Over the past century, Indigenous populations of Alaska and the circumpolar North have experienced major socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural changes. Various developments in recent decades, including environmental shifts and demographic flux, have accelerated the ongoing transformation of the circumstances of rural Indigenous people's lives. While these changes have undoubtedly impacted the lives and livelihoods of all Native peoples, they are experienced differently by geography and culture, and influenced by generational and economic factors. Some of the more visible impacts of these developments are changes in subsistence participation and production and the out-migration of Indigenous youth and young adults from their home communities. To compound matters, such phenomena are occurring within a broader context of environmental change that is impacting the sustainability of rural Native communities in the Arctic. The research project seeks to better understand the consequences of these complex processes from the perspective of Alaska Native people across generations in two different regions of Alaska, the Yup'ik of the Yukon-Kuskowkim Delta and the Gwich'in of the Yukon Flats. The two distinct geographical areas and cultural groups allow the research team to capture some of the historical and contemporary complexity of Alaska, given that Alaska Natives are a diverse community with each cultural group possessing its own unique culture, language, history, and economic resource base. Specifically, the investigators will study the range of experiences that both elders and youth face and how they make sense of their past as well as the contemporary shifts in rural lives and livelihoods. Issues of language, tradition, and kinship ties are crucial facets for exploring such dynamics. The researchers will incorporate methods of participant observation, community-based focus groups and individual interviews to capture the central issues and comparative understandings relating to subsistence and out-migration in each of the four communities that are the focus of the study. The research will result in a broad in-depth understanding of issues facing rural Alaska Natives today from their own perspectives. The collaboration between elders and youth will contribute to community discussions on the social, cultural, political and economic issues that each ethnic and ecological area faces, highlighting both the convergences and divergences of policies and practices at the local level. A substantial component of the grant work involves including Native students in cutting-edge research, including training in anthropological and audio-visual methods. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.