Clams (for) healing: CO-producing local assessment and mitigation strategies for habs to enhance alaskan lifeways and indigenous governance across coastal alaska, harmful algal blooms (habs)…

Clams (for) healing: CO-producing local assessment and mitigation strategies for habs to enhance alaskan lifeways and indigenous governance across coastal alaska, harmful algal blooms (habs) threaten food security and sovereignty as they expand in response to climate change, and the toxins they produce penetrate through the marine food web on which the health (nutritional, cultural, spiritual) of alaska native communities depends. Coastal indigenous peoples face the most severe direct impacts from habs, which adds to the compounding pressures of climate change on their communities. Particularly regarding the non-economic, less tangible dimensions of indigenous well-being (e.g., sense of place, social cohesion, intergenerational knowledge, sovereignty), the sociocultural impacts of HAB events remain sparsely captured by the peer-reviewed literature for coastal alaska. Understanding HAB impacts through indigenous perspectives and frameworks like food security and food sovereignty can help elucidate social, ecological, and cultural interconnections and reveal the cumulative impacts of habs to systems and communities. Since coastal alaska native communities encompass diverse cultures, diets, geographies, latitudes, and experiences, IT is critical to consider how this diversity influences local HAB impacts while identifying shared impacts that can be addressed across regions. The proposed project takes a CO-production of knowledge approach to develop a holistic understanding of habs impacts to coastal and alaska native communities with differing habrelated experiences. IT brings together traditional knowledge and western science in ethical and equitable partnership to enhance collective knowledge about HAB impacts and CO-develop indigenous-centered frameworks for assessing HAB impacts to subsistence communities. The project leverages an expert panel (EP) composed primarily of community marine resource experts, to advise project personnel at every stage of the proposed work. Using quantitative surveys, the project will examine how habs affect subsistence harvest behaviors at household and community levels. In a participatory workshop, these data will initiate discussions about knowledge gaps and assessment needs with diverse habs knowledge-holders. Workshop discussions will draw on traditional knowledge to CO-produce an impact assessment framework for habs that will be implemented and evaluated through community-driven monitoring tools (e.g., indigenous sentinels network) and mitigation strategies (e.g. clam gardens). This work addresses seahab priorities of examining social and cultural impacts of habs at local and regional scales, assessing HAB impacts to subsistence, and identifying the resilience of subsistence communities to HAB events. IT also cultivates a tribally driven, cross-regional network and develops actionable tools that center indigenous perspectives in the assessment, monitoring, management, and conservation of ocean and coastal ecosystems.