Abundant Lands & Waters

Southeast Alaska is the ancestral and unceded territory of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples who continue to care for, steward, and honor the lands and waters that sustain all Southeast Alaskans. This is the largest remaining coastal temperate rainforest on the planet. Cultural, domestic and commercial use of these lands and waters continues to be the foundation of Southeast Alaskan life. Yet, the challenges to sustainable stewardship are many including: a rapidly changing climate, unsteady global economics, our isolation and high costs of living, and the persistent inequities of a colonial past that continue to inflict harm.

Our partners combine expertise, resources, and catalyze initiatives that face these challenges head on. We work together to ensure that the abundant lands and waters of Southeast Alaska, and the rich cultures that depend on them, continue to thrive for centuries to come.

Community Forestry Initiatives

The Hoonah Native Forest Partnership and Keex’ Kwaan Community Forest Project are ‘all hands’ community forestry initiatives. These collaborations encourage landscape level planning, data-informed decision making, cross-boundary management, local employment, community capacity building. The goals of these collaborations are to improve the productivity of local watersheds for traditional cultural use and commercial economic development while improving overall ecological resilience.

Hoonah Native Forest Partnership / Keex’ Kwaan Community Forest Partnership / Klawock Indigenous Stewards Forest Partnership

Fostering Local Leadership through Youth Programming

Our partners support the stewardship of local lands and waters by bringing young leaders into the forest and on the water to conduct research, execute community priorities like trail building, gather wild foods to share with elders and participate in community-forestry. Our youth are our most treasured resource, by investing in them we invest in the health of our lands, waters, and communities for generations to come.

Alaska Youth Stewards

Indigenous Guardianship

We are working to change the course of human history —to decolonize an entire region of Earth by restoring authority of its resources to its Indigenous peoples. Indigenous Guardians support their Alaska Native communities in expressing their inherent sovereignty by applying their ecological knowledge and sustainable ways of living to monitor, protect, restore and manage their homelands and waters. The Indigenous Guardians Network offers technical and social support to grow the capacity of Alaska Native residents to achieve their goals for environmental stewardship and the co-management of their home lands and waters.

Indigenous Guardian’s Network

“Everything we are is dependent on the health of the land--we as humans are a mirror of our environment. That is why we see that when the environment’s health is poor, people’s health is poor. The more that we can invest into the health of our lands, the more we are investing in a healthy people and future.”
Miakah Nix
Keex Kwaan Community Forest Partnership Coordinator