Posted on September 15, 2025
SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Since 2008, around the globe, 20 million people on average have been displaced by extreme weather events every year. That is according to a 2022 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For some indigenous communities, the ground on which they live is literally disappearing due to climate change. For the podcast “Sea Change,” member station reporters Eva Tesfaye and Sage Smiley looked at how tribes in both Louisiana and Alaska are making tough decisions about whether to stay or leave. Thanks to both of you for coming on.
EVA TESFAYE, BYLINE: Thank you.
SAGE SMILEY, BYLINE: Thanks for having us.
DETROW: Let’s start with this – why did you decide to focus on these two tribal communities, Nunapitchuk in Alaska and Pointe-au-Chien in Louisiana? Sage, let’s start with you.
SMILEY: Yeah, it really started with a conversation about how climate-driven coastal erosion actually looks pretty similar between Alaska and Louisiana, even though there’s 4,000-ish miles between the two.
DETROW: Yeah.
SMILEY: And in that conversation, we noticed that relocation is something that tribes are thinking about in both places. So I flew out to the small Alaska native village of Nunapitchuk. The village plans on relocating because it’s built on permafrost, ground that normally stays frozen year-round. But because of warming temperatures, that permafrost is melting, and the ground is becoming unstable, causing damage to houses and the town’s infrastructure. One person I talked to about this was Gertrude Lewis, an elementary school teacher.
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GERTRUDE LEWIS: My grandson, he stepped off the boardwalk, then he went knee deep. We had to pull him out. We lost his rubber boot (laughter).
SMILEY: When you were a kid, could you play on the Tundra?
LEWIS: Everywhere. Everywhere, we went everywhere.
SMILEY: And now you have to stay on the boardwalk.
LEWIS: Stay on the boardwalk.
SMILEY: Because of the permafrost thaw, they’re trying to relocate to land about a mile away that’s owned by the local Native corporation, but getting the money to make the relocation happen is the hardest part.
DETROW: Eva, what about you? You know, so much of coastal Louisiana is losing land due to erosion and sea-level rise. So why focus on this one particular community?
TESFAYE: Yeah, I chose Pointe-au-Chien partly because it was right next to this other tribal community, Isle de Jean Charles, that actually ended up relocating due to sea-level rise. But Pointe-au-Chien was saying, we’re not even considering moving, even through all of that. So I wanted to understand why they were so adamant about adapting in place and how they’re accomplishing that.
DETROW: And one of the people you talk to is named Brenda Ann Billiot. This is an elder in Pointe-au-Chien. Let’s hear a little bit.
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BRENDA ANN BILLIOT: It’s quiet, and everybody’s family around here. And we just love being here, no matter what. The hurricanes come – we come back, and we rebuild.
DETROW: Can you give us a sense of what it’s like, from your perspective, what you saw, and what do you think it is about the place that makes people decide we’re going to stay?
TESFAYE: Well, Pointe-au-Chien is just such a beautiful, idyllic place. It’s surrounded by wetlands and water. And the people who live there are very connected to that landscape and water and also its resources and the wildlife. Cherie Matherne is another person I talked to. She’s the tribe’s cultural heritage and resiliency coordinator, and she talked a lot about that connection.
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CHERIE MATHERNE: My husband is a craft fisherman, so he has caught sharks in his cage. He has caught sting rays, turtles, and that’s all due to the many changes.
TESFAYE: The changes she’s talking about are sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion, which is causing the land to disappear. But that saltwater is also attracting more shrimp and fish, and it makes that area a really good fishing spot, which is another reason they want to stay. Fishing is really important to people in Pointe-au-Chien. But at the core of it all, everyone I talked to said this area’s just home, and they don’t want to lose their connection to it.
DETROW: Which makes sense. Let’s go back up to Alaska. Sage, I imagine Nunapitchuk is much colder than Louisiana to start. But, you know, it’s also inland. It’s near a river. It’s built on permafrost. So how are people there feeling?
SMILEY: You know, I think people know that this is necessary, but not everyone is thrilled about the prospect…
DETROW: Yeah.
