Indigenous Alaskan Sustainable Community (IASC) Sustainable Village Design led by a village’s story

We're working with Alaska Native Villages on the frontlines of climate change:

Quinhagak (pop 753) is forced to relocate from melting permafrost- a 3rd move of a prophecy that says they will move 5 times. They are dealing with an eroding coast line and  have regenerative goals in regards to food sovereignty, energy efficiency, and green energy.

Akiachak (pop 683) has a Carbon project that leverages advanced soil science and indigenous plant cultivation activities, propagating native and fruiting trees and bushes for soil health and local enjoyment. They are also dealing with the impacts of melting permafrost.

Port Heiden (pop 82) is shrinking due to lack of economic opportunity, while permafrost thaw causes infrastructure and land changes, with whole lakes drain into the Bering Sea.

Its is located near a preferential trade route for Western States and Eastern Countries, offering an opportunity for strategic development towards value chain creation.

Eklutna (378 Tribal members) seeks to address food insecurity, install renewable energy infrastructure, participate in Carbon markets, and reduce wildfire risk by removing dead timber killed by invasive insects driven by climate change. Due to Eklutna’s proximity to Anchorage, the community is in constant threat of assimilation and is not able to secure funding for rural designated areas, despite facing many of the issues rural communities deal with.The area possesses thousands of acres of dead timber stands that pose a threat to safety, property and emissions.

Common factors between the challenges these communities are facing are: 

1. Inefficient building design: Lack of energy efficiency in existing buildings contribute to energy losses and high bills, increasing an already high energy burden.

2. Infrastructure inequality: Port Heiden is the extreme example with rapidly eroading lands. In Eklutna, Native land was sold to a polluting power plant right next to the village, while the community still only has single phase power and experiences blackouts.  Most villages have lands contaminated by military or industrial use prior to land transfer to back Native ownership.

3. Food insecurity: As sustenance hunting and food cultivation is threatened by urbanization, Native communities are forced to rely on more expensive, less healthy, less available, imported food sources. 

4. Threats to cultural knowledge: Cultural conservation is a core value for our communities, yet we are losing our elders who are some of the remaining language and wisdom keepers, while young people are moving away for economic opportunity. 

5. Lack of economic opportunity: This ties into cultural conservation because young people are leaving the villages for work.  

6. Need for capacity building: There is historic opportunity to apply for IRA capital, but small villages need additional capacity to apply for capital and implement projects. 

The overarching issue is climate change, which impacts everyone on the planet. We stewards are requiring urgent focus right now to stem accelerating feedback loops – melting permafrost releases methane, arctic ice melt diminishes global heat deflection, and wildfires spin the carbon cycle in the wrong direction.

Inter-tribal solutions to these problems can be shared with Native and non-native communities across the world.

Our solution combines traditional knowledge and modern technology to create vertically integrated systems for energy security and sovereignty; regenerative food systems; economic value; capacity building and workforce development.  

Specifically, addressing the issues discussed above, we are solving for: 

1. Energy and Infrastructure: Renewable energy upgrades matching the available resources and cultural values of each community are required for economic development of the areas. Three villages have existing renewable energy infrastructure needing upgrades or expanded. Analysis is required to determine what should be built where.  Eklutna has the right-of-first-refusal to utilize waste-heat from natural gas fired power plant for co-generation and we have received technical assistance from NREL to conduct a feasibility study for greenhouse project - utilizing the heat to grow year-round first foods and medicines. 

