Graduate Students

I'm Janessa Esquible. My Ojibwe name is Ziibi. I am from southwest Detroit (Mexicantown), Michigan and am Mexican-American and Ojibwe. I am a member of the Walpole Island Band in Bkejwanong Territory in southern Ontario. I moved to Alaska in 2014 after completing my Zoology degree at Michigan State University with a specialization in American Indian Studies. I completed a Masters of Fisheries in the College of Fisheries & Ocean Sciences in 2018, where I focused on Steller sea lion stranding and infectious disease agents associated with reproductive failure. From 2016-2021 I was employed by Orutsararmiut Native Council, the Tribe of Mamterilleq/Bethel, Alaska as a Tribal Biologist and later as Natural Resources Director, where my academic journey as a PhD student also began. I am interested in how Indigenous ways of knowing and understanding are used to guide fisheries management decisions along the Kuskokwim River. I am also interested in how Yup'ik and Athabascan values are reflected in fisheries management and bridging knowledge systems. I feel it is so important for scientists, managers and biologists to reconsider what constitutes "knowledge" and to promote Indigenous land-based knowledge systems as co-equal to western science. I also have interest in better understanding the inequities inherent in fisheries management and natural resource management more broadly with hopes of contributing to positive change and a more equitable and inclusive space for Indigenous people, Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies within the fisheries realm.

I'm Karen Grosskreutz, originally from southeast Wisconsin. I’m interested in community-based, local resource management and the co-production of actionable science. My first career was as a wilderness expedition guide and trip leader, both nationally and internationally. After spending six years working seasonally in Alaska and Hawaii, I decided to return to graduate school to offer something different to the rural communities where I want to make my home. I recently completed my M.Sc. in Sustainable Resource Management from the Technical University of Munich. My research interests are in pairing Indigenous and local knowledge with Western science to inform resource management and support local governance. I would like to co-produce research that addresses a community-identified priority in the areas of coastal fisheries, food security and climate adaptation. My career goals include working with boundary-spanning agencies, organizations, and academic departments at the interface of science, management and policy to support climate change mitigation and adaptation and coastal community resilience through local resource management and governance. My current research is in the Human Dimensions of Coastal Margins, part of the EPSCoR Fire and Ice project.

Kendrick was born in Alaska and grew up in the village of Kwethluk on the Lower Kuskokwim River. He is an Alumni of Mt. Edgecumbe High School, a challenging and life changing boarding school located in Sitka, Alaska. Before college, he participated in the Rural Alaska Honors Institute (RAHI) and the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP). Both are amazing summer programs designed to prepare high school students for college. At UAF he also participated in the Biomedical Learning and Student Training (BLaST) program helping with multiple scientific research projects. Through this experience he learned in depth how science works from the help of Research Advising Mentoring Professionals (RAMPS). He was able to work with live reindeer and traveled to the Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference to present the research he was helping with. He graduated from UAF with a Bachelors of Science in Natural Resource Management and a Minor in Fisheries. During his time at UAF he enjoyed the interconnected community across campus and learned how tightly knit together it is. He also loves spending time with his wife Marissa, as well as his daughters Jacinda and Brielle.

Kimberly Kivvaq Pikok is an Iñupiaq from Utqiagvik, Alaska. She is a senior at the University of Alaska Fairbanks studying Wildlife Biology and Conservation. Kimberly has many interests, but she is passionate about learning how climate change impacts animal health and behavior. After she graduates with her Bachelor’s degree, she sees herself furthering her education so she can work with her community and inspire and encourage Native youth to pursue a career in the sciences. Since 2016, she has been involved in the Fresh Tracks program, which is a leadership training expedition that brings together diverse young leaders from urban, rural, and tribal communities from across the nation. The leadership program uses cross-cultural leadership experiences that tap into the power of the outdoors to unite and ignite young leaders, transforming personal dreams into civic action. In the summer of 2019, Kimberly was a Haskell Environmental Research Studies (HERS) intern at Haskell Indian Nations University. The HERS internship, her time at UAF, and her summers working at the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management taught her how important it is to have Indigenous people in the sciences. With the skills she is learning from these experiences and opportunities, she plans to incorporate into her future career back at home.

My name is Nick Jacuk and I am Kahtnuht’ana Dena’ina, a citizen of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe of Kenai, Alaska. I grew up in Coweta, Oklahoma on the sovereign grounds of the Mvkoke Nation, and have spent many summers in Kenai fishing on our educational fishery nets. I graduated from Whitman College in 2020 with a BA in Sociology-Environmental Studies, and was co-president of the Whitman College Indigenous Club for 2 years. I have spent various summers working with Bristol Bay Native Association and Tanana Chiefs Conference doing fisheries research as a technician. My research interests focus on developing political ecology narratives of traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous salmon management systems within Southcentral Alaska.

