Alaska Native Allotments at Risk: Technological Strategies for Monitoring Erosion and Informing Solutions in Southwest Alaska

Jonathan S. Lim (), Sean Gleason, Hannah Strehlau, Lynn Church, Carl Nicolai, Willard Church and Warren Jones
Additional contact information
Jonathan S. Lim: School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 1 South Parks Rd., Oxford OX1 3TG, UK
Sean Gleason: Hampden Sydney College, Hampden Sydney, VA 23943, USA
Hannah Strehlau: Zentrum für Baltische und Skandinavische Archäologie, 24837 Schleswig, Germany
Lynn Church: Nalaquq, Quinhagak, AK 99655, USA
Carl Nicolai: Qanirtuuq Inc., Quinhagak, AK 99655, USA
Willard Church: Independent Researcher, Quinhagak, AK 99655, USA
Warren Jones: Qanirtuuq Inc., Quinhagak, AK 99655, USA

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-19

Abstract: After the United States’ purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, Alaska Native lands have existed in a legal state of aboriginal title, whereby the land rights of its traditional occupants could be extinguished by Congress at any time. With the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, however, Alaska Native individuals were given the opportunity to select and secure a title to ancestral lands as federally administered ANCSA 14(c) allotments. Today, though, these allotments are threatened by climate-change-driven erosion. In response, our article provides an erosion monitoring tool to quantify the damage caused by coastal and riverine erosion. Using the Yup’ik (pl. Yupiit) community of Quinhagak as a case study, we employ high-precision measurement devices and archival spatial datasets to demonstrate the immense scale of the loss of cultural lands in this region. From 1976 to 2022, an average of 30.87 m of coastline were lost according to 9 ANCSA 14(c) case studies within Quinhagak’s Traditional Land Use Area. In response, we present a free erosion monitoring tool and urge tribal entities in Alaska to replicate our methods for recording and quantifying erosion on their shareholders’ ANCSA 14(c) properties. Doing so will foster urgent dialogue between Alaskan Native communities and lawmakers to determine what measures are needed to protect Alaska Native land rights in the face of new environmental challenges.

Keywords: unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs); remote sensing; Alaska high altitude photography (AHAP); satellites; erosion; climate justice; indigenous data sovereignty; archaeology; Alaskan Native; Yup’ik (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/1/248/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/1/248/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:12:y:2023:i:1:p:248-:d:1034681

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().