In Kotzebue, Alaska, 78-year-old Inupiaq hunter Roswell Schaeffer continues to teach younger relatives traditional hunting skills even as warming temperatures, thawing permafrost and shifting migrations make subsistence hunting harder. A proposed 211-mile mining road, approved this fall and now facing legal challenges, alarms residents who fear it would harm caribou and salmon habitat and invite outside hunters. Families are increasingly reliant on store-bought food as wildlife declines and extreme weather — including record rainfall that flooded one elder’s yard twice this fall — becomes more common.
In Alaska’s Warming Arctic, An Inupiaq Elder Passes Hunting Traditions As Habitat Shifts
Roswell Schaeffer, an Inupiaq hunter and fisher, helps his great-grandson James Schaeffer, 7, scope ducks while hunting in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The low autumn sun set the tundra aglow as seven-year-old James Schaeffer and his 10-year-old cousin Charles Gallahorn raced along a dirt track beside Kotzebue’s cemetery. Thawing permafrost had warped the ground, tilting wooden grave markers; frozen puddles formed slabs of ice the boys gleefully smashed as they ran.
Trailing them was their great-grandfather, Roswell Schaeffer, 78 — a prolific hunter and respected Inupiaq elder. As he watched the children play, he thought of what warming temperatures and changing seasons have already taken: the stable sea ice where he hunted seals, underground permafrost cellars that once kept food frozen through summer, and the dependable salmon runs and caribou migrations that used to mark the year.
Another pressure now looms: a proposed 211-mile mining road approved this fall by the Trump administration that would cut through important caribou and salmon habitat. The project faces lawsuits and opposition from environmental and Native groups. Locals like Schaeffer worry the road would invite outside hunters and further weaken already declining herds. “If we lose our caribou — both from climate change and overhunting — we’ll never be the same,” he said. “We’re going to lose our culture totally.”
A Lifetime of Hunting
Antlers are stacked outside Schaeffer’s home; traditional seal hooks and whale harpoons hang in his hunting shed. Inside, a photograph of Schaeffer beside a hunted beluga sits next to the head of a dall sheep and a mask his daughter Aakatchaq crafted from caribou hide and lynx fur.
Schaeffer shot his first caribou at 14 and began taking his own children on hunts when they were about seven. This spring his great-grandson James made his first caribou kill using a .22 rifle. Schaeffer teaches the lessons he learned from his father: that power is shown by giving food, and a hunter’s chief responsibility is to feed the elders. “When you’re raised an Inupiaq, your whole being is to make sure the elders have food,” he said.
That Future Feels Tenuous
Despite passing these traditions on, Schaeffer fears there may not be enough to sustain the next generation. Families in Kotzebue are eating less hunted food and relying more on store-bought items such as farmed chicken and processed goods. Caribou numbers have fallen, salmon runs are thinner, and storms have grown more severe.
Record rainfall battered Northwest Alaska this year, flooding Schaeffer’s backyard twice this fall, and scientists link later migrations and other shifts to climate change driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. That day in late September, with caribou delayed, Schaeffer and James scanned the tundra for swans, ptarmigan and ducks. James fired at two ducks from the truck bed, but rising tide kept them from retrieving the birds.
Seth Kantner, a writer and commercial fisherman who grew up along the Kobuk River, described the region’s emptiness where caribou once crossed by the hundreds of thousands. “I can hardly stand how lonely it feels without all the caribou that used to be here,” he said. “This road is the largest threat. But right beside it is climate change.”
Despite mounting threats, Schaeffer continues to bring younger family members onto the land — teaching skills, stories and responsibilities — determined that the next generation will know how to hunt and share what they take. “My great-grandson and my grandson are my future for food,” he said.
Reporting and photography by Annika Hammerschlag / The Associated Press.
Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram @ahammergram.
Roswell Schaeffer, an Inupiaq hunter and fisher, visits the cemetery where thawing permafrost has caused grave markers to tilt in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
James Schaeffer, 7, runs through a cemetery where thawing permafrost has caused grave markers to tilt and the ground to warp in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
James Schaeffer, 7, hunts in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Roswell Schaeffer, an Inupiaq hunter and fisher, looks over caribou antlers from past hunts at his home in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Roswell Schaeffer, an Inupiaq hunter and fisher, helps his great-grandson James Schaeffer, 7, into waders while hunting Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
James Schaeffer, 7, hunts in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
James Schaeffer, 7, plays on a road where thawing permafrost has caused the ground to warp in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
James Schaeffer, 7, plays on a road where thawing permafrost has caused the ground to warp in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
James Schaeffer, 7, looks out at a view of Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Charles Gallahorn, 10, plays with a slab of ice taken from a pond that formed on a warped road caused by thawing permafrost in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Charles Gallahorn, 10, plays with a slab of ice taken from a pond that formed on a warped road caused by thawing permafrost in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
James Schaeffer, 7, plays with a slab of ice taken from a pond that formed on a warped road caused by thawing permafrost in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Roswell Schaeffer, an Inupiaq hunter and fisher, takes his great-grandson James Schaeffer, 7, and James' cousin Charles Gallahorn, 10, hunting in Kotzebue, Alaska, Friday, Sept. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Annika Hammerschlag)(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