Tazia Wagner di waayu, Ts'msyenu, Niisk'iyaa Laxgibuu di pteegu, Maxłaxaała di wil waatgu

My name is Tazia Wagner, I am Ts'msyen, Łingít, Haida, and Athabascan, my crest is the Niisk'iyaa wolf clan of the Gitzazłaał within the Ecstall watershed, and I am from Metlakatla, Alaska. I graduated in 2021 with a BA in Fisheries with a Concentration in Rural & Community Development and Minor in Marine Science. I work in Fisheries Management and Inter-Governmental Affairs at the Metlakatla Indian Community Department of Fish & Wildlife. My way of life that I was brought up in has inspired my education and professional endeavors and continues to inspire me in my everyday life.

It's So Good to be Back: Explorations of Subsistence in Alaska

Dissertation Abstract: For 30 years, I lived in, photographed, studied, and wrote about small Iñupiaq communities in Arctic Alaska, primarily for the Division of Subsistence, a small social science research group embedded in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In my first field project, a “simple” subsistence harvest estimation problem developed into a substantial and continuing interest in network analysis as a method to understand rural Alaska economies. Analyses of our social network data showed that – despite profound social and economic changes over the last century –Iñupiat produced and distributed wild foods within resilient, multi-household, extended family structures very similar to those of their ancestors. Further, we found that subsistence flow structures were substantially different from cash flow structures in the same communities, raising questions about the impacts of increasing reliance on market resources in subsistence-based communities. Most gratifying, when we return to study communities with our survey results, network graphs often receive the most enthusiastic, positive responses. Resource management agencies tend to focus on the biological, and I lacked the skills to fully analyze complex social networks. So I resigned from the Division in September 2012 to return to graduate school full time and pursue a Ph.D. in natural resources and sustainability at the University of Alaska, and as a visiting graduate student in biocultural anthropology at the University of Washington-Seattle, with an emphasis on network analysis.

Commercial Fishing Livelihoods, Permit Loss, and the Next Generation in Bristol Bay, Alaska

Dissertation abstract: Fishing people across the globe have experienced a fundamental restructuring of their livelihoods, communities, and economies as the result of shifts to rights-based fisheries management in the past halfcentury. The ideological underpinnings of this movement are based in neoliberalism, which is a belief system that values individualism, competition, private property, and governance by the free market. I examine some of the long-term and latent effects of this and other significant historical transitions in the fishery-dependent Bristol Bay region of Alaska. Relationships between humans and salmon in Bristol Bay evolved over thousands of years and inform the way that many fishing livelihoods are pursued today. In addition to these foundational relationships, many significant changes have occurred that have shocked and stressed the livelihood “fabric” woven many interlocking threads (i.e., the sociocultural, economic, knowledge/skill, political, natural, physical building blocks needed to construct a fishing livelihood in the region). Informed by literature review and ethnography, I describe in detail four such changes: colonization of Bristol Bay’s Indigenous peoples, industrialization of the commercial fishery, implementation of a rights-based access regime (i.e., limited entry permit program), and the sockeye salmon price crash of the early 2000s. These effects linger today and raise questions for the future of the Bay and its fisheries, with respect to two particular issues: the uncertainty around the next generation of fishermen, and the severe loss of locally held permits in the Bay. To address the former, I conducted a survey of local students to measure their perceptions of the fishing industry and of community life. The results of this survey suggest that familial fishing ties, experience in the fishery, subsistence fishing activity, and household economic dependence on commercial fishing income are strong predictors of a student’s desire to be engaged in commercial fishing as an adult. I examine the second issue—the loss of locally held fishing rights since the implementation of limited entry—through the combined analysis of qualitative ethnographic data and quantitative data on commercial fishery permit holdings, subsistence activity, permit holder age, and new entry trends by community and residence category. The immense loss of limited entry permits continues to challenge livelihoods because access to local fisheries is the foundation of not only the region’s economy, but also of the shared identity, history, and culture of local people, family and social networks, and the mechanism by which fishing knowledge, skills, values, and ethics are transferred to the next generation. I suggest that policymakers and fishery managers dispense with neoliberal panaceas, and design fisheries policies that reflect the multiplicity of worldviews held by the policy’s target populations by diversifying their own means and methods for understanding fishery systems.