SMILEY: …Like Gertrude Lewis, who we heard from earlier. She’s worried it will drive people in this tight-knit community apart from each other. And I should add this isn’t a new conversation. Some of the elders I talked to said relocation has been a topic for as long as they can remember. The village was built on land that was known by the indigenous people of the area to be unstable. But the Bureau of Indian Affairs established a school there in 1936, and so people had to settle and coalesce around that school. Before that, most Yup’ik people in the area moved with the seasons and the changing texture of the ground from winter sod houses to summer fish camps.
DETROW: I mean, moving an entire town seems like such a hard challenge, even if it’s a small community like Nunapitchuk. Are they getting any help with this?
SMILEY: So Nunapitchuk has some national partnerships that are trying to help scope what it will take to move the town, but the village doesn’t have any money that’s going toward this move yet. When I spoke to their relocation coordinator, Morris Alexie, he said he feels like the federal government should step in and help, since the federal government is responsible for Nunapitchuk being located where it is now.
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SMILEY: Do you feel like the government agencies owe Nunapitchuk?
MORRIS ALEXIE: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We were still nomadic people, like nomadic where we went from, like, 75 miles away, each fall and spring.
SMILEY: In 2020, the Government Accountability Office released a report about climate-driven relocation and basically found the biggest barrier is the lack of a cohesive federal plan or network to connect those communities with funding and support. And relocation projects are really expensive. The report recommended that Congress establish a federal migration pilot program, but they still haven’t done that. In 2022, the Biden administration actually did provide $135 million to tribes for voluntary community-driven relocation projects. Most of the money went to three tribes – Newtok and Napakiak in Alaska and the Quinault Indian Nation in Washington.
DETROW: Eva, going back to Louisiana and the decision to stay rather than leave, do the Pointe-au-Chien – do they need help to stay?
TESFAYE: Yeah, I mean, they have a few projects going on. Like, one of the things they’re doing is these small coastal restoration projects that are based on more natural solutions. So, for example, they’ve done this really cool thing where they placed oyster shells along certain coastlines that they wanted to protect, and that creates a reef that will slow down waves and reduce erosion. They’re also, you know, rebuilding homes after hurricanes, and they’re lifting those homes higher for flooding and making them more resistant to hurricane winds.
But unlike Nunapitchuk, Pointe-au-Chien isn’t federally recognized, and that means they have trouble getting help from the federal government. And so they tend to get assistance from local nonprofits, and they’re also getting assistance from a program at Louisiana State University to accomplish these things. There used to be a FEMA program for adapting in place. It was geared towards helping communities. It was called the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. That actually was started under the first Trump administration, but this year, the administration deemed it wasteful and canceled it.
DETROW: One of you is in Louisiana, and one of you in Alaska. And for the similarities that we’ve talked about, these are very different places, and they are very far away from each other. So I’m just curious what you both learned by reporting this project together.
TESFAYE: I think, for me, reporting this story with Sage revealed all these connections between the tribes in Louisiana and Alaska, like we’ve been talking about, the way those communities connect to the land they live on and how climate change is altering it. But I think it was also important to remember that there are these huge differences, and each tribe is so unique and faces their own challenges.
SMILEY: Totally. For me, it made me realize relocation and adapting in place aren’t really two separate or distinct choices. Nunapitchuk does have to get grants to improve infrastructure where they are right now – basically adapt it as best as they can, even though the ground is unstable under them – until they’re able to move people. And a lot of people from Pointe-au-Chien, especially the young people, are still migrating away from the area. But what was hopeful was seeing both Nunapitchuk and Pointe-au-Chien so focused on keeping their cultures and communities intact, no matter whether they are relocating or trying to adapt in place.
DETROW: That is Sage Smiley along with Eva Tesfaye, two reporters who worked on the podcast “Sea Change.” You can hear the episode “Between Land And Water: Tribal Relocation And Resistance” wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to both of you for talking.
SMILEY: (Non-English language spoken). Thank you so much.
TESFAYE: Thanks, Scott. (Speaking French). Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
