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The John D. and Catherine T. MacA >> (woman speaking Yup'ik) Everything about our world is changing.

>> We have to wake up before it becomes too late for us to adapt.

>> Our ancestors said one day we will come upon this day.

I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime.

>> In Alaska, the governor has declared a state of disaster after the remnants of Typhoon Merbok caused unprecedented flooding.

>> 1,000 miles of coastline was impacted by Typhoon Merbok.

>> Hurricane-force winds and over 50-foot waves... >> One of the most destructive storms to ever hit that region.

>> Entire towns were completely submerged.

(thunder crackling) ♪ ♪ >> TALAHONGVA: A little over a year after that catastrophic storm hit Alaska, I flew up the western coast.

I was headed for an area called the YK Delta, about 500 miles west of Anchorage, home to dozens of small Native villages for the Cup'ik and Yup'ik people.

They're some of the most vulnerable communities in the country to climate change.

And the storm was the latest sign of the imminent dangers.

We landed in Chevak, one of nearly 150 Native villages that have been experiencing increasing flooding, erosion, and warming temperatures.

It was the dead of winter, and everything was covered in thick layers of snow, making it hard to see what was water and what was land.

But I could still make out the erosion caused by the storm.

What you're looking at right now is actually a river that's frozen over, covered with snow and the debris left by Merbok.

Then here you can see a little bit of a hill.

And on the top of the hill, are some homes.

And that's where the village of Chevak actually starts.

These are homes that are in the direct path of destruction.

Around 60 houses, nearly a quarter of the village, were badly damaged.

And the situation was similar in other communities.

We went an hour away by snow machine, heading to Hooper Bay, home to around 1,400 people on the edge of the Bering Sea.

When I got there, residents were arriving for a meeting to discuss the fate of the community.

>> TALAHONGVA: Estelle Thomson is a tribal president and was leading the discussion.

>> Typhoon Merbok hit our community so hard it did an entire lifetime's worth of erosion in one storm.

The inundation from the sea came in through our town.

It damaged infrastructure.

37 people were permanently displaced from the village.

So we had a huge disaster.

>> TALAHONGVA: Agatha Napoleon is the climate change coordinator for one of the tribes that lives in Hooper Bay.

>> I'm a Hooper Bay-er.

This is where I grew up.

My children grew up here.

This is our land.

We are its people.

We've lived here for eons.

We've learned to live with the storms, the blizzards and everything that the ocean has to bring.

Good or bad, we have learned to adapt and live with it.

Our way of life revolves around the cold and whatever little spring and summer that we have.

This climate change thing is wreaking havoc.

>> TALAHONGVA: Experts who've been studying what's happening here say the threat is so severe because of changes to both the surrounding sea and the frozen ground known as permafrost.

>> This big hunk of ice up here, which is most of Alaska, is slowly melting due to the very rapid warming, up to four times faster than what we see globally.

>> TALAHONGVA: Tom Ravens is a civil engineer and an expert on the Arctic coast.

>> Environmental warming is really doing a number on the permafrost.

And, you know, permafrost is a natural way to protect against coastal erosion.

Permafrost is absolutely the glue that's holding all the sediment along the coast in place.

And of course, as that permafrost thaws, the glue is essentially disappearing, and it's just draining into the sea.

And all that's left is a sort of muddy mush.

Now that the permafrost is thawing, coastal erosion rates are higher.

>> TALAHONGVA: What's worse, Arctic waters aren't freezing the way they have in the past.

And as the sea ice disappears, so does an important line of defense.

>> The ice is almost like a seawall.

And so, when you've got five, ten, 20 miles of ice that is anchored to the coast, those big waves, those big surges that are offshore, they stay offshore.

But now, when you've got no ice armoring the shoreline, those waves, there's nothing to stop it from just coming in and battering the coastline.

>> TALAHONGVA: That's what's happening in Hooper Bay.

And efforts to strengthen the village's defenses haven't been able to keep up.

The state has spent millions in federal grants trying to protect the airport road.

>> The Department of Transportation in Hooper Bay elevated the airport access road.

And we thought it was gonna be good until 2050, according to our projections of sea level rise and flooding.

But it turns out Merbok came in and flooded this road.

>> TALAHONGVA: So for some here, the conversation is changing-- from protecting Hooper Bay, to leaving it behind.

>> We've learned that, within 15 years, the permafrost in the YK Delta around Hooper Bay, Scammon Bay and Chevak is gonna be melted.

And at the end of the century, the Bering Sea is going to be subsuming that entire area.

So it's become a priority for us to resettle our village in order for us to have a place to escape to.

>> TALAHONGVA: She and her tribal council have been working on a plan to move to higher ground around 15 miles away, to a tribal area called Paimiut.

>> It's a lone mountain.

