"As part of the ongoing research for my current book project, an environmental history of the Yukon River watershed, I spent most of the summer traveling the upper Yukon River and tributaries by boat—over 2000 miles in all.

In addition to seeing wolves, wildfires, and other wonders of the river, I visited multiple historic sites, including a former fur trading post at Fort Selkirk, and assessed contemporary gold mining in the watershed from the air and the ground, conducted interviews, and deepened relationships with communities and First Nations along the river. A highlight of the trip was spending most of a week at the biannual Gwich'in Gathering, held this year in Circle, Alaska—an event that brings Indigenous leaders from Gwich'in communities in Canada and the US together to discuss critical issues, tell stories, and dance into the long subarctic evenings.

This year, two UTRA students—Ifadayo Engel-Halfkenny (history and religious studies) and Elizabeth Duke-Moe (independent concentration)—joined the trip for its final weeks, as part of a summer helping with research and planning for a new course I'm teaching this fall, HIST1820 Sovereignty and Ecology, which thinks with the history of the Yukon River to understand how changes in sovereignty, law, and environmental conditions are influence each other over the past 200 years."