1. Cultural knowledge preservation: Plant varieties are selected by the community for land needs/traditional and modern uses. Growth of the Native Vegetation initiative includes tissue cultures. Sensitive genetics can be patented and protected. Eklutna possesses the capacity to distribute Tribal patents, which would be owned by the indigenous peoples of the land. We envision a digital database as well as a physical seed bank of Native seeds, which have already been proven to be far more resilient than GMOs in changing climate conditions. All work is being guided by traditions and the communities stories. Pratt Institute is helping to build capacity for storytelling. Community sites, like the gardens, will be used to distribute relevant knowledge discovered to the community, by academic teams.
2. Economic opportunity:Example: Indigenous forestry management program for culling the trees killed by invasive spruce beetles and utilizing the harvest to create biochar for sale (and for use as a carbon-negative soil amendment in village food programs). This initiative can be developed in conjunction with a compost program which could be scaled in the Anchorage area. Pratt Institute's departments of architecture, civil engineering, and industrial design offers solution exploration for worker housing and industrial system designs that reflect the local culture. 

1. Capacity building and workforce development: This project will train community members soil science for stabilizing eroding lands, increasing carbon sequestration, protecting GHG pools, nutrient management,  and contamination removal.
2. Food security/Stewardship: The co-gen greenhouse project is part of a development in ag infrastructure for Eklutna. Our solution incorporates its use and effort of Eklutna's for Native Vegetation cultivation, for planting bio-diverse food forests. Each village currently has a garden in development for education and feeding their people. We seek support establishing baselines and streamlining the collection/processing of information to inform decisions, with follow-up actions in community, commercial and industrial areas, and natural wildlands that the communities subsists from. Assistance from plant genetics specialists would ensure access to correct varieties. Each village would benefit from soil specialists, conducting analysis and long-term planning. 
3. Our vision is to introduce advanced genetics production systems, i.e. modular lab units for tissue-culture operations. This will provide scalable production with minimal land disturbance. In the near-term we are supporting internal capacity for Native Villages to apply for and manage grants.

Graphic Description

Each site has a village government entity that benefits the original peoples of the area and a Native corporation owned by the original people that owns the land and provides economic development for the community, respectively.

Quinhagak: Kwinhagak Tribal Council, Qanirtuuq, Inc.

Akiachak: Native Community of Akiachak, Akiachak, Limited

Port Heiden: Port Heiden Community, Alaska Peninsula Corporation

Eklutna: Native Village of Eklutna, Eklutna, Inc.

Tribal members and Alaska Native shareholders will possess ideal preference in placement of the project opportunities. From education to job placement to increase enjoyment of healthy lands, the project will provide pathways of education and creation of meaningful jobs that build up their communities.

Benefits to communities are multifold. Plant production that focuses on addressing unstable soils with deeper soil establishment and deeper root penetration to thawed and eroding areas will help stabilize and protect resources. Inland sites designated for crop production would benefit from strategic disturbance for maximum production of healthy crops and increased biodiversity. For example: in areas with dead timber impacted by invasive species, strategic harvesting offers strategic disturbances of the land to produce natural plant varieties with or without production intervention. 

Further planning allows for strategic conversion of land-use to meet the needs of the landowners, who are the original peoples of the areas. The strategic disturbances provide minimal negative impacts to sites and offer academic teams with opportunities for relevant data collection and content creation for educational, storytelling, and promotional uses.

Solutions have specifically been identified and are being driven by the communities: 

Akiachak: Implementing an aggressive planting plan for establishing 100,000+ trees and bushes for building soil health, biodiversity, increasing local plant resources, and increasing the carbon pool. Carbon finances will be used to provide the wildlands production system with long term maintenance and improvements.

Quinhagak: Implementing plant production effort for stabilizing soils, similar to Akiachak design. System would produce native plant varieties along sensitive areas and produce crops on areas selected by Native landowners.

Port Heiden: Created a hemp market analysis and seeks a quad crop production process - growing flower, fiber, grain, root system which will provide elements for soil health, including soil stabilization. Areas where permafrost has melted poses no organic materials or roots, creating unstable soils. Project will work with focused production of plants to create organic material in permafrost thawed areas while protecting permafrost areas.

Produced crops offer raw resource or value-added commodity sales opportunities to larger consumer bases. Project team holds relationships with access to multiple large commodity customers.

Eklutna, is pursuing the next level of permaculture production at their garden, with goals for identifying the best plants to go through value added processing for 3 specific end-use products.

