Alaska Climate and Aviation Podcast

Arctic Encounter 2025~Navigating Governance: Land Use and Sovereignty in the Arctic

• Katie Writer • Season 5 • Episode 5

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The 11th Arctic Encounter was held at the Dena'ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage Alaska, July 30-August 1st, 2025 as well as the popular Far North Fashion Show held at the Anchorage Museum. This years Arctic Encounter was attended by participants of over 27 countries, including Arctic policy makers, Indigenous leaders, scientists, ambassadors, and business leaders in the North, US Military leaders, US government officials, artisans and fashion designers of the Arctic. 

Founder and CEO of Arctic Encounter, Rachel Kallander welcomed her newest family member, baby Jonah a bit earlier than expected this summer, which moved the event from April 2025 to late July, 2025. 

Libby Casey, Senior News Anchor of The Washington Post and Matt Hickey of Arctic Security Studies were two of many moderators that directed unique discussions of Arctic related topics, including, "Arctic Warfighters: Rapid Responses to an Evolving Northern Threat", "Strategic Ground: Greenland in the Center of Arctic Geoploitics", "Arctic Knowledge: Informing Policy Through Science", and "Navigating Governance Land Use and Sovereignty in the Arctic".

This year's episode covering the Arctic Encounter includes discussions of the sovereignty of Greenland and self determination of Arctic Peoples. 

Thank you for tuning into the Alaska Climate and Aviation Podcast.

Katie Writer

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Unknown:

Thank you.

Katie Writer:

Greetings and welcome to the Alaska Climate and Aviation Podcast and I'm Katie Writer. This episode is going to be covering this year's Arctic Encounter. It was the 11th Arctic Encounter and was held at the Dena'ina Civic Center in downtown Anchorage, Alaska, July 30th through August 1st, 2025. This year's Arctic Encounter was attended by participants of over 27 countries, including Arctic policymakers, indigenous leaders, scientists, ambassadors and business leaders in the North, U.S. military leaders, U.S. government officials, artisans, and fashion designers of the Arctic. Founder and CEO of the Arctic Encounter, Rachel Callender, welcomed her newest family member, baby Jonah, a bit earlier than expected this summer, which moved the event from April 25th to late July. Libby Casey, senior news anchor of the Washington Post, and Matt Hickey of Arctic Security Studies were two of the many moderators that directed This year's episode includes discussions of the sovereignty of Greenland as well as the self-determination nation of Arctic peoples. For starters, we're going to listen to some of the discussion that was on a panel that was moderated by senior news anchor of the Washington Post, Libby Casey. The topic was navigating governance, land use and sovereignty in the Arctic. I'll let some of the voices speak for themselves here with starting with, let's see, Dr. Liza Mack.

Dr. Liza Mack:

I would like to thank you for inviting me to sit on this panel and to share some of

Mr. Nagruk Harcharek:

the We've got about 20,700 last day of sharps. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm the president for the Voice of the Arctic. I'm originally from Alaska, which is the northernmost point in the state, furthest north city in the United States. President of the Voice of the Arctic, we're a 501c4 nonprofit. We have 21 member organizations from the different communities on the North Slope, including all the regional organizations. And our mission is dedicated to preserving and advancing cultural and economic independence self-determination for the North Slopes. We bring everybody together and advocate on issues that are important to the members of our organization. We do that within the state, we do that in Washington, D.C., and considering the landscape over the last, well, I guess since 1971, it's really important that we come together to be able to advocate for people since we're such a small population that message becomes all the more powerful. And because of the separation of the and the economic arms of North Slope or all of Alaska, essentially, it was really important to have an organization like ours to bring all of that back together, to advocate for the needs of the community, for the needs of the people, and to protect the culture.

Chief Barbara Joe:

Chief Joe. Hi. My name is Chief Barb Joe, and I'm from Southwest Yukon Territory in Lebanon. The First Nation name is Jamaican and Asian First Nation. And in my language, you say... We say, not quite chief, but

Unknown:

.

Speaker 04:

And my First Nation name is

Unknown:

.

Speaker 04:

And I was named after an elder my grandmother gave it to me during a potluck when I was really young. And my First Nation name is

Unknown:

.

Speaker 04:

So maybe I'll try to do that later today. Champaign-on-Azac First Nation is one of 11 self-governing First Nations in the Yukon Territory. And our First Nation has about 41,000 square kilometers that extend from Yukon and into northern British Columbia. Of that, we own about 2,200 square kilometers, which is considered settlement land. We have about 1,300 citizens. And we have about 300 which live outside Canada, including in Alaska and the United States as well. So just a little bit of that. And just also in our First Nation culture, we do a land acknowledgement to the traditional people, the anchorage area, for allowing us this opportunity to be here. So, buenos dias, Sholita. May I allow them?