It's part of the Asqinaq range.

Its Yup'ik name is "Qikertakuq," meaning "island."

It's safer.

And definitely water will not reach us.

While everything is changing, we're just making sure that we take care of ourselves, our grandkids and that we adapt as easily as we possibly can, even though it is difficult.

>> TALAHONGVA: This plan to move to the native village of Paimiut.

Is everybody 100% ready to do that?

>> No.

As with any other relocation, there are gonna be people that want to stay in Hooper Bay as long as they possibly can.

And we can respect that.

I mean, it's been our home for quite a long time.

>> TALAHONGVA: In fact, several Hooper Bay families are originally from Paimiut.

But they were relocated here decades ago, as part of a U.S. government effort to assimilate Alaska's Native people.

>> I think it was in the 1940s when people from the Bureau of Indian Affairs came to my village of Paimiut, my settlement, and told the people there that you need to move to another community that has a school because our, our settlement was pretty small.

And one of the things that happened was that it split up our people between three villages: Hooper Bay, Scammon Bay and Chevak, with the majority of our tribal membership living in Hooper Bay or from Hooper Bay.

>> TALAHONGVA: In the schools, the Yup'ik children were taught English and western culture, instead of their own.

>> Going from fluently speaking our language every day, all day long, entering school and not knowing very many words in English.

Maybe "yes," "no," "please" and "thank you."

>> TALAHONGVA: In 1953, Walt Disney Productions released a film about the Alaskan Natives in Hooper Bay.

That's Agatha's mother as a young girl, reaching for a tool.

She was helping sew skins for the outside of a boat.

(people in recording singing and drumming) >> TALAHONGVA: Members of the tribe were still holding their ceremonies in a traditional setting.

>> The Qaygiq was a place of learning.

My father always let us know to go down to the Qaygiq, sew and listen, because this is our first and foremost way of life, our teachings.

And then the Catholic Church came in, the Covenant Church came in, and then we learned about God.

>> TALAHONGVA: The story resonated with me.

My family moved from our Hopi reservation in Arizona to Denver, where I was born.

Growing up in the city, it was hard to hold on to our traditions, as it's been for the Alaskan Native people, too.

>> I think that it's important to keep what you can.

Just like any society, any culture.

One of the things that I've noticed with most cultures around the world, regardless of how much they've assimilated or changed over time, is the fact that they've been able to keep their food.

It's extremely important to us.

>> I've got two blackfish traps here.

There's elders' favorite delicacy out there.

They love blackfish.

(tapping) >> Oh you hear that?

It's not even that thick.

>> TALAHONGVA: Many of the Native people here still practice subsistence living, living off the land.

In the winter, they get fish from the ice-covered rivers and sea.

>> Just a small, little one.

>> TALAHONGVA: In the school at Hooper Bay, I met a group of students who told me how important it is to them to practice their traditional way of harvesting.

We talk about subsistence living.

What do you eat?

>> Birds, seal, moose, whale, fish.

>> Clams.

>> TALAHONGVA: Clams?

You guys hunt walrus out here, too?

>> Yeah.

We go up to them slowly... >> TALAHONGVA: Mm-hmm.

>> ...so we don't scare them.

And they'll get pissed off and come after us.

(laughs) >> And we produce a seal oil from seals when we catch them.

And they have a nice layer of fat.

>> TALAHONGVA: So, your food is not something you can buy in the grocery stores.

>> No.

>> We get them from the land.

The land provides.

>> Stores here are full of junk.

So we'd rather go out and go get our own food, and which is more healthier.

>> I can't imagine not living with and eating the foods that we have lived with all our lives.

It would be... ...it would be like a fish out of the water.

(giggling, shrieking) I know eventually my grandchildren, they're gonna have to find other ways.

But right now, it's... it-it hurts.

We have no other choice.

We have to make changes.

We have to do something.

Otherwise, we'll just be part of the ocean, too.

>> TALAHONGVA: The challenges facing Alaska Native villages have been growing for decades.

As far back as the 1980s, there were warnings that dozens of communities were in danger from erosion and flooding.

A federal agency called the Denali Commission was created to work with rural Alaskan communities.

And one of its missions has been to help protect Native villages from the impacts of climate change.

But only one village so far has actually gone through the dramatic process of relocating: Newtok, a community of around 300 people, that built a new town nine miles away.

The move has cost about $160 million, taken around 30 years, and it's still not complete.

>> Relocation is a extremely complex, difficult process that takes a huge team to work through over many years.

Many, many dozens of organizations are involved in the process.

It's a very messy problem, and we need some strategic kind of top-down guidance to agencies and organizations to kind of streamline it, to transform it, to make it a more efficient system.

Right now there's no one to support a community with relocation, officially, there's no lead agency.

There's no lead technical assistance provider at the federal or state level to help communities address the impacts of climate change.

