Western Forester: The Next Chapter of the Alaska Youth Stewards Program

This story first published in Western Forester Volume 68 Number 4, published here with permission.

A tacky whine echoes through the understory of the Tongass National Forest of Southeast Alaska. Something akin to a door creaking loudly amongst the trees. At the source of the sound, a group of Prince of Wales Island teenagers adorned with hard hats stands at the base of an old-growth red cedar tree, one with a corkscrew-like tool called an increment borer twisting deep into the tree to pull out a core sample. With each twist, a loud creak resonates. They stand alongside their crew leader and USDA Forest Service (USFS) employees who are teaching them about dendrochronology. Together, they are gathering data to identify trees for local cultural wood use such as carving totem poles and dugout canoes. About 150 miles to the north near Angoon, AK, a net full of salmon frenzy as another youth crew works with USFS staff to harvest salmon that they will distribute throughout the community of Angoon. The crew based in Hoonah, AK pull invasive plant species from around a popular recreational cabin. In Kake, AK the crew processes harvested plants and berries that will be used later in the fall during the community’s Traditional Foods Fair. 

For the past eight years, rural and Indigenous youth have spent their summers working on these stewardship projects and many others through a program now known as Alaskan Youth Stewards (AYS) — formerly known as YCC and TRAYLS. The AYS program seeks to provide local youth with experiential opportunities to engage with their lands, develop their leadership abilities, grow their soft skills, and acquire new hard skills, all while focusing their efforts on the unique priority projects of each community. 

In the circles of natural resource management, youth, and workforce development, the concept of “stewardship” has become essential to the work. More than stewardship, AYS embodies “Indigenous stewardship” as an alternative to centuries of workforce and resource development practices rooted in Western colonialism and settler colonial ways of working. Indigenous stewardship programs provide opportunities for rural and Indigenous youth to reflect on, develop, and apply skills that are rooted in their ancestral lands in support of their communities’ regenerative futures. This approach focuses on proactive work that looks toward the future and provides space to reconcile the exploitation of the past. 

Many AYS crewmembers are not old enough to remember the logging boom of the 1980s or the subsequent policy reforms brought on by the State of Alaska’s Forest Practices Act and the Tongass Timber Reform Act of the ’90s. During those earlier boom years, logging operations ran along the banks of the region’s life-giving salmon streams, the keystone of our regional economy since time immemorial. This mismanagement disrupted intact ecosystems, decreased salmon runs, and lowered the annual return of salmon. For Alaska Native peoples, salmon is a culturally significant resource that has provided sustenance to communities for generations. 

AYS, with Indigenous stewardship and regenerative practice at its core, allows generations of Indigenous stewards to engage in a kind of shared healing. Some AYS projects collaborate with agencies that in recent history have contributed to the marginalization and disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples. The youth stewardship program is an opportunity for shared generations

to support activities that work to restore Native lands, provide opportunities to grow skills, generate income, and work together towards collectively built, sustainable futures. 

Recognizing the importance of healing through shared stewardship, the US Department of Agriculture has been working on the Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy (SASS), in which the federal agency is investing in local priorities and community-led projects across the region that address sustainability, enhance community resilience, and conserve natural resources. The Alaskan Youth Stewards program was included in the seventy projects and programs that were invested in through SASS, but beyond funding, AYS also embodies the values of the strategy, which prioritizes a more holistic approach to land management in the region that is based on trust, relationships, and supporting the collective needs of the communities that call this region home. 

AYS is nearing a decade of demonstrating the collective impact of multiple partners coming together to support a community-driven program that directly benefits the youth of Southeast Alaska. Recently, the AYS crews consolidated as a singular program under the leadership of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska to continue providing Southeast Alaska youth with well-supported pathways toward becoming empowered contributors to our region’s cultural, economic, and environmental resilience. 

Partners of AYS include the Sustainable Southeast Partnership, Spruce Root, Inc., the National Forest Foundation, Sealaska Corporation, the USDA Forest Service, the Prince of Wales Vocational and Technical Education Center, Hoonah Indian Association, Chatham School District, the Organized Village of Kake, and various other organizations, Tribal governments, and Alaska Native corporations. This level of support ensures participants can benefit from shared regional opportunities while still working in support of their communities’ specific needs. Through Indigenous stewardship practices, AYS shifts the management of lands and resources in Southeast Alaska to those local to the area. 

When AYS was imagined, the hope was that the program would work in tandem with existing forestry partners, such as the Klawock Indigenous Stewards Forest Partnership (KISFP) on Prince of Wales Island. Many members of KISFP were former timber professionals. The goal is for the forestry partners and AYS members to engage in shared projects such as stream restoration, community harvest efforts, forest inventorying, and a suite of other regenerative forestry projects. This concept, buttressed by the support, mentorship, and training offered through partners, was designed to create laddered career pathway opportunities by which youth could “graduate” from the AYS programs into stewardship careers through their community Tribal and natural resource agencies, State agencies, and federal agencies such as the USDA Forest Service, in essence, creating local career paths for local youth. 

Under the direction of Tlingit & Haida, the Alaskan Youth Stewards program aims to give rural youth on-the-job experiential education and training to take care of their lands, waters, and communities. Tribes hold an immense amount of traditional ecological knowledge that has been passed down for generations. Program oversight by Tlingit & Haida ensures the Alaskan Youth

Steward is indigenous-led and helps empower communities to reclaim management of their resources now and for the future. Tlingit & Haida also leads the Seacoast Indigenous Guardians Network (SIGN) that aspires to provide tribes throughout Southeast Alaska with the tools they need to steward and restore balance to their ancestral homelands. In the long term, the Seacoast Indigenous Guardians Network hopes to complement the Alaskan Youth Stewards by developing career pathway opportunities for youth crew members and building the capacity of existing programs housed within Tribal offices across Southeast Alaska, many of which have been increasingly centered on resource management and protection. More than a paycheck and physical work outside, AYS is about building capacity, confidence, pride, and a future generation of environmental and cultural leaders.