Introducing the winning project of the 2025 Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award
In this video, Sharon Snowshoe, Arlyn Charlie, Kristi Benson, Trevor Lantz and Tracey Proverbs talk about their 2025 Action Award winning project, Nan guk’anàatii ejuk t’igwinjik (The land we are taking care of is changing), that aims to integrate Gwich’in ecological classifications with climate and geospatial data to assess and adapt to landscape change across the Gwich’in Settlement Region.
About the winning team and their project:
The 2025 Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award winning team consists of Sharon Snowshoe, Arlyn Charlie and Kristi Benson from Gwich’in Tribal Council, and Trevor Lantz and Tracey Proverbs from University of Victoria.
Their project, Nan guk’anàatii ejuk t’igwinjik (The land we are taking care of is changing), brings together Gwich’in knowledge and scientific modelling to assess the impacts of climate change and industrial development on culturally important landscapes in Canada’s Northwest Territories. Building on over three decades of cultural documentation by the Gwich’in Tribal Council’s Department of Culture and Heritage and twelve years of collaboration with the Arctic Landscape Ecology Lab at University of Victoria, the project will classify Gwich’in landscapes through Gwich’in knowledge and language, and model future disturbances to evaluate their impacts on key harvesting areas and wildlife species. This work will support Indigenous-led land use planning, cultural protection, and climate adaptation, and will provide a transferable model for combining Indigenous and scientific knowledge systems across the Arctic.
The Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award provides high-level recognition for innovative ideas that transform knowledge into action to help address the impacts of climate change in the Arctic. The prize comes with a 100,000 euro unrestricted grant that is intended to help develop the ideas through outreach, engagement, and communication.
The 2025 Award recipients were announced at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík in October. The Frederik Paulsen Arctic Academic Action Award is a collaboration between Arctic Circle and UArctic.