Videos from Kivalina Community Center Renovation
Watch more video segments of our days in Kivalina this September and October renovating the Kivalina Community Center with JADE and the Kivalina Crew.
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Three Degrees Warmer and Re-Locate Awarded EPA Environmental Justice Grant to Support Kivalina Biochar Project
Kivalina has developed the first human waste biochar reactor for the Arctic. It arrived by barge in Kivalina in July. The pioneering Kivalina Biochar Reactor is an initiative of the Kivalina Native Village and the Kivalina City Council to innovate a pipe-less and relocatable sanitation system to eventually replace the honeybucket and to reduce the cost of village relocation. High costs of relocation have imposed a formidable barrier to village planning, with sanitation infrastructure comprising a major portion
Center for Kivalina Territorial Planning and Global Responsibility for Climate Displacement
The renovation of the Kivalina Community Center took six weeks to complete with the support and committed dedication of the local Kivalina crew (Reppi Swan, Charles Adams, Oran Knox Jr., and Robert Hawley), JADE Craftsman Builders (Dan Neumeyer, Taz Squire, and Micheal Cox), and Re-Locate directors (Michael Gerace and Jen Marlow). Funding for the renovation was made possible by ArtPlace America’s Creative Placemaking Grant.
See also photos of the community center in winter taken by architect Klaus Mayer
Renovation of Kivalina Community Center Underway
This September, Three Degrees Warmer and Re-Locate are working with carpenters from Kivalina and JADE Craftsman Builders to renovate the Kivalina Community Center. For decades, Kivalina people have gathered in the Kivalina Community Center to play games, dance, sing, eat, and welcome guests. It has also been a place where Kivalina leaders, together with their neighbors and partners, come together to discuss the future.
Today, because the building is in partial disrepair and not designed to support specific community needs such
It’s Time to Take Mesh Networks Seriously (And Not Just for the Reasons You Think)—Wired Magazine Article
“The problem is that we are focusing too much on the technical and legal challenges of mesh networking as opposed to the social benefits it might bring in terms of user autonomy and community-building. Or have we not yet realized that we have finally reached a competitive point in communications where we can deploy more than one internet? Instead of trying to create one perfect network that will satisfy us all, we can, instead, choose between several networks to find the one
Application of Ground-Penetrating Radar Imagery for Three-Dimensional Visualisation of Near-Surface Structures in Ice-Rich Permafrost, Barrow, Alaska
ABSTRACT Three-dimensional ground-penetrating radar (3D GPR) was used to investigate the subsurface structure of ice-wedge polygons and other features of the frozen active layer and near-surface permafrost near Barrow, Alaska. Surveys were conducted at three sites located on landscapes of different geomorphic age. At each site,
Urine Recycling in Scientific American
Gee Whiz: Human Urine Is Shown to Be an Effective Agricultural Fertilizer
Relocatable Infrastructure
For communities like Kivalina who are looking for ways to relocate and spread out into their land more easily, movable and self-sufficient water and sanitation systems could be very helpful. These same systems can also be designed for use at current village sites where water and sanitation infrastructure is usually in urgent need of improvement, and they are generally far less expensive than traditional infrastructure. Decentralized and relocatable systems, like the Alaska Water and Sewer Challenge (AKWSC) system being
Physics Doesn’t Negotiate
Physics Doesn’t Negotiate: Notes on the dangerous difference between science and political science
Some notes from Bill McKibben on medium.com about President Obama’s trip to Alaska.
Re-Locate Receives 2015 ArtPlace America Grant
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 16, 2015
$500,000 Grant Will Fund Village-Based Territorial Planning Process in KIVALINA, ALASKA
Anchorage, Alaska – Re-Locate announced today that it is among 38 recipients of ArtPlace America’s 2015 National Grants Program. ArtPlace, one of the nation’s largest philanthropies dedicated to creative placemaking, is investing $500,000 in Kivalina, Alaska, to further integrate arts and culture into the field of community planning and development. Re-Locate will work to co-create a village-based territorial planning process with individuals,
Seattle University’s Just Sustainability: Hope for the Commons Conference, 2014 Saturday morning panel on Climate Displacement and Indigeneity: The State, “Governance-beyond-the-state”, and Prospects for Re-location
On August 9, 2014, Re-Locate curated and prompted a roundtable discussion at Seattle University’s Just Sustainability: Hope for the Commons Conference titled Climate Displacement and Indigeneity: The State, “Governance-beyond-the-state”, and Prospects for Re-location.
