Nihk’atr’inaatii, which is the Gwich’in value of sharing and caring, guides our work as we study the traditional landscape classification of the Gwich’in people of the Canadian subarctic in tandem with compiling and predicting the impacts of climate change and other threats.
By Kristi Benson, Senior Heritage Specialist, Gwich’in Tribal Council
Sharon Snowshoe, Director (Emeritus), Gwich’in Tribal Council
Arlyn Charlie, Culture and Heritage Coordinator, Gwich’in Tribal Council
Trevor Lantz, Professor, University of Victoria
Tracy Proverbs, Research Associate, University of Victoria
The Gwich’in are a northern Indigenous nation whose traditional lands are in what is now known as the Northwest Territories and Yukon in Canada. As they have maintained a close relationship with their lands for millennia, they have developed an intricate, flexible, adaptive, and robust body of knowledge about the land: the plants, animals, weather, and other natural systems and cycles. The Gwich’in protect their lands in many ways, through careful on-the-land stewardship, community and regional management infrastructure, and ongoing research. As climate change is disproportionately affecting the North, they are also working to develop tools to understand and manage the impacts occurring across their lands. Along with their research and management partners, they are working to understand, model, predict, and plan for the changes to wildlife, fish, permafrost, vegetation, and water that are impacting Gwich’in lives.
For more than three decades, the Department of Culture and Heritage of the Gwich’in Tribal Council has carefully recorded Gwich’in knowledge and stories. This includes life histories, legends, place names, and ecological knowledge. For fourteen years, the Department has worked with academic partners at the University of Victoria’s Arctic Landscape Ecology Lab, who bring expertise in their work mapping and modelling the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbance on landscape features, including cultural features such as important fish habitats and harvesting locations.
Through this partnership, we are bringing ethnographic information on Gwich’in land use together with geospatial data on current and future climate impacts, important habitats, and industrial development. We will focus on the integration of Gwich’in traditional ecological classifications and an evaluation of current and projected impacts on Gwich’in lands. For example, gwąhsri’ are low-alpine grassy, treeless areas important for caribou and moose, and in some areas, they may be at risk of climate-change mediated “shrubification”. Modelling these interactions in a fluid and multi-layered map overlay will help scientists and the Gwich’in make plans and educate land-users to better withstand a changing climate.
The Gwich’in value of Nihk’atr’inaatii (sharing and caring) applies to knowledge-sharing just as it applies to sharing a meal of caribou stew. For this reason, we will freely share the methods we used in this work with researchers and colleagues. A public form of the final overlay will also be shared with our numerous partners, including other Gwich’in and non-Gwich’in organizations, regional and territorial Indigenous and governmental co-management boards, and other territorial and federal stakeholders.
Photo: Arlyn Charlie
Nan guk’anàatii ejuk t’igwinjik is the winning project of the 2025 Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award.
The Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award provides high-level recognition for innovative ideas that transform knowledge into action to help address the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. It comes with a 100,000 euro unrestricted prize, intended to help develop the idea through outreach, engagement and communication. The award is a collaboration between UArctic and the Arctic Circle.
