Julia Ilhardt '21 presents her certificate project, "Outrunning the River: A Warming World Melts the Ground Beneath Alaska’s Indigenous Communities," during the Program in Journalism's third annual Senior Colloquium.
Newtok, Alaska, is a community of 400 indigenous Yup'ik persons. Since the 1990s, Newtok has been in the process of relocating ten miles downriver to Mertarvik, but only a handful of new homes have been constructed. Like dozens of other remote Alaskan communities, Newtok is rapidly losing ground to thawing permafrost, an eroding riverbank and flooding. Newtok's relocation has been mired in political and financial difficulties, leaving a village split in half. Newtok calls into question the sustainability of life in the Alaskan arctic and highlights the very tangible consequences of climate change for some corners of America.