Roundtable Participants included:
Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (moderator), teaches theological ethics. She has lectured or consulted in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and many parts of North America in theology and matters of climate justice and environmental racism, economic globalization, moral agency,
Re-Locate at the Creative Time Summit, Venice Biennale
Re-Locate has been asked to speak and host a roundtable discussion at the 7th Creative Time Summit, “devoted to expanded notions of ‘curriculum.’” This year, the Summit will take place from August 11th to the 13th and within Okwui Enwezor’s exhibition for la Biennale di Venezia, All the World’s Futures.
“Since 2009, the annual Creative Time Summit has operated as a convening, a discussion, and a platform for the intersection of art and
In Memory of Etok Edwardsen: “One Bad-Ass Eskimo”
There is a legend told among the Inupiat Alaskans who live above the Arctic Circle, “Etok Tames the Green People.” It goes like this:
In the Old Days, as today, the peoples on the edge of the Arctic Sea killed whales. It’s just what they do. It’s what they eat. But the Green People didn’t like
Re-Locate in Huffington Post
Interior Secretary Has ‘Much to Learn’ from Kivalina’s Inupiaq Elders and Hunters about Climate Change and Village Relocation
Last Monday morning in Inupiaq Alaska, at Kivalina’s McQueen School gymnasium, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell stood from her seat at a table surrounded by community elders, hunters and search and rescue volunteers. “For the elders that are willing to open up,” she gestured, “I’d be very interested in hearing
Palestine: Cartography of an Occupation, Creative Time Reports, Michael Hardt
“Palestine is unexceptional, then, in the sense that it shares some of the primary axes of domination that characterize the current crisis across the globe. And Palestinians are discovering new means to rebel against
An Attempt at a “Compositionist Manifesto”, Bruno Latour
“In this paper, written in the outmoded style of a ‘manifesto’, an attempt is made to use the word ‘composition’ as an alternative to critique and ‘compositionism’ as an alternative to modernism. The idea is that once the two organizing principles of nature and society are gone, one of the remaining solutions is to ‘compose’ the common world. Such a position allows an alternative view of the strange connection of modernity with the arrow of time: the Moderns might have
Go Speak Out
Kivalina hunters and elders went to Go Speak Out on Monday, with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell present, listening, and in dialogue as part of her short visit to Kivalina earlier this week. Re-Locate helped set the table for intimate conversation in the McQueen School gym, turning down the overhead fluorescent lights except for one strip directed down onto a rectangular table for fifty covered in white paper.
ArtPlace Names Re-Locate a Finalist for Creative Placemaking Grant
Re-Locate is one of 90 finalists for an ArtPlace America grant, an award that would fund immersive social artists and transdisciplinary partners working with Kivalina to reframe and support a community-led master planning process for village expansion.
ArtPlace invests in “‘creative placemaking’ projects that involve cross-sector partners committed to strengthening the social, physical, and economic fabric of their communities.” Forty out of nearly 1,300 nationwide applicants will receive grants.
If Re-Locate and Kivalina are selected for an
The End of Nature, Slavoj Zizek
From the paper The End of Nature published in the New York Times by Slavoj Zizek:
“So what might the future hold? One thing is clear: We should accustom ourselves to a much more nomadic way of life. Gradual or sudden change in our environment, about which science can do little more than offer a warning, may force unheard-of social and cultural transformations. Suppose a new volcanic eruption makes a place uninhabitable: Where will
Climate Justice: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation, Dr. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, of Seattle University, at Luther College
The Luther Lecture was established by Luther College at the University of Regina in 1977 with the purpose of making a distinctive and stimulating contribution to the life of the University and the general community. Annually, a distinguished scholar or leader of note is invited to give a public talk on matters of spiritual and social importance.
Although the speakers have included such outstanding minds as Northrop Frye, Helen Caldicott, John Ralston Saul, and Margaret Somerville, the lectures are aimed at a
Tradition and Modernity: The Feasibility of Regional Architecture in Post-Modern Society, Juhani Pallasmaa on Fluxwurx
“The diversity of building in traditional societies is brought about by the impact of local conditions and the specificity of culture. In our own culture the sheer force of industrial technology, combined with mobility, mass-communication, and uniformity of life-style, is causing cultural entropy that minimalizes diversity. What is the feasibility of regional culture and architecture in a world in which two billion people gather simultaneously around TV sets to watch the same football match? Are we not gradually becoming detached
Collaborative Systems: evolving databases and the ‘conditions of possibility’ — artificial life models of agency in on-line interactive art.