Eklutna seeks to build a workforce and install a facility to process biomass tonnage into biochar for consumer use.

Academic team proximity allows for consistent marketing of curriculum useful to local workforces.

Strategic economic development ensures the industry established meets the needs of the community, including cultural requirements.

Steven Holley: The Project Lead has deep relationships with all sites, professional and personal, having worked on garden developments and other activities including: 

• Aligning Pratt services to Quinhagak needs and connecting Carbon storage practices to the community needs.

• Carbon planning for Akiachak, he has aggregated in-depth understanding of steps needed to identify exact steps for intervention for addressing Climate Change concerns through Carbon creation.

• Building the Hemp Market Analysis for Port Heiden, currently collecting additional information to present project feasibility requirements.

• Cultivating relationships with industries and institutions that are a part of this project or adjacent to it’s activities.

Steven consistently conducts in-depth discussions on project needs with local stockholders, industry and institution contacts, and market stakeholders, centering work on the communities’ goals and immediately addressing any concerns..

Project partners – 10POWER, North Star Agriculture, Community Business Development Inc. – are well established in industry and have direct relationships with the project lead and his home village of Eklutna. They are well aware of the project needs and the direction being taken to identify further project needs.

Academic partners – Pratt and Alaska Pacific University – are well suited to bring in students and provide student opportunities that meet the project needs. The close relationship with Project Leader assists in project relevance in curriculum developed for student or community participation.

Colleagues from the United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, North American & Indigenous Foods Systems Program are being reached out to for project qualification as a project for their support.

The Team possesses ample data for a majority of the decisions needed, but requires further insight and discussion for appropriate decisions needed. Each village brings different levels of science and a spectrum of relationships that enable specific services to be implemented. This offers the team a foundation to develop advanced planning on all sights for strategic land management, infrastructure, and community resources.

Quinhagak introduced Pratt to the group, and met them in the village in 2023. Further developments in storytelling have resulted in documentary of the challenges faced by the community.

Akiachak’s tree and bush production will model the wildlands production of fruiting and woody materials for soil health improvements and local enjoyment of natural areas and materials.

Port Heiden is undertaking hemp production activities in 2024, partnering with Winona Laduke and her team for training needs. A market analysis has been completed and a feasibility study is under development. A documentary about erosion issues is under development.

Eklutna is finishing a Forest Stewardship Plan, Strategic Energy Plan, and Biochar Business Plan. Further, they have successfully established a garden producing both traditional garden and traditional native plants on a permaculture system of management.

All groups have industry and institutional relationships that will assist in the development, at varying levels and capacities. Market relationships will assist in establishing sustainable growth with healthy revenue streams from commodity sales. Natural resource management cost-match programs from the federal government for increased production will assist in system sustainability. This part of the design will ensure scientific bases are covered during implementation of stewardship practices.

The project needs are multi leveled and possess technical needs that need a holistic analysis and approach.

Implementing conservation practices that provide soil system needs for stability and nutrient management will require satellite and on-the-ground sensory data collected over an extended time, collected regularly by standardized practices, manually or through technology. Land stability and improved soil and wildlands health provide a sustainable resource for local enjoyment, inline with the local culture. 

Strategic conversion to farmland uses provide economic resources for further community development. In order to ensure sustainable production of specific plant genetics for specific end-use products, soil capacity will need to be managed and improved with industry standard practices for soil nutrient management.

Produced crops will need facilities for specific value-adding processes. Ensuring energy-efficiencies are found and implemented, accurate sensory and modeling needs technology devices and software use.

Energy-efficiencies further need to be found for worker and community housing, some of which are needing further building improvements. 

All these needs bring extensive technical capacity requirements best served with scientific approaches with technology and tradition. The MIT recognition of the value in Traditional Ecological Knowledge provides this project a path for inclusion of Local Environmental Observations to  influence the modeling and practices implemented to attain the modeled results, especially for energy creation and use, and the growth-yield modeling for increased vegetation resources.

