Organization: Arctic Health Research Network
Country: Yukon Territory, Canada
Peoples: Vuntut Gwich’in
Climate change has altered the migration patterns of the Arctic caribou. It has altered permafrost and ice formation, and the visible landscapes of the Arctic. The Gwich’in, Indigenous Peoples of the region, must take what their forbidding environment gives in order to survive, as they have for thousands of years. When they see vast and rapid changes in the environment – permafrost sagging under their homes, tundra slopes collapsing, essential hunting seasons on thin ice, and caribou herd numbers in sharp decline as peak foliage feeding weeks arrive before calving time in the global-warmed growing season – they know that they must change with it. Traditional knowledge guides them in this challenge.
