#TheYearofBelief | #TYBBuild

(Re)Building the Iñisaq — Preparing for the Next Storm

🌿 From the Land: Rebuilding the Iñisaq in a Changing World

Last fall, a storm flooded Kotzebue, tearing through our family’s iñisaq—the structure we’ve used for years to process ugruk, fish, and other subsistence foods.

In the video below, Corina’s husband Qaluraq Lance Kramer shows the late October 2024 storm that flooded Kotzebue:

The storm didn’t just take down drying racks and fish camps.
It destroyed homes. Permanent structures. Places where families had lived for decades, now uninhabitable because the beach that once supported them was gone.

The storm came. And we know another will come because Kotzebue is a frontline community in the climate crisis.

We cannot stop the storms, but we can prepare.

In June, as ugruk season approached, Cana was home with her son Wells to help prepare, and part of that meant rebuilding what the storm took.

We went upriver as a family to look for logs, filling our boat with heavy timbers—some for our camp, some for another family’s. Back at the site, Wells and our family friend Max, a Harvard medical student spending the summer learning and helping, cleared storm debris to make space for a new iñisaq.

The next week, Wells, Lance, and Tyler began building. They set the posts, braced the frame, and shaped the new iñisaq to Lance’s vision—one strong enough to withstand storms, dry ugruk, dry fish, and process seal oil.

But even with their combined knowledge and effort, they realized they needed help to do it right.

Gene, a contractor and family friend who has spent summers volunteering in Kotzebue with Lance’s church, brought his son to help. Together, they built an iñisaq meant to last. One that could stand in the wind and hold strong in the next storm.

Because the storms will come.

Building the iñisaq is about preparing for what we know will come, not just hoping for calm weather.

It’s about building anyway, even knowing it might fall again.

It’s about family, neighbors, and friends working together to prepare for the seasons ahead.

It’s about readiness.

And it’s about hope.

🏛️ From the Institutions: Building Enabling Structures for the Storms We Know Are Coming

The storm that took our iñisaq also destroyed homes, making them uninhabitable. These were not temporary structures; they were meant to last. But the land they stood on eroded, pulled away by the sea.

This is the reality of living on the frontline of climate change.

We cannot stop the storms.

But we can build structures that help us prepare, endure, and adapt.

Tara McMullin, in her What Works podcast/article on enabling structures, defines them like this:

An enabling structure is a system that enhances human capacity and extends the imagination. It’s a way of prioritizing a value or set of values and constructing a system for realizing that value. An enabling structure creates the conditions necessary for a desired outcome while defining that outcome in terms of a complex human value. (“How to Leverage Enabling Structures to Fulfill Values,” 3 April 2025)

They are not just routines or habits, but frameworks we intentionally create to make living out our values possible.

Public education is an enabling structure.
Community care systems are enabling structures.
An iñisaq is an enabling structure.

When we rebuild the iñisaq, we’re not just putting up poles for drying meat—we’re creating a system that allows our family and community to feed each other, share, and prepare together for the work ahead. We’re creating space for youth to learn and for knowledge to be passed on. We’re ensuring that even if storms come again—and they will—there is something to rebuild around.

In research, we need enabling structures too:

• Relational agreements that hold during conflicts.

• Flexible timelines that allow for family emergencies and climate disruptions.

• Funding models that support slowness, reflection, and real community engagement.

• Shared visions that guide us when conditions change.

Tara McMullin reminds us that enabling structures are built with intention. They allow us to “extend our imagination” and live out our values even in the face of intractable challenges.

Building a strong iñisaq is not about avoiding the next storm; it’s about being ready to respond when it comes, with your people by your side.

And building enabling structures within respectful Arctic research is not for controlling uncertainty. Instead, it’s about creating conditions for responsiveness, care, integrity, and community accountability to flourish even in the storm.

🧭 TYB Framework: This Week’s Practice

This week, we focus on:

Know Who You Are
Where in your work or life are you building your “iñisaq”? Is it ready for the storms you know will come?

Hope Reinforced by Grit
Hope is in showing up with tools, logs, and willingness to work, even knowing it might be washed away.

Invest in a Community of Support
Who do you call when you need help building? Who do you help when they are rebuilding?

✅ This Week’s Challenge: Build for What’s Coming

Pick an area in your research, work, or personal practice that feels fragile.

Ask yourself:

• What would it take to strengthen this for the storms you know are coming?

• Who can help you?

• Who can you support in return?

Then take one action:

• Strengthen a partnership.

• Clarify an agreement.

• Offer your help.

• Accept help.

If it feels right, share using:
#TheYearofBelief | #TYBBuild
“Here’s how I’m preparing for the storms ahead.”

Post your ideas for first steps in comments, on our EAR Facebook Group, ARCUS’s Connect the Arctic portal, or simply reflect privately on your preparation.

Remembering Forward

We know the storms are coming.

We can’t stop them.

But we can prepare for them.

We can build our iñisaqs strong, together, grounded in knowledge, and rooted in hope that our efforts will protect what matters most.

Because this is what belief looks like on the frontlines of climate change.

And it’s what respectful Arctic research preparation looks like too.