Further, the alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goals provide a platform for recognition of value in the system established.

The Team Lead has worked on projects in each village, and mentioned in this application: Carbon, Pratt, Hemp, gardening, forest management. The opportunities for each site has been aggregated by him with personal and professional relationships with leadership and among the communities. He is on the board for the Eklutna Tribal Conservation District.

Steven Holley is an Indigenous leader located in the community. He has worked on projects in each village, and is engaged with the stated partners on other projects in carbon, energy development, hemp, gardening, forest management. He has aggregated the opportunities for each site through personal and professional relationships with leadership and among the communities. He is a tribal member and on the board for the Eklutna Tribal Conservation District.

The compilation of science and use of basic to advanced technologies and practices are standards in the industry, but have limited use at the scale of acreage and have never been described as used to address Climate Change impacts and management of soil nutrients.

Further, the direct relationship the community will have, through participation, direction, and storytelling, will provide pathways for local knowledge to be used in design and curriculum.

The Project Lead has extensive industry and institutional relationships that require multiple levels of discussion with a variety of decision makers from the stakeholder group. Decisions have to be made on complex opportunities that require high-level, technical discussions. The high-level decisions that follow will hold traditional knowledge and scientific data as equal sources of input.

The landowners have generations of information passed on about the life of the land they live on. One village, Quinhagak, has stories, prophesies, about the need to move their village 5 times in the future. The village has moved twice since the telling of the story, and they are in the middle of the third move. Because of this body of information, the Quinhagak design seeks to address all the elements of sustainability it can include, but some infrastructure will keep a modular design to mitigate its negative “footprint” on land. This design will inadvertently offer a level of semi-mobility that can be accounted for and prepared for, in the case of a forth move of the community.

The lands of these people is fragile, and the infrastructure and land management needs require a level of modeling and design to be interpreted among a group that uses a first language that has been in America before it was America and holds science before the word was used on the American continent.

Agricultural development changing indigenous land isn’t new. But, indigenous landowners choosing to include agriculture into theirs culture with a team of cultural leaders working with academics, industry leaders, and institutions to empower their culture while helping them to learn agriculture that fits the local indigenous cultural values is new. This includes traditional uses and conservation practices being present in the design of production.

The building of the project will follow close discussion with community personnel. This includes building the stories of residents and stakeholders in other communities. This will provide the community with pathways of discussion in a form recognizable to their culture and offers the Project Team an opportunity to present other forms of communication technologies and techniques of the industries.

Distribution of information for agricultural and conservation practices will highlight land needs and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TKE). Messaging and media that provides students and workers the relevant content that will follow Project Villages’ cultural designs. The format will focus on an item’s relevance to the curriculums and the degrees, certificates, or jobs associated with them. The goal is to aggregate students, workers, and community support.

Alaska Natives as farmers is new, but Alaska Native living on what the land provides has happened since time immemorial. Using simple and advanced plant production techniques, cell-groups of Production Technicians will focus efforts for increased production of natural habitat and agricultural crop sites. The body of information they collect in their tasks will include soil attributes, vegetation yield, and local uses by people and wildlife.

From minimal disturbances to full land-use changes, the actions of the Production Technicians will implement Stewardship and Farming processes that produce the highest yield afforded by science and traditional values. The modeling created would provide decision makers the best available science to compliment their traditional knowledge. This inclusion of TKE would improve the modeling and build a place for both TKE and Local Environmental Observations.

The crop yield and sustainable natural harvest of raw materials will enter value-added processes designed for energy, physical, mechanical, and electrical, efficiency. The practices used will be identified through Participatory Action Research. These sets of data need modeling software.

Further, the modeling of capturable-energy from renewable resources in the area, the use of financial methodologies that require up-to-date system scenarios for financial needs, and use of culture for focus on local workforce development will yield efficiency in production that will create profitability from the crop designed using regenerative and traditional practices.

