Voices of the Sea Ice: engaging an Arctic community to communicate impacts of climate change
Authors: Lipson David , Reasor Kim , Erickson Kååre Sikuaq 
Published: March 2020

&lt;p&gt;The predominantly Inupiat people of Utqia&amp;#289;vik, Alaska are among those who will be most impacted by&lt;br&gt;climate change and the loss of Arctic sea ice in the near future. Subsistence hunting of marine mammals&lt;br&gt;associated with sea ice is central to the Inupiat way of life. Furthermore, their coastal homes and&lt;br&gt;infrastructure are increasingly subject to damage from increased wave action on ice-free Beaufort and&lt;br&gt;Chukchi Seas. While the people of this region are among the most directly vulnerable to climate change,&lt;br&gt;the subject is not often discussed in the elementary school curriculum. Meanwhile, in many other parts&lt;br&gt;of the world, the impacts of climate change are viewed as abstract and remote. We worked with fifth&lt;br&gt;grade children in Utqia&amp;#289;vik both to educate them, but also to engage them in helping us communicate&lt;br&gt;to rest of the world, in an emotionally resonant way, the direct impacts of climate change on families in&lt;br&gt;this Arctic region.&lt;br&gt;The team consisted of a scientist (Lipson), an artist (Reasor) and an outreach specialist (Erickson) of&lt;br&gt;Inupiat heritage from a village in Alaska. We worked with four 5th grade classes of about 25 students&lt;br&gt;each at Fred Ipalook Elementary in Utqia&amp;#289;vik, AK. The scientist gave a short lecture about sea ice and&lt;br&gt;climate change in the Arctic, with emphasis on local impacts to hunting and infrastructure (with&lt;br&gt;interjections from the local outreach specialist). We then showed the students a large poster of&lt;br&gt;historical and projected sea ice decline, and asked the students to help us fill in the white space beneath&lt;br&gt;the lines. The artist led the children in making small art pieces that represent things that are important&lt;br&gt;to their lives in Utqia&amp;#289;vik (they were encouraged to paint animals, but they were free to do whatever&lt;br&gt;they wanted). We returned to the class later that week and had each student briefly introduce&lt;br&gt;themselves and their painting, and place it to the large graph of sea ice decline, which included the dire&lt;br&gt;predictions of the RCP8.5 scenario. At the end we added the more hopeful RCP2.6 scenario to end on a&lt;br&gt;positive note. The artist then painted in the more hopeful green line by hand.&lt;br&gt;The result was a poster showing historical and projected Arctic sea ice cover, with 100 beautiful&lt;br&gt;paintings by children of things that are dear to them about their home being squeezed into a smaller&lt;br&gt;region as the sea ice cover diminishes. We scanned all the artwork to make a digital version of the&lt;br&gt;poster, and left the original with the school. These materials are being converted into an interactive&lt;br&gt;webpage where viewers can click on the individual painting for detail, and get selected recordings of the&lt;br&gt;children&amp;#8217;s statements about their artwork. This project can serve as a nucleus for communicating to&lt;br&gt;other classes and adults about the real impacts of climate change in people&amp;#8217;s lives.&lt;/p&gt;