#TheYearofBelief | #TYBThaw

Navigating Rotten Ice: Respectful Arctic Research in Practice

🌿 From the Land: Letting Your Child Step onto Rotten Ice

Ugruk season is one of the most intense, important, and beautiful times of the year for many Arctic Iñupiaq families.

It’s when we hunt bearded seal from the sea ice before it fully breaks apart.
It’s when generations of knowledge, muscle memory, and respect for the ocean and its rhythms are put into practice.

But it’s also risky.
The ice can change by the hour.
There are hidden cracks, ocean currents, wind shifts.
Even if the weather and ice look perfect, the conditions below can be unstable.

Here is a video Cana shot in Kotzebue of the ice moving.

This week, Cana’s 23-year-old son Wells went ugruk hunting for the first time.
He came up to Kotzebue after graduating from college—to return to his roots, to iñuniaq.
To just be Iñupiaq.
To steep himself in the rhythms of his people.

He went out with Corina’s husband Lance (a deeply experienced hunter), their nephew Willard (a steady, committed provider), and Willard’s partner Madison.
They were the dream team.

But Cana was filled with anxiety.

Not because she doubted the hunters’ skill or their care—but because she knew they might assume Wells, as an adult Iñupiaq man, already knew the basics.
How to read ice.
Where to step.
What not to trust.

The sea ice this year was rotten.
The ice melted from the top and didn’t move in the normal time.
The break-up was slow, messy.
Everything was shifting underfoot.

But then Cana learned that Corina’s youngest son, 11-year-old Adam, was also going out with the crew for his first time.

And something in her relaxed.

Because she knew:
If Adam was with them, the pace would shift.
Things would be explained aloud.
The rhythm would change to one of teaching, not just hunting.
And Wells would benefit from that.

Regardless, Cana stayed up all night.
Worried. Quiet.
They were gone for over 12 hours.

When the crew arrived at camp around 2am, tired and windblown and full of that quiet peace that only comes from being out in the country, Cana looked at Corina and said:

“I don’t know how you or other Iñupiaq parents do this all the time.”

Here is a video of the hunters arriving at camp after a long day out in the boat and on the ice.

This moment is personal.
But it’s not just personal.

Wells pulls the ugruk to the gravel on the beach with his Auntie Corina leading the way!

It’s a story about readiness.
About trusting others.
About how belief is practiced—imperfectly—in real conditions.
In letting go.
In letting someone you love take on risk, and watching from a distance.

And it’s what respectful Arctic research preparation looks like, too.
You don’t just prepare the paperwork.
You prepare your heart and listen.
You recognize your limits.
You stay in relationship—with people, with seasons, with systems.

Letting go is part of the work.
It’s how belief makes space to grow.

🏛️ From the Institutions: Trusting Relational Expertise in Arctic Research Partnerships

In Cultural Rhetorics Methodology as Praxis, Andrea Riley-Mukavetz (2014) reminds us:

So when I talk about intercultural research, I am acknowledging that all research that negotiates multiple spaces, knowledge practices, and beliefs is intercultural research. In addition, this distinction provides the opportunity for researchers to reflect on how they are members of cultural communities within academia with their own sets of shared beliefs and practices to use for communication. This distinction is particularly relevant for intercultural research because we need to think about the knowledge-making practices we use to communicate our research (experiences) to our disciplines.

This reminder reframes research preparation as more than project logistics.

It urges us to recognize that even in academic spaces, we are operating within cultural systems—systems with their own rhythms, expectations, and blind spots. And when we work in partnership with communities, especially Indigenous ones, we’re not just moving across spaces—we’re shaping knowledge in the spaces between.

This is what Cana wrestled with during her son’s ugruk hunt. She had to trust the deep, lived knowledge of others. And that trust was relational. It required humility, and a willingness to step back from control and lean into shared learning.

Cana’s anxiety about the hunt wasn’t about skill.
It was about different kinds of experience.
Her son hadn’t grown up on the ice. His crew had.
And she had to trust that those differences wouldn’t get overlooked in the field.

The same dynamic exists in equitable Arctic research partnerships:

• Community partners may hold intergenerational land-based knowledge.

• Academic partners may hold technical tools or institutional access.

• Preparation means knowing your place in the system—and trusting others to know theirs.

Donella Meadows (2001), in Dancing with Systems, reminds us that respectful work with complex systems—like the land, like communities—requires release, not domination:

We can’t impose our will upon a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone.

Respectful Arctic research preparation means listening to what the system—and our partners—are telling us.
It means making space for different knowledges, different speeds, different risks.
It means preparing with others, not just for them.

🧭 TYB Framework: This Week’s Practice
This week, we focus on:

• Know Who You Are
  What kind of preparation do you avoid because of the fear of not knowing?
  Where do you need to trust someone else’s rhythm?

• Hope Reinforced by Grit
  Where are you being called to let go—and what would it take to lean in, even if the terrain feels unstable?

• Invest in a Community of Support
  Who has walked this path before?
  What can you learn from those who know where it’s safe to step?

✅ This Week’s Challenge: Prep Like It Matters

Choose something you’re preparing for—a project, a field visit, a transition, a relationship.
Now pause and ask:

• Who else is part of this preparation with me?

• What assumptions am I making about other’s experience? How can I trust other’s knowledge more?

• Who might need me to slow down, or who might I need to ask for help or clarification?

Then take one small action:

• Ask a question.

• Share your plan.

• Check in with a partner.

• Or give yourself the grace to feel nervous—and keep going anyway.

If it feels right, share using:
#TheYearofBelief | #TYBThaw
“Here’s what I’m getting ready for—and who I’m learning to trust.”

Post your ideas for first steps in comments, on our EAR Facebook Group, ARCUS’s Connect the Arctic portal, or simply reach out to someone who’s helping you get ready.

🌬 Remembering Forward

Cana wasn’t the expert of hunting on the ice.
But she didn’t need to be.

She trusted others to bring the expertise that she couldn’t—just as they’ve trusted her with what she knows—to keep her son safe on the ice.

That’s what true research partnership looks like.

Not knowing everything.
But being prepared to believe—and to learn—together.
That’s what grows trust.

And that’s how respectful Arctic research begins.