08-07-2025
Communities across US struggle with new threats emerging beneath their feet: 'When you walk, you feel like you're on jelly'
Areas everywhere are being reshaped by rising global temperatures and their effects. But from Alaska to Louisiana and beyond, Indigenous communities are among those experiencing some of the first and most devastating impacts.
In the podcast Sea Change, New Orleans Public Radio and Baton Rouge Public Radio, in collaboration with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, recently addressed the growing and disproportionate threats of climate change on some of the Tribal lands in the United States.
Indigenous people, especially those living in coastal areas, are being displaced by extreme weather and rising seas. Even in between increasingly destructive storms, everyday existence in these communities isn't what it used to be.
Nunapitchuk, Alaska, resident Gertrude Lewis described what it can be like just walking around her Native village since the permafrost has been thawing: "My grandson, he stepped off the boardwalk and he went knee deep. We had to pull him out — we lost his rubber boot." Sharing the Yup'ik word for the feeling, she said, "Angayiiq — it's like where you when you walk you feel like you're on jelly."
Having spoken with Morris Alexie, also Yup'ik and in the midst of considering how he will help to migrate his village to firmer ground, the radio report also explains that "the boardwalks in Nunap dip and curve as the ground thaws and unevenly degrades below them … As the permafrost thaws, it also increases riverbank erosion, literally eating away land from underneath the village."
Tribal communities are often located in areas already facing some of the most damaging and visible impacts of our warming world — places like the melting Arctic and islands shrinking as sea levels rise.
Historically oppressed throughout much of the globe, many Indigenous groups have already been robbed of their lands by colonization, only to face further threats of displacement as thaws and floods threaten the safety of their homes. They have also often been robbed of generational wealth and marginalized from other resources, making survival even more tenuous. This can be especially true as so many Tribal cultures, food sources, and livelihoods — hunting, fishing, berry picking, nature arts like basketry — are interconnected with increasingly imperiled ecosystems.
In Alaska, where Lewis and Alexie live, thawing permafrost is a significant cause for concern. In Louisiana, it's rising sea levels, where coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion are displacing the Pointe-Au-Chien Indian Tribe and causing their land to disappear.
Indigenous people face continued uncertainty as they lose their ancestral lands — their homes and traditions — to the planet's steady it's the traditional wisdom from these communities that may offer some of the most promising keys to climate resilience for all. As the United Nations Development Programme has noted, Indigenous knowledge can provide insights into drought-resistant crops, sustainable water management practices, and responsible land stewardship.
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Funding research and implementation for related projects could help more people benefit from this expertise while properly compensating Indigenous experts. And supporting pro-environment land-back policies has the potential to protect vital ecosystems and Indigenous communities all at once.
Taking a traditional approach to understanding today's most critical climate issues might involve appreciating the interconnectedness of all things. And it can inform doable actions and daily choices with a climate benefit, like reducing meat consumption, patronizing local farms, shopping secondhand, and switching to renewable energy sources like home solar power systems.
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