The Perilous Pursuit of Tradition: Indigenous Hunting in Warming Alaska

Tue Mar 17 2026 15:48:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

The lives of Alaska's Indigenous communities are challenged as warmer winters create increasingly dangerous ice conditions, leading to historic drownings and disrupting traditional hunting practices.

As Alaska heats up, the thinning ice is endangering the lives of Indigenous hunters. The tragic stories of Elmer Brown and others illustrate the desperate choices faced as traditional hunting routes become perilous. Climate change is eroding generations of ice safety knowledge, forcing families into precarious situations for food security. This pressing issue reveals the intersection of climate change, culture, and survival in the Arctic.

Elmer Brown was following two friends on his four-wheeler last November, hunting caribou across a frozen channel in northern Alaska when the ice gave way. All three plunged into the frigid water. One friend drowned, and Brown, 45, later died of hypothermia, leaving behind five children.

“He was always helping other people and sharing his catch with the elders,” said his brother Jimmy Brown. “It’s been tough, not seeing him. I keep expecting him to walk in and tell me about his day.”

The friends had ventured onto the ice to hunt caribou, under pressure to make the most of shorter and less reliable hunting seasons, Jimmy Brown said.

They’re among thousands who have died on ice across the Northern Hemisphere in recent decades as warming winters make conditions thinner and less predictable for those who fish, hunt and recreate on frozen lakes, rivers and coastal waters. March and April are particularly dangerous months as winter conditions recede.

The risks are especially acute in Alaska, where the unpredictable ice season disrupts traditional hunting practices for Indigenous communities. Though some communities are using satellite imagery to assess conditions and social media to share ice observations, technology can’t replace the predictability that generations once relied upon.

Transition seasons are deadliest

It wasn’t the first time the family had lost someone to the ice. The Brown brothers’ father drowned in 1999 while seal hunting.

The Brown brothers’ hometown of Kotzebue, a predominantly Inupiaq community of 3,000, is perched on a narrow spit of land surrounded almost entirely by water. During winter, frozen waterways are the only way in and out, besides planes. There, average fall temperatures have warmed by 10 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) over the last 50 years.

To the south, in the Bering Sea — where many western Alaska communities rely on coastal ice for travel and hunting — ice season is more than 40 days shorter on average than it was in the 1970s.

This unpredictability is eroding generations of ice safety knowledge. In a state where more than 80% of communities are not connected to the road system, extended transition periods — too slushy for boats, too unstable for snowmachines — can leave villages with few options to hunt or travel.

“Our native food is really key in terms of how we survive the Arctic,” Schaeffer said. “The ice is changing too much, and it’s not going to slow down.”

The changes also threaten the food chain. Sea ice fuels the spring algal blooms, which sustain the plankton, fish, and other critters whales, walruses, and narwhals feed on.

Globally, lakes are losing some 17 days of ice cover per century, at a rate that has accelerated sixfold over the past 25 years, research shows.

The risk of drowning will eventually decline — not because conditions improve, but because ice will largely disappear, said York University’s Sharma. “If we continue releasing greenhouse gas emissions at current rates, by the end of the century, thousands of lakes will no longer freeze and people won’t fall through the ice,” she said.

This legacy is illustrated in stories of individuals like Roswell Schaeffer, an Inupiaq hunter and fisher. He reflects on the past losses his community has faced as they've adjusted to an unpredictable environment, gravely considering the future of their traditions.