Nuna Nalluyuituq/the land remembers: spatial technology, collaborative community engagement, and capacity building in Southwest Alaskan cultural landscapes

For over a thousand years, the Yup’ik (pl. Yupiit) people have inhabited the vast subarctic wetland tundra of the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta in southwest Alaska. Despite enduring dire challenges in the colonial era (c.19th century to present) — violence, disease, disenfranchisement, and forced relocations—- they have emerged more resolute and resilient than ever. Modern Yup’ik communities actively reclaim their culture in a number of ways, including working with outsiders: as exemplified by the Quinhagak Archaeological Project’s rescue excavation of the Nunalleq site, a 17th century ancestral village. This doctoral research project seeks to build upon the collaborative research relationship established in Quinhagak, a village of 700 Yupiit on the Bering Sea, by looking beyond the Nunalleq site to the wider cultural landscape— how can spatial technology be used in close collaboration with local communities to protect cultural landscape heritage, and build capacity in the face of catastrophic climate change? In places like Quinhagak, multiple strands of evidence are available for investigation. Yup’ik oral history provides a rich source of traditional knowledge about the cultural landscape. Furthermore, unrecorded archaeological features are hard to detect unaided, but their presence is revealed through subtle indirect clues in the landscape, like vegetation differences. Thus, through ancestral memory and the natural environment, the land remembers the activities of its past inhabitants. In this thesis by papers, five peer-reviewed articles are presented. Article 1 demonstrates the value of Yup’ik oral tradition for characterising cultural landscapes. It also suggests that vegetation signatures associated with archaeological sites can be detected with remotely-sensed multispectral imagery. Article 2 is a spatial analysis of known cultural sites around Quinhagak, illustrating the profound relationship between the community’s past and its two salmon-bearing rivers. Article 3 proves conclusively that archaeological sites can be easily detected though anomalous vegetation patterns in subarctic tundra, and highlights the advantages of imagery captured by Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s) versus satellite-derived ones— image quality, cost effectiveness, and data sovereignty. Article 4 further demonstrates the utility of UAV’s by showing how they can be used to measure erosion severity when used in conjunction with archival satellite imagery. Finally, Article 5 suggests that capacity may be built by automating the processing of spatial data in Google Earth Engine, a free cloud-based remote sensing client. This will saves users dozens of steps, and will facilitate the training of local cultural professionals to tackle the climate crisis and threats to heritage in the Y-K Delta.

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