This includes sustainable industrial design support provided by Pratt Institute and industry/institution leaders involved in this project.

Land Impacts will be measured by volume planted and types of plants selected. Volume indicators will account the production needs and land impacts, as well as end-use of natural resource products produced on acreage under project management. Acreage impacts will follow Carbon models of sequestration and emissions.

Community and industry energy uses will follow Carbon emission reduction practices and follow those indicators of clean energy uses. Further use of technologies and techniques for high-value adding processes will be accounted for and an indicators of system evolution.

Decent work and economic growth will be visible with an empowered culture. By putting technology in the hands of local residents that have had their culture empowered and offered other systems of discussion and action, the level of individual involvement with one or multiple tasks creates a digital representation of their productive activities that can be accounted for and assessed by system workers that are familiar with serving local cultural needs. Indicators of worker success is assessed within the land’s health and crop yield or facility product outputs, as well as the community enjoyment of the systems created.

Land health will be measured in soil health, biodiversity of natural areas, crop rotation plan, crop conversion to natural plant production plan, and traditional access/enjoyment of culturally relevant sites.

Sensory devices to collect land, water, and climate date. Computer devices for collecting computing data and providing a systems reading. System output models using LandFire or similar software for delivering GIS compatible information for GIS device or software use.

Renewable energy systems present:

Quinhagak, 3 large wind energy turbines needing efficient use technologies and further energy creation and developments for SMART residential, commercial, and industrial needs.

Akiachak, 480 solar panels being installed and needing adjustable foundation technology for mitigating negative solar energy system impacts from unstable grounds. Needs further energy creation and developments for SMART residential, commercial, and industrial needs.

Port Heiden, having 3 wind energy turbines installed. Needs further energy creation and developments for SMART residential, commercial, and industrial needs.

Eklutna, working to demolish existing hydroelectric dam to restore Eklutna River salmon population. Needs and further energy creation to offset impacts from dam removal and developments for SMART residential, commercial, and industrial needs.

IoT (Internet and Intranet) system activity data collection and modeling for existing and scheduled actions. This includes information collection on physical, mechanical, hydrological, and other corporal elements needing quantification, as well as electrical and digital. 

Drones for seed distribution, crop health assessment, wildlands imagery collection, forest stand health assessment, and other activities for land management and plant health assessment.

Robotic tools for seed tray population and other tools that will be part of bases for the use of student projects in the field.

Hydroponic plant production system use for tissue-culture operations. The effective use of this system requires strategic interventions of environmental impacts by Production Technicians in growth cycle. From complete development in a controlled environment to introduction to natural open lands, and everything in between, the process needs data collected and interpreted for timely Production Technician actions.

Value-adding technologies, like plant processing and packaging equipment.

Houses in Quinhagak and Akiachak are elevated on “stilts” to mitigate impacts from unstable grounds. Further work will need to be done to improve this design, as well as its building envelope and energy systems.

Quinhagak, Akiachak, Port Heiden, and Eklutna.

Other areas of expansion are having increased levels of activities and waiting for further results from initial villages in project.

Brooklyn, New York

52 people

Community Business Development Inc. 1 full time, 10 volunteers, 2 contractors

10POWER 2 full time staff, 10 volunteers

Eklutna Tribal Conservation District 2 full time staff, 1 volunteer

Native Village of Eklutna 2 full time staff

Eklutna Inc.  1 full time staff

Qanirtuuq, Inc. 3 full time staff

Native Village of Kwinhagak 2 full time staff

Native Community of Akiachak 1 full time staff

Akiachak Limited 2 full time staff

Native Community of Port Heiden 2 full time staff

Alaska Peninsula Corporation 2 full time staff

Pratt 7 full time staff

North Star Agriculture 2 full time staff

In 2008, Project Leader became aware of the extent of forest health degradation and of the contamination left by industry and institutions on his ancestral lands. That year, the Project Lead became determined to find a solution that became what is presented in this application.