This paper will discuss interactive on-line artworks modeled on cellular automata that employ various types of agents, both algorithmic and human, to assist in the evolution of their databases. These works constitute what will here be referred to as “Collaborative Systems,” systems that evolve through the practice of inter-authorship.
- a paper authored by Sharon Daniel
EPA Issues Letter of Congratulations for Biochar Project
On March 4, the international Commission for Environmental Cooperation awarded an $85,000 grant to Climate Foundation and the Re-Locate project to work with the Tribal and City Councils of Kivalina, Alaska, to develop a shovel ready project to provide biochar sanitation to the village.
The project received a letter of congratulations from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, Ms. Gina McCarthy, on being chosen as a recipient of the 2013-15 North American Partnership on Environmental Community Action grant for the biochar
Kivalina to Turn Waste into Energy—The Arctic Sounder
In the next year or so, Kivalina residents might get to say farewell to the honey bucket.
Earlier this month, two organizations, Re-Locate and the Climate Foundation, were awarded an $85,000 grant through the Commission for Environmental Cooperation to work with tribal and municipal governments in the community to revamp the village’s sanitation system. Read more. (See also article in Alaska Dispatch.)
International Funding Grant Awarded to Re-Locate and the Climate Foundation
Kivalina, Alaska – On March 4, the international Commission for Environmental Cooperation awarded funding to the Climate Foundation and Re-Locate to work with the Tribal and City Councils of Kivalina to develop a shovel ready project to provide biochar sanitation to the village. Kivalina, an Inupiat Eskimo community in the Northwest Arctic, is among seventeen other communities that received an
Re-Locate Featured at SF MOMA
Last Friday, Re-Locate participated in the weekend-long Visual Activism symposium curated by SF MOMA. The symposium explored ways that art takes the form of political and social activism, and ways that activism takes on specific, and sometimes surprising, visual forms.
SF MOMA asked: How is our broader visual culture shaped by activist practices that circulate in public space? How can we better understand
The Modelling Kivalina Project
I. Interviews
The Modelling Kivalina project hopes to locate and make visible a variety of political perspectives on the erosion of Kivalina’s shoreline, and to place future discussions about the village’s relocation within the broader context of issues contributing to climate displacement around the globe.
At the end of June, from our base in London, we built a model of the village of Kivalina. We decided to
Video: Elinor Ostrom at NYU: The Role of Culture in Solving Social Dilemmas
“The Role of Culture in Solving Social Dilemmas” — Elinor Ostrom
Outcomes of Nansen Initiative’s Pacific Regional Consultation
Read about the Nansen Initiative Pacific Regional Consultation: Human Mobility, Natural Disasters and Climate Change in the Pacific.
United States General Accounting Office Testimony and Re-Locate government-structural origins
In conclusion, Alaska Native villages are being increasingly affected by flooding and erosion problems being worsened at least to some degree by climatological changes. They must nonetheless find ways to respond to these problems. Many Alaska Native villages that are small, remote, and have a subsistence lifestyle, lack the resources to address the problems on their own. Yet villages have difficulty finding assistance under several federal programs, because as currently defined the economic costs of the proposed project to control
Alaska Village Erosion Technical Assistance Program
This report was prepared as a response to legislation that directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to investigate issues surrounding erosion at several Alaska Native villages. As part of this effort, the Corps examined erosion rates and control, potential relocation, and impacts to Alaska Native culture and tradition. The Alaska Village Erosion Technical Assistance (AVETA) program is a compilation of efforts in numerous communities funded through the Tribal Partnership Program and subsequent legislation.
Alaska Baseline Erosion Assessment
the Corps designated 26 communities “Priority Action Communities”—indicating that they should be considered for immediate action by either initiating an evaluation of potential solutions or continuing with ongoing efforts to manage erosion. Sixty-nine communities where erosion problems are present but not significant enough to require immediate action were designated “Monitor Conditions Communities.” Eighty-three communities where minimal erosion-related damages were reported or would not be expected in the foreseeable future were designated “Minimal Erosion Communities.”
United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues: Climate change, bio-cultural diversity and livelihoods
Climate change, bio-cultural diversity and livelihoods: the stewardship role of indigenous peoples and new challenges:
Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, owing to their dependence upon, and close relationship with the environment and its resources. Climate change exacerbates the difficulties already faced by vulnerable indigenous communities, including political and economic marginalization, loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination and unemployment.