Unknown:

Yes.

Mr. Dickie Moto:

Good afternoon. Dickie Morrow, I'm the Northwest Park Borough Mayor. I'm originally from Deerfield. I moved to Coxview. I've been the Borough Mayor for my second term. Our vision for the borough is improving living conditions for all the residents we serve. Our borough is pretty unique. We have roughly 35,000 square miles. All of that 35,000, 5,000 is either ocean or rivers. We're overseas, 10 villages plus Coxview, which is the helpings, that's where we're located at. We've been all subsistence hunters. We live off the land. We do what we could to lower the cost of living in our area.

Katie Writer:

One thing that is unique about Alaska is the scale of the lands that are managed and how complex it is for everyone to work together with the cultural aspects, the size of the areas, and the cultures that are also sustenance hunting. Here's Libby.

Libby Casey:

Keeping the environment pure, keeping the resources ready and available in terms of hunting, fishing, everything else. With development, maybe Chief Jo, you could follow up just to talk about how you think about respecting the land and the people who live in the land with those things you were talking about, the eagerness that many may have to develop and then, of course, the economic opportunity that could come with that.

Chief Barbara Joe:

The Yukon is growing. We've seen an increase in the population quite a bit in the probably 10 years. And my issue is always, problem that we see popping up is pollution. We see things like very rich, big left, things that aren't very good for our lands, our animals, the fish and plants and whatnot. We try to, as a nation, protect the ability for citizens to practice, practice what we call in Canada, the Aboriginal rights. It's always a struggle. We've been speaking at our Yukon forum where we took me with our free year, who is kind of the head of state at Yukon, and the ministers, and trying to push for educating people and newcomers about our treaties, about how we can work on this together, how we need to be able to explain how our treaties work, and also our lifestyles that We've been in the Iran for millennia and we'll continue to be there.

Katie Writer:

One of the common themes across the panels of this year's Arctic Encounter is just the importance of the growth that is happening in the Arctic, the importance of honoring the Native peoples that already live there. Here's Erin of the Doyen Company explaining a little bit more about that.

Mr. Aaron Shutt:

In the Doyle region, we try to participate at every level with the federal and state and local governments as they make decisions. We spend a lot of time responding to public notices. We do consultation frequently with the governmental agencies, even for seemingly minor things. You know, Denali National Park, which is a very large park, has a lot of cultural resources. So even though it's Our interests are pretty far afield from many people's perspectives. We still want to know what's happening because of those cultural resources. Sometimes our tribes are very active, and when they are, we'll take a step back. When a local tribe, their history isn't involved, they're the best people to be involved.

Katie Writer:

All the panelists were able to share their thoughts on what some of the most important values were for the Aleut people in working together keeping their traditions alive as well as their voices heard.

Speaker 04:

just total self-reliance, no fiscal transfer of reinvents, no the federal government, and we have the ability to generate our own economies, our own income, and be able to stand on our own with very much, and this is kind of part of our vision statement, a very self-reliant people who always keep the culture and the language with them. Thank you.

Speaker 02:

Just going to say a couple of words that come to mind. Opportunity and trust. Allow us the opportunity to provide for our people and trust that if we're allowed to do that, we will do what's best for our people. We will do what's best for the environment. We will not threaten our way of life in any ways, right? So allow us the opportunity. Keep those opportunities open. Keep the doors open and trust that we know what's best for our people. We know what's best for our land. We know what's best for our community and give us that opportunity to be able to prove

Speaker 04:

it. Darren.

Mr. Aaron Shutt:

Yeah, well said. We at Doyland have plans for many years of resource development and other things to support our rural communities. So, as you just said, trust us. It's not trust me, it's trust Doyland. The grandparents, instead of going out and having this plan set in motion 50 years ago and making decisions, people think Aaron made these decisions yesterday. No. Our people have been planning for generations now on what needs to occur to support economic and community development. Some of these things might become muscular to certain groups. But they're well thought out. And again, we're the last people that are going to damage our own farms. I spend as much time in Alaska as I can and spread friends, spread families, still lives. If we care deeply about our own lives, we will always protect our own lands. But we have to provide for these communities and the people. So the children have good schools, they're good jobs, a home. All these things have to go together.

Katie Writer:

And that voice was the voice of Arctic Inupiat president, Mr. Nagru Hasharek. One can see from hearing how well the panelists all work together and listening to one another and adding their voices in a very important, important topic of sovereignty in the Arctic. We're going to keep this episode short and sweet. There'll be more to come, including some of the sovereignty and voices of the leadership in Greenland. Today is August 24th. And I'm Katie Writer. Thank you for tuning in to the Alaska Climate and Aviation Podcast. Talk to you next week.