New fisheries and marine sciences program focuses on Indigenous knowledge

August 31, 2020

A new graduate traineeship program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will broaden and diversify graduate education in fisheries and marine sciences through greater inclusion of Indigenous peoples and knowledge.

The National Science Foundation is providing $3 million in funding through its National Research Trainee (NRT) Program, which is designed to encourage innovation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduate education training. Funding is also being provided by NSF’s Navigating the New Arctic initiative. The traineeship will be part of the UAF College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

The program is called “Tamamta,” which means “all of us” in the Sugpiaq and Yup’ik languages of the Indigenous peoples of Alaska’s southcentral coast.

“Tamamta addresses a huge problem in Alaska – the exclusion and erasure of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems,” said Courtney Carothers, a professor at CFOS, who is the principal investigator on the project.

Photo by Michael Hardy. Shannon Hardy, left, and Jessica Black cut Łuk Choo (Chinook salmon) on the Yukon River. Black helped develop the new Tamamta graduate traineeship program at UAF's College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

The Tamamta program will fund four or five cohorts of Indigenous and non-Indigenous CFOS graduate students over the next five years.

“It is our goal to elevate Indigenous knowledge and pedagogies to their rightful places as intact systems that can be offered alongside Western marine science and fisheries,” said Jessica Black, a co-investigator and assistant professor at the UAF College of Rural and Community Development, who is Gwich'in.

Nearly 80 percent of CFOS fisheries graduates go on to work in state, federal and tribal resource management, so Tamamta students are likely to be part of the next generation of scientists and managers.

The First Alaskans Institute, the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are examples of partner organizations where students have opportunities to receive on-the-job training or do research.

Tamamta program activities and training are available to students, faculty, staff and agency partners. They include new team-taught interdisciplinary courses, an elder-in-residence program, a visiting Indigenous scholars program, cultural immersion experiences, professional development and cultural competency skill-building, hosted dialogues and art installations.

Tamamta was built by a cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary group of faculty from CFOS, the College of Rural and Community Development, the College of Natural Science and Mathematics, and the Center for One Health Research.

For more information, contact Courtney Carothers at clcarothers@alaska.edu.