Architecture: A New Conversation in Kivalina
Architecture without Borders Austria is designing a new Re-Location center in Kivalina. The Re-Location center will be owned by the people of Kivalina as a space where the village and its collaborators can discuss and design relocation possibilities. Their participatory design process is creating opportunities for the village and related agencies to co-develop models for buildings in Kivalina to be designed more specifically to reflect climate, site, and social life
NANA Comprehensive Plan
Link to NANA’s Comprehensive Plan from 1982
NWAB Comprehensive Plan
Click to open the Northwest Arctic Borough’s Comprehensive Plan prepared in 1993.
Camp Two: July 2013
On July 25, 2013, Kivalina will host an open house to exhibit works of the Re-Locate Project (www.relocate-ak.org). There will be a project review at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage on July 30, 2013, with members of the Kivalina city and tribal councils attending.
The Re-Locate Project is a multidisciplinary group of partners working with Kivalina to support a community-led and culturally specific relocation process. The international collaborative
Camp One: August 2012
At the invitation of people in Kivalina, Anchorage-based artist and architect Michael Gerace invited fourteen international researchers and artists to visit Kivalina for a 10-day work camp last August. Re-Locate was co-produced by the Alaska Design Forum with initial funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and other partners. The camp launched the Re-Locate Project, a multidisciplinary group of partners working with the village to support a community-led and
Modelling Kivalina is on its way to Alaska
The Modelling Kivalina group based out of the Centre of Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, is happy to share the first pictures of the Kivalina model that will be presented to different agencies, stakeholders and community members this month in Alaska. In a series of interviews with different actors, the group will investigate the role and responsibility of different federal and state agencies in responding to the changing shoreline.
Voices from the Flats (themudflats.net) – How Many Votes Will Lisa Murkowski Get in Kivalina?
William Takak from Shaktoolik understands the impact of climate change. The Alaska Native Science Commission quotes him in a survey of the impact of climate change[1]. “Last Spring we only got six walrus because of the weather and the ice moving out to quick. A long time ago it used to be real nice for weeks and even sometimes for months. Now we have a day or two of good weather and this impacts our hunting. The hunters talk about
KCRW Santa Monica and Public Radio International Interview with Colleen Swan
“Melting ice and rising sea levels are driving native Alaskans out of their homes. Entire villages are struggling with the need to move. We hear about the earliest ravages of climate change and what they could mean for other places in the US and the rest of the world.”
City council woman Colleen Swan is interviewed by Public Radio International about Kivalina’s relocation, climate change, and Re-Locate.
Early Alaska Native Land Cases and Acts
With the steady stream of outsiders coming into Alaska, demand and competition for land continued to increase. Churches sought land and acquired it through the Missions Act of 1900, which allowed a religious denomination to acquire up to one square mile of land in Alaska. Disputes over land, particularly between miners, resource developers, and Alaska Native people arose. A string of court cases concerning Alaska Native land rights began, and continued up to the settlement of the Alaska Native Claims
Culture as Corporation – Juneau Empire
Culture as Corporation - NANA shareholders adapt corporate life to the ways of the people. By LORI THOMSON, THE JUNEAU EMPIRE
At 23, Jimmy Baldwin, has racked up a sum of money most villagers only dream about. He’s poured about $100,000 into his snowmachine shop in Kiana by working behind the steering wheel of a front-end loader at the Red Dog zinc mine, owned by NANA Regional Corp.
For people such as Baldwin, NANA is fulfilling one of its
Newtok to Mertarvik Relocation Plan
RELOCATION REPORT:: Newtok to Mertarvik
FINAL DRAFT ISSUED FOR REVIEW
by the Community of Newtok and the Newtok Planning Group, August 2011.
Prepared by by Agnew::Beck Consulting with PDC Engineers and USKH Inc.
for the State of Alaska
Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development (DCCED)
Division of Community and Regional Affairs.
Coastal Impact Assistance Program, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation,
and Enforcement, U.S. Department of
ANTHC – “Climate Change in Kivalina, Alaska – Strategies for Community Health”
“This is the second in a series of community specific analyses describing climate change effects in Northwestern Alaska. It was prepared by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Center for Climate and Health with funding from the United States Indian Health Service. The first report focused on Point Hope, the northern most community in the Maniilaq Association’s health service area. Assessments in other communities are on-going and will ultimately contribute to a comprehensive report for the Northwest Arctic region.”