Funding: North Pacific Research Board

Unangam Unikangis: Aleut Stories of Leadership and Knowing

Dissertation abstract: The central question of this dissertation is, “What do Aleut people know about the laws that directly affect their access to local resources?” The complex details of hunting and fishing regulations coupled with legislation that dictates access to natural resources will play a key role in Aleut leaders’ ability to understand, disseminate, and protect these rights. Such policies include clauses that regulate who can and cannot participate based on blood quantum, which can be problematic for future generations of Aleut people as they marry and have children with people from outside the region. Further, with the abolishment of aboriginal title to lands and hunting and fishing rights in Alaska, understanding who owns the land and resources and how they are governed is imperative to Aleut people. This dissertation uses participant observation, critical case studies, key informant interviews, and a survey of Aleut leaders in the Eastern Aleutians to illustrate the ways in which Aleut people know and understand their environment and the ways they address natural resource management issues. It further demonstrates the way these issues are being addressed and learned about in two Eastern Aleutian communities. It also highlights the dynamic leadership of Aleut community members in the Eastern Aleutians. Some of the major findings include no reported change in subsistence use for respondents under the age of 50, a decline in the amount of subsistence used by older respondents, Aleut leaders spend years serving their communities in multiple capacities; and generally speaking, younger generations of public servants tend to become involved in community service as well.

Funding: University of Alaska MESAS Fellow, NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant, Mellon Foundation Fellow

For Generations to Come: Exploring Fisheries Access and Community Viability in the Kodiak Archipelago.

Thesis abstract: The sustainability of fisheries and fishing-dependent communities depends upon numerous political, cultural, economic, and ecological factors. My research explores a key threat to this sustainability in Alaska – the graying of the commercial fishing fleet. As current fishermen approach retirement age and a decreasing number of young people obtain ownership level careers in Alaska’s fisheries, succession impacts become an increasingly pressing issue. This research utilized a political ecology framework and mixed methods ethnography, including 70 semi-structured interviews and 609 student surveys, to study local fisheries access and community viability in the Kodiak Archipelago communities of Kodiak City, Old Harbor, and Ouzinkie. This research documents barriers that fishermen face at different stages in their careers and describes related implications. Findings indicate that opportunities for rural youth and fishermen are increasingly constrained by interrelated economic and cultural barriers that have created equity and sustainability concerns. Furthermore, research suggests that the privatization of fisheries access rights is a major catalyst of change that has amplified these barriers, generated social conflict, and resulted in a transformed paradigm of opportunity compared to decades past. Secondly, this research compares fishermen’s identities and livelihood motivations to dominant framings in academic literature and policy realms. This comparison reveals that in-depth understandings of fishermen are not well explained by narrow economic assumptions and instead include broader social and cultural dimensions. Lastly, exploration of the entangled relationships between fisheries access and rural youth pathways demonstrates increasing pressures within coastal communities, such as globalization, outmigration, youth ambivalence, substance abuse, and overall constrained opportunities. Nonetheless, coastal communities are working towards increasing local resilience to external pressures through social network support and some youth are bucking demographic trends by moving into fishing livelihoods. Due to the suite of threats facing fishing people and communities, it is increasingly important to have a deeper understanding of natural resource management impacts and local dynamics within fishing communities in order to plan for sustainable coastal futures.

Funding: Alaska Sea Grant

Resilient Spirits

Project abstract: “Resilient Spirits” took place in Nome, Alaska. This project aimed to highlight stories of healing through survivorship. This work focuses on the assets within Alaska Native culture, community, and people. Development of strategies to address violence need to include healing. The project selected a mixed methodology of talking circles and photovoice to highlight the themes of healing, strength, and resilience. These methods served to engage participants in a culturally appropriate manner, in a safe space, and could be utilized at their comfort level. The first phase of the project was the introductory talking circle. It was used to discuss the themes and set up the photo activity. The second phase, photovoice, was chosen as a project activity to assist in sharing stories. Participants used digital cameras in their everyday lives to represent what healing and strength looked like from their perspective. The final third phase was another talking circle. It was a time to reflect on the first talking circle and the process of photovoice. From the unique combination of talking circles and photovoice, stories emerged on healing where there is often silence. Photographs provided a rich illustration of a sense of holistic healing and strength. Knowledge on healing and strength can be found within our Alaska Native communities. Healing is a renewable resource and experienced inter-generationally.

