Alaska Voices

“Venetie at one time in the 40s and 50s was a major gardening center and they would trade potatoes and carrots, things like that, they would go down and trade for salmon on the Yukon and supply vegetables and such for the steam boats.” - Lance Whitwell

“I'd spent all of my time learning about cultures around the world and I didn't know anything about the cultures of my own state or the area that I lived in.” - Davin Holen

“And I think positive self talk is the kindest thing you can do to yourself. Being able to say 'It's OK, it takes time.' You know what you need to do, so why not start?” - Dina Abdel-Fattah

“If all my legacy is that I have produced one scientist, that's enough for me.” - Elena Sparrow

Alaska Voices is back March 15 with new episodes. Project leads Jessie Robertson and Bob Bolton also give a quick update on future Alaska Voices recordings.

The first season of Alaska Voices is coming to a close. Stay tuned for updates on future developments as we explore what comes next for the project. Thank you to our contributors, organizers, and listeners for all of your support.

"I was always the kid getting outside and getting lost and grimy and playing with frogs and cutting trees."

"I think that the first thing that agencies have to acknowledge is there's an extreme power imbalance between what value we put on scientific knowledge and what value we put on local knowledge."

“I'm more and more impatient with the slow pace of science and feel like at the rate the world is changing these days, we really need to make progress.”

"As a leader you're not there to tell people what to do. You're there to support them succeeding at what they already can do best or helping them learn to do something better."

“I'm definitely interested in expanding access to nature because I do think it's really important for mental health and spirituality and physical health.”

“It's easy to be satisfied with incremental change when the incremental change is not affecting you.”

“As a mentor it's important for me to advocate for my students, especially as undergraduates you really feel like you're at the bottom and you have no power.”

“I think as humans, especially when it's in our backyard, we want to feel like we have a process, that we have ownership in that, and we have agency to make our voices heard.”

" I have to be able to be on my toes and defend all of the work that my team has done, and yet if I question any of the work any of the other teams have done, immediately I'm called in the office."

"I thought environmental science was a really good way to connect people's problems and Earth's problems and learn about the physical world yet the social science world, too."

“A lot of the male engineers were invited to go out golfing, and shooting, and I was never invited to do those things even though I was also an engineer and actually a pretty great shot.”

“The more positive side of people's brains would say oh, no, no, no, these are learning opportunities or whatever, but at some point it's actually just failure.”

"So once I found this role as a peacemaker, I was like, OK, this is my role on the team. It's not so much science, it's more communication."

"Being able to move on and feeling supported by your superiors, takes away so much of the trauma that women often experience when they try to report."

"I think the more that we talk about our differences and our full stories and how they've informed where we're at, that is how we make the community stronger for whatever we face."

"The person that owned that had no requirement to say hey there's a big ice lens under here, don't build your house there."

"Since our existence is glued together by stories and songs and language, all of our laws and everything, I have a certain way of looking at stories that the next generation won't be able to accommodate."

"It's sometimes hard to see a trend because we're living in the moment of all the ups and downs. But the sea ice is something that is really dramatic."

"When you get out to the real world the skills that you need are going to be really varied. I think that's helpful for a new generation of scientists, be aware that there's not one way to do it."