented sea ice decline (lowest in at least 160 years).
• Partnership between scientific (SEARCH) and Indigenous (BSEG) organizations suggests collaborative data creation.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last updated 2021-12-31 23:59:59.999000; freshness should be verified.

Provenance

Source

Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) and Bering Sea Elders Group (BSEG)

Collection Method

Two-day round-table gathering and transcription of Elder perspectives.

Time Range

2019 (gathering), referencing observations from winters 2018 and 2019.

Freshness

Last updated 2021-12-31 23:59:59.999000

Geography

Bering Sea region, specifically eight Indigenous communities in Alaska.