ANTHC
How Stuff Works – Barrier Islands
Mapping the Political and Economical Entities
The area where Kivalina originated from is rich both in soil and in subsistence. Over hundreds of years the people in Kivalina have been living of hunting, fishing and picking. The rich grounds filled with Zinc and Iron have led to the opening of the Red Dog Mine. The Red Dog mine is the largest Zinc mine in the world and is a huge source of income to the NANA region. The mine bought the land out of NANA back in the 1980
NANA Kivalina Information Page
Spring Whaling Camp
Kivalina Consensus Building Project 2010
Kivalina_Consensus_Building_Project_Final_Report_July_2010
Traditional architecture
People in the Kivalina region were historically nomadic and lived in various types of seasonal housing. The longest time people would stay at the same place was three months in mid winter and three months during spring. Location was dependent on seasonal subsistence practices.
Along the coast people lived in sodhouses, at the river they used willow branch and moss structures, and in the hills they stacked rocks to build housing. People also used willow and caribou hide tents
Ownership Structures
The following section is focused on the ownership-structure in Kivalina. According to the 2010 census, 374 people are living in Kivalina in 99 houses, of which 85 are in use; in 2012 we counted 112 houses in the village. The housing units are located on the southern end of the peninsula, because the landfill and the airport (property of the state) to the North do not allow room for community expansion. Two streets, Channel and Bering, run through Kivalina
Residential housing conditions
Being on site in Kivalina in August and September 2012 we had to learn that the buildings are in a relatively low condition. Even nowadays, none of the residential houses in Kivalina come with a sewage and water system. Instead of using a toilet, people are using honeybuckets made of plastic. The houses’s waste and honeybucket storages on the streets are spilling over, water which is usually collected from one of the two watertanks in the city, couldn’t
Waste(d)?
In Kivalina each household is responsible for collecting its own waste and bringing it to a 3.4 acre dump site, located just north of the airport. There is no separation system in the city. All solid and human waste ends up at a non-managed landfill. Although seeing a lot of the residents disposing their waste to the landfill, garbage is pilling up around the city, human waste spilling out of the plastic bags.
See Google
Public Spaces in Kivalina
The cold climate in Kivalina forces the public interactions and assemblies to be held indoors.
1. The community center and Bingo Hall
The community center, located in the center of the village, is used in special events for public gathering (f.ex. Community meetings, or when a whale is caught for a feast), but also regularly for traditional Eskimo dancing classes. Next door’s Bingo Hall is owned and operated by the municipality, but was on suspension period
On foundations
The melting of the permafrost in the North Arctic region causes a shifting of houses which eventually damages the buildings and results in cracks of walls and windows. In Kivalina, only the school’s foundation
Threats to Kivalinas Water System:
The Material: Part of the existing water and sewage system in Kivalina is now 36 years old and therefore at the end of its expected life span.
Apart from that the pipe-line which connects the river with the water treatment plant when being re-filled is broken. This is a result of the most recent storm in the area happening in mid August 2012:
Water and Sewage System
The following section focuses on the system of water supply and waste water treatment in Kivalina based on an on-site research, done between August, 27th and September 3rd 2012:
Kivalina relies on water coming from the Wulik River. The water is being collected about 2 and a half miles upstream. Usually the water tanks are beiRead More »
Water Situation in Kivalina, August 2012
Situated on a small island – the Chukchi Sea to the west, a lagoon and the mouth of the Wulik river to the east – Kivalina is surrounded by water. Potable water on the other hand is not so accessible in this Arctic town. When we arrived in late August 2012 Kivalina faced a severe lack of potable water due to another heavy storm in the area of NW arctic Alaska.
See: Residents collecting
Sources of Access to Potable Water in Kivalina
- Outside the water plant building there is a coin operated machine where people buy their water (25ct. per 5 Gallon).
- People go upstream to collect water from the river. To do so, access to a boat and fuel is needed. Usually they collect from the Wulik river. Since the Zinc Mine discharges into the water shed of the Wulik river, Read More »
“Storms Force School Postponement in Kivalina”
A few of us from the Re-Locate Project flew back to Anchorage from Kivalina last night to start pulling together all of the information, stories, and research from our weeklong trip to Kivalina. (Photo: aerial view of Kivalina from yesterday’s flight.) Today, for the first time in over a week, we are showered and have a reliable internet connection.
We arrived in Anchorage to this headline in the