Alaska Voices

“Antarctica, it's fascinating from the scientific point of view, but you don't have a community that depends on the sea ice in Antarctica.”

"If I were in Ethiopia right now, I would be in jail already, or probably I would be killed."

"The key for us is being able to justify and ground decisions in good science."

"If the public who isn't a scientist knows what we do and why, then we've done good in education."

"When you lose half of your sea ice volume, in fact we've lost more than half of the volume in such a short period of time, that's something that I don't think people really anticipated."

"It's so overwhelming. The scope of problems we face in our communities, let alone climate change on an international or world level problems, sanitation issues, landfill issues"

"I told him we have a sand dune that's erupting in the middle of our airstrip and there was a tribal member who got stuck in a sinkhole."

"I feel that a lot of younger people really don't want to be faculty and don't want to be scientists because they feel very fed-up with the system. And I am really worried about that."

"There's a culture here of women, working moms, who are wanting to, outdoing each other, like, 'Well I put the baby down at 8 but I still had to stay up until 2 in the morning to finish this grant.'"

"We currently are the world leader in Arctic research. No other university, and really no other federal government around the world, does more research on the Arctic than University of Alaska Fairbanks."

"We were in Georgia, the Republic of Georgia, when they were being bombed. And all we had to eat for like six weeks straight was kasha, buckwheat."

"I started working with my high school teacher who was very, very dedicated to helping me reach this goal. She used to drive me to the university where I did the research after school everyday."

"I think what I've been focusing on is how can we take something that can spill out of people in such a negative way and make it neutral?"

"If you shoot a bear in self defense you have to take the hide and the paws and the head with you and we still had maybe two or so more weeks of floating this river."

"Their formal role in this is to make sure I don't die and my role is to make sure they experience a different part of the world that they wouldn't get to otherwise."

“My path now is to be a leader and to make conditions such that I'm encouraging other people such as yourself have those sorts of adventures”

“I want to be one of those ladies that's dirty every day and slugging through places without trails.”

"I'd say within the last 20 years maybe about 15 of those years we've seen a lot of changes in our climates with floods, erosions, fall storms."

"When we went back, again, we just listened. We didn't have any questions, we didn't have any ideas, and that space for communication grew back."

"I don't think climate change is something we should just wait off until disaster. I just think we need to be more prepped and figure out how far ahead can we get our stock up?"

"Done a little bit of everything you can imagine, from recycling pop cans to fuel spill response and contaminated site cleanups and brownfields, the whole gamut of things we can run in to in the villages."

"I feel that we all have a role at the smokehouse and that gives you some worth in your core. Like, you have a role in this family and you're important."

"First and foremost, we should be addressing our people And then addressing our scientific needs."

Alaska Voices project leads Jessie Robertson and Bob Bolton explain what led them to record dozens of conversations about Alaska and Arctic issues.

"When I went to work at the hospital, they were amazed what I can do. Elders always were glad for me to take care of them because I took care of an elder so I knew."