Author

P. Joshua Griffin

P. Joshua Griffin

P. Joshua Griffin is an assistant professor of marine and environmental affairs and American Indian studies at the University of Washington. He is a scholar of settler descent working at the intersections of Indigenous studies, political ecology, critical environmental anthropology, climate change and environmental justice. His community-engaged research focuses on Arctic Indigenous ecologies, climate change, environmental health, food sovereignty, hunting and fishing governance, and environmental planning.

COMMENTARY
A section of an embankment is seen where due to permafrost melt the dirt wall collapsed on Sept. 17, 2019, near Kivalina. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

‘We just can’t adapt this fast’ – Kivalina Search and Rescue fights to protect their island

By: - April 28, 2023

As winds and waves from Typhoon Merbok devastated communities along the coast of Western Alaska in 2022, Reppi Swan Sr.’s phone began to ring at Kivalina, a barrier island 80 miles above the Arctic Circle. A neighboring family had lost 3 feet of land to the rumbling lagoon, and their home was now sitting just […]