'What research can do for a community': New center dives into Arctic research
Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq knows firsthand the toll climate change has on Arctic communities.
“I’ve watched the impacts of it for a long time,” said Itchuaqiyaq, an Iñupiaq scholar and Tribal citizen of the Noorvik Native Community in northwest Alaska. “I’ve seen how it has affected cultural practice and subsistence.”
As a child, she walked the beach of Kotzebue, Alaska, watching and helping as community members fished and processed seals.
“We would be asked to rinse fish or grab things for adults,” she said. “We could participate in subsistence with people in town, even if they weren’t our own family.”
Itchuaqiyaq said such opportunities have dwindled since a sea wall, built in 2012 to address coastal erosion, forced subsistence activities farther down the coast – significantly impacting how Arctic Indigenous people “interact with the ocean in the summer and the ice in the winter.”
Those early experiences, and the sprawling changes she has witnessed since, now shape her work as founding director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Sustainable Engagement in the Arctic.
Centering Indigenous voices
Through the center, which launched in September, she is transforming how Arctic research is conducted. Housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, it prioritizes listening to Indigenous leadership to create sustainable solutions and foster connections with resources at Virginia Tech and beyond.
It was founded on the premise that Arctic research can do more than observe. The results of this kind of research can strengthen community well-being by creating job opportunities, improving health care access, and prioritizing cultural practice.
While the Arctic – generally defined as the area north of the Arctic Circle – is thousands of miles from Virginia, Itchuaqiyaq said the issues affecting the region impact many other places in the U.S.
“Arctic research funding is federally mandated to support the U.S. Arctic Research Plan,” she said. “There’s a ton of space for Arctic research because it is a strategic area of the United States, especially in terms of national security.”
The center operates on three levels. It conducts short-term consultations with Arctic community leaders and organizations to address immediate needs, develops medium-sized projects that grow from those consultations, and undertakes long-term initiatives tackling issues such as health, research infrastructure, and workforce development. While not every consultation evolves into a long-term initiative, each helps the center map community needs across the Arctic, identify patterns and emerging concerns, and coordinate collaborations between researchers and communities.
Currently, it is working with the Aqqaluk Trust educational fund in Kotzebue on workforce development focused on digital and data literacy and infrastructure. This is important for enacting Indigenous data sovereignty, which Itchuaqiyaq said is of high importance to Arctic communities. In northwest Alaska, the center is helping a Tribal Health Organization develop research and data policies which will be shared with other Tribal Health Organizations, many of which receive numerous research requests but lack the structure and staffing to respond effectively.
Turning resources into action
Andi Ogier, associate dean in University Libraries, is deputy director of the center. She said the center strives to build trust with communities by avoiding extractive research practices that collect data without involving or benefiting communities.
“It's not ‘what can communities do for research?’” she said. “It's ‘what can research do for communities?’”
The center’s work is guided by the Iñupiaq expression “isagutilakput,” which conveys the spirit of working together to initiate meaningful action. To her knowledge, Itchuaqiyaq is the first-ever Inuk to found and lead a university Arctic research center.
“We will not only do good science and research, but we will also be doing really good community service, which is part of the bigger goal that Virginia Tech has,” Itchuaqiyaq said.
It was Virginia Tech’s commitment to Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) that drew her to the university in 2021, where she is now an assistant professor of technical and scientific communication in the Department of English. After earning her Ph.D. from Utah State University, a conversation with her mother inspired her to use her training to direct resources to Arctic communities. Itchuaqiyaq also holds a master’s degree in communication and media studies and a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies.
Since joining Virginia Tech, Itchuaqiyaq has become a leading scholar in community-driven Arctic research. She co-leads the Tribal Consultation and Effective Processes team for the U.S. Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee, a federal group that ensures Indigenous communities maintain their leadership in Arctic research and have the resources to build partnerships with scientists. She also co-leads the International Arctic Science Committee’s Research Priority Team on Services, Infrastructure, Logistics, and Technology, which guides planning for the tools and support needed for international Arctic research.
She has received numerous honors for her work, including an invitation from the White House to present her research to Office of Science and Technology Policy officials.
Bridging science and humanities
Drawing on her background, she uses a feminist rhetoric lens to interpret research, asking not just what data reveals, but whose voices are missing.
“Looking for those gaps is really important when we interrogate the power structure of research,” she said, adding that the college, with its focus on humanities education, is the ideal home for this kind of scientific research.
“The humanities is a natural bridge for the necessary action of listening to community expertise and bringing it into the fold of science,” she said. “We are incorporating lived local expertise with institutional scientific methods, which makes science more rigorous and impactful.”
The broad nature of Arctic research also means there is ample opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration, she said, noting there is a huge crossover between Arctic and Appalachian issues — from resource extraction to rural health care and education. The center invites Virginia Tech faculty, graduate students, and staff to consider how their work connects with the Arctic.
“Basically name your field, and it has relevance to the Arctic and Arctic research,” she said. “That’s another thing the humanities does well – we have this imagination of possibility. Putting together interdisciplinary teams to meet community goals is what we’re trying to do.”
Itchuaqiyaq visits her village often and is currently in the early stages on the journey of becoming an elder in her tribe of roughly 600. Elders are keepers of knowledge and peacekeepers in their communities.
She said she feels a strong responsibility not only to her tribe, but to the broader Arctic community.
“It’s time for science to start giving back, because the whole field of Arctic science — this huge interdisciplinary field — has been made possible by Arctic Indigenous peoples,” she said.