From contamination and contaminated material removal, workforces development, property rights, federal funding sources, science and traditional stories marketed to indigenous landowners, conservation, and agriculture, the project lead has researched attributes of each element that make this solution.

We are a diverse group organically. The Project Lead resides in Anchorage, which is one of the nations most diverse communities. 

Further, the Project Lead comes from a matriarchal culture and expects to see women in leadership roles. He also leads a culture group that has many ethnicities in regular participation. This has shown him the strength in other cultures working with the indigenous peoples of Alaska.

The foundation of this project is the personal efforts of the Project Lead for his culture group. Their success is his personal indicator of success, which requires him to assemble a team of skilled personnel from many backgrounds. This element of diversity will guarantee the required skills are present and accessible to the next generation. The culture group that will become the next workforce is from ages 2 months to 22 years old, and this age factor presents a need for a diverse group of people to work together.

Leadership of of each entity:

Community Business Development Inc., Sugpiaq, Hispanic, Dena’ina Athabascan, 

10POWER 2, Korean American

Eklutna Tribal Conservation District, Dena’ina Athabascan, Tlingit/Squamish

Native Village of Eklutna, Dena’ina Athabascan

Eklutna Inc., Dena’ina Athabascan

Qanirtuuq, Inc. Yupik

Native Village of Kwinhagak Yupik

Native Community of Akiachak Yupik

Akiachak Limited Yupik

Native Community of Port Heiden Suqpiaq 

Alaska Peninsula Corporation Suqpiaq

Pratt 7, Asian 

North Star Agriculture, Canadian

Our volunteer base is even more diverse.

The business model of Community Business Development Inc. (CBD Inc.) is service based, with focus on plant production that leverages community strengths. Business model templates are in development for various verticals of this project - each can be customized for the village where it is located. Stakeholder engagement with asset owners and sovereign governing bodies in collaboration with community groups inform clear inputs and expected outputs for impacts in the realms of people, planet, and profit.

The focus is accomplished by assisting in: definition of goals, building “yesable decisions” among parties, aggregating project capacity, aligning project to local culture, and communicating project deliverables to interested parties.

By serving communities as a “nexus” of resources, from personnel and processes to technology and relationships, CBD Inc. brings a team to assist groups undertake opportunities and build their capacity to handle complexities of advanced new systems.

The team has worked with communities following this process to develop Community Business Models so far in the areas of: 

• Biochar business planning 

• A Biogasification feasibility study 

• Hemp Market Analysis

• Hemp Feasibility Study- incomplete

• Forest Stewardship Plan

Technical Assistance from National Renewable Energy Labs through the Communities LEAP program has been secured for a feasibility study of the natural gas power plant waste heat cogen greenhouse project. 

Conservation practices implemented will create increased access to subsistence resources and strategic conversion of land-use to farming in areas capable of handling agricultural production offer economic opportunities. These are available to the landowner and tribe, if a capable workforce is present to work within industry and cultural standards.

The project team is working with these communities to identify Federal IRA grants as well as investment capital and philanthropy, which will serve as seed capital for getting projects off the ground. Initial projections show positive cash flow from revenue generating activities on a time scale that varies based on the vertical. Projects with faster payback periods (forestry, biochar) can help subsidize projects that will take a longer time to get up and running (agriculture, hemp-crete).

The business model for CBD Inc. is up and running, finishing it’s 2nd year of stable revenue generation, post Global Shutdown. Having analyzed the opportunities presented in this proposal with groups of specialists, the CBD Inc. team of workers and partners has built a direction of development with financeable thresholds being identified and pursued.

The next phase include implementing identified training for the existing workforce and volunteers to assist in mobilizing groups within each community and undertaking existing contracts needing workers.

This application is to assist in building the definition of the direction taken to a level tangible to multiple stakeholder groups. The project looks to activate multiple agreements that manage hundreds of thousands of acres of indigenous lands. The work done prior to this application has worked to define the specific routes for development towards these goals