Tribes and rural, predominantly alaska native communities are arguably the most prominent frontline communities in alaska in terms of climate impacts and adaptation

Amidst growing recognition of the ways in which research efforts have historically excluded and exploited alaska native peoples, there is a resounding call for future research and engagement to prioritize equity, recognize native sovereignty, and braid together multiple knowledge systems. The alaska center for climate assessment and policy (ACCAP) has been working in alaska since 2006 with continuous competitive funding from the NOAA climate adaptation partnerships (cap) program. Our vision is to build healthy and thriving alaskan communities, economies, and ecosystems in a changing climate. Our mission is to conduct innovative and collaborative research and engagement to inform climate policy, decision-making, and action for a just and sustainable future. The proposed work is centered around serving the needs of alaska native peoples in alaska related to climate change impacts, climate adaptation, and hazard mitigation in the context of multiple climate and societal trends and stressors. IT is designed to directly engage with alaska native organizations and, by extension, the tribes and communities that they serve. We propose to hire two new positions that will build the capacity of the ACCAP team, an engagement specialist and a science communication specialist. In addition, we will extend the existing ACCAP small grants project by providing direct funding to regional alaska native non-profit organizations to advance their self-defined climate adaptation goals. We will also evaluate this small grants project and create recommendations for designing a similar potential small grant project in the future. The assessment of our proposed work and the evaluation of the small grants project will both prioritize indigenous evaluation methods and metrics. Together these activities will work to build and sustain relationships between ACCAP, small grant recipients, alaska native organizations, and ACCAP partners. The proposed work will improve ACCAP?S ability to support alaska native communities and organizations and to meet community-defined needs related to climate change impacts and adaptation. At the same time, the work proposed here will advance collaboration between ACCAP and NOAA?S arctic research program (ARP), including the exploration of shared goals. The primary audience for our work and engagement are non-profit organizations that serve tribes and rural, predominantly alaska native, communities in alaska. We anticipate the principal impacts of our work to be in the categories of capacity building and connectivity. We propose metrics of success and deliverables in terms of both process and products and ground our evaluation of the small grants project in principles of indigenous methodologies.