Funding: National Science Foundation

Toothed Whale Interactions with Longline Fisheries in Alaska

Dissertation Abstract: Killer whale (Orcinus orca) and sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) depredation occurs when whales damage or remove fish caught on longline gear. This project used a mixed methods approach incorporating Generalized Linear and Additive Modeling techniques and social research methods, such as semi-directed interviews and written questionnaires, to evaluate: 1) spatio-temporal depredation trends, 2) depredation effects on groundfish catch rates, and 3) socio-economic implications of depredation avoidance and changing fishing practices due to whale interactions. The occurrence of killer whale depredation varied by target species and area based on National Marine Fisheries Service longline survey data and observer commercial fishery data collected from 1998 to 2012 in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Western Gulf of Alaska. The percentage of commercial fishery sets affected by killer whales was highest in Bering Sea fisheries for: sablefish (Anoploploma fimbria; 21.4%), Greenland turbot (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides; 9.9%), and Pacific halibut (Hippogolosus stenolepis; 6.9%). Killer whale depredation was more common on the standardized longline survey (9.2-34.6% skates impacted) than the commercial sablefish fishery (1.0-21.4% sets impacted) in all three management areas. Catch reductions were consistent across data sets. Average commercial fleet catch reductions ranged from 35-69% for sablefish, Pacific halibut and Greenland turbot (p<0.001); survey catch reductions ranged from 51-73% (p<0.001). Sablefish catch per unit effort, gear haul time and location significantly impacted the proportion of sets depredated. Fishermen reported changing their fishing practices in response to depredating whales by soaking gear longer to “wait the whales out” or moving to different fishing sites. These avoidance measures resulted in increased operation costs and opportunity costs in lost time. In a follow-up analysis based on data collected by fishermen in 2011 and 2012, it was found that killer whale depredation avoidance measures resulted in an average additional cost of $494 per vessel-day for fuel and crew food. Opportunity costs of time lost by fishermen averaged $486 per additional vessel-day on the grounds. These results provide insight into the potential impacts of whale depredation on fish stock abundance indices and commercially important fisheries in Alaska and will inform future research on apex predator-fisheries interactions.

Funding: University of Alaska MESAS Fellow, NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant, EPSCoR Graduate Research Award, Rasmuson Fisheries Research Center Fellow

Subsistence Salmon Fishing in Beaufort Sea Communities

Thesis Abstract: Environmental change, combined with observations of increasing numbers of salmon in subsistence fisheries, has generated a need for more information about salmon use, abundance, and distribution in the Arctic. Ethnographic research was conducted in Barrow and Nuiqsut, Alaska, in 2010 and 2011 with 41 active fishermen and elders. Salmon catches were perceived to be increasing; however, perceptions about changing salmon abundance were mixed. While pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) and chum salmon (O. keta) have been observed in subsistence fisheries in the central North Slope region for over 50 years, only within the last 10 to 20 years has local use of these resources begun to increase. In this region, salmon are less important as a subsistence resource compared to whitefish species (Coregonus spp.). However, many fishermen participating in the Elson Lagoon gill net fishery near Barrow have begun to target salmon. Harvest estimates for this fishery in 2011 indicated that chum salmon and pink salmon catches comprise the majority of all fish caught (42% and 23%, respectively). Chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha) have been increasingly targeted, but catches are generally low. While sockeye salmon (O. nerka) numbers were perceived to have increased on the North Slope, catches of this species are rare. Only a few stray coho salmon (O. kisutch) have been captured in this region. Informants identified new stream systems where salmon are present and spawning, suggesting possible distribution shifts. Fishermen in both communities reported developing knowledge of salmon and are increasing their use of salmon as a subsistence resource.

Funding: University of Alaska SELMR Fellow, Sloan Foundation Fellow, Bristol Bay Native Corporation

A Total Environment of Change: Exploring Social-Ecological Shifts in Subsistence Fisheries in Noatak and Selawik, Alaska

Thesis Abstract: Arctic ecosystems are undergoing rapid changes as a result of global climate change, with significant implications for the livelihoods of Arctic peoples. In this thesis, I use ethnographic research methods to detail prominent environmental changes observed and experienced over the past few decades and to document the impact of these changes on subsistence fishing practices in the Iñupiaq communities of Noatak and Selawik in northwestern Alaska. Using in-depth key informant interviews, participant observation, and cultural consensus analysis, I explore local knowledge and perceptions of climate change and other pronounced changes facing the communities of Noatak and Selawik. I find consistent agreement about a range of perceived environmental changes affecting subsistence fisheries in this region, including lower river water levels, decreasing abundances of particular fish species, increasingly unpredictable weather conditions, and increasing presence of beaver, which affect local waterways and fisheries. These observations of environmental changes are not perceived as isolated phenomena, but are experienced in the context of accompanying social changes that are continually reshaping rural Alaska communities and subsistence economies. Consequently, in order to properly assess and understand the impacts of climate change on the subsistence practices in Arctic communities, we must also consider the total environment of change that is dramatically shaping the relationship between people, communities, and their surrounding environments.

Funding: George Melendez Wright Climate Change Fellowship, National Park Service