(line ringing on speakerphone) >> AUTOMATED MESSAGE: Sorry.

Senator Murkowski Anchorage main line is not available.

Record your message... >> TALAHONGVA: Over the past several months, I have tried to interview many state and federal officials.

I wanted to understand their roles in relocating the Native villages.

But no one would agree to go on camera.

And since President Trump took office, the outlook has grown more uncertain for the villages, with the focus being shifted away from climate change and funding cuts to federal agencies.

As the situation has been worsening, people from various Alaska Native villages have been searching for help, even far from home.

>> Can I get a show of hands of all the people from Alaska?

(greets in Yup'ik) We are experiencing climate change at a rate that's four times faster than the rest of the world.

>> TALAHONGVA: In the spring of 2024, Agatha Napoleon and Estelle Thomson traveled to a Climate Change Preparedness Conference in Las Vegas.

Among the attendees were members of tribes from the Lower 48.

>> For villages and stuff, for those of us that are faced with relocation, um, you know, we've had a lot of... we've had a lot of difficulty with relocation.

It can be really easy to get discouraged.

And I'm sure that those of you that are working for your tribes or for your people, it is discouraging to think about our, our way of life, our life way, changing.

Many of us that are going through relocation don't know the ins and outs.

And so, for us to be able to work with other Indigenous communities that are facing the same things, it's extremely helpful.

We can learn from each other.

>> The shared struggle underscores the broader impacts of climate change for Indigenous coastal communities.

Capacity and funding are two of the biggest challenges.

You have to cut through all this red tape.

You have all of these strict regulations and rules to follow that really aren't in the best interest of anyone.

>> TALAHONGVA: Their plan to move to Paimiut has run up against these bureaucratic challenges.

For example, some federal grant money can't be used until families inhabit Paimiut.

But to make Paimiut habitable, they say they need financial assistance.

>> Until we have a family living up there, we won't be able to get certain things-- a school, power, water, a sewer; all the stuff that human beings need.

Good afternoon.

My name is Agatha Napoleon.

I am with the Native Village of Paimiut Traditional Council.

We live literally on the coast of the Bering Sea.

And we have seen so much destruction.

But, um, hopefully... we'll be able to do a little remediating so that we can live in Hooper Bay for a little bit longer.

We need to make a move.

>> TALAHONGVA: The accounts of Hooper Bay's situation struck a chord with people at the conference.

After hearing Agatha Napoleon speak, another Native woman gifted her a pair of beaded earrings and a necklace.

>> We do have to acknowledge the fact that there is a lot of historical and intergenerational trauma around relocation for all sorts of Indigenous peoples.

Relocation does come with harm.

But it also comes with an opportunity for healing, for rebuilding, for creating a community that is going to serve us in the ways that we want it to.

>> TALAHONGVA: After Vegas, we travelled to the far north of the Alaskan coast, to see how other Native communities were faring.

We arrived in Kotzebue, an Iñupiat town above the Arctic Circle.

Rather than relocating, they have been focused on fortifying their defenses.

Alex Whiting, the tribe's Environmental Program Director, took me for a walk on the frozen Kotzebue Sound.

(laughing): Whoa.

>> Yeah, that looks a little watery.

>> But I'm trusting that I'm not gonna sink into the water, right?

>> Another month, for sure, you'll be swimming right here.

>> TALAHONGVA: In 2012, they built a $34 million seawall, funded mostly by federal dollars, to protect against the rising waters.

Honestly, I had imagined this huge wall... >> Yeah.

>> TALAHONGVA: ...like 20 feet tall, but it's not that big.

>> No, it's not that big.

>> TALAHONGVA: It's not that tall.

>> More than the height of it all is just having a buffer because we'll get west wind this way, we'll get high water from the west wind, and then we'll get waves, too.

And if you didn't have something like the seawall, and we have more massive storms that are becoming more common because of climate change, then there would sort of be no hope for a lot of these structures that are facing the ocean right here.

>> TALAHONGVA: But the seawall took something critical away from Kotzebue-- its beachfront.

>> From time immemorial, people in Kotzebue that lived in this area utilized the beach for, you know, all their many activities.

It's necessary that we have the seawall, but it's really bad that that relationship has been sort of torn asunder by this cement and steel structure.

And that future generations will never have the opportunity to have that same kind of relationship with that beachfront.

>> TALAHONGVA: Kotzebue is surrounded by water on three sides.

And while the seawall has so far protected the west side of Kotzebue, the east side remains unprotected.

Three rivers drain into the Kotzebue Sound near here, making this area especially vulnerable to flooding.

>> It's definitely a battle fighting the coastal flooding on the front and then the, the lagoon flooding on the back.

>> This is the flood zone in Kotzebue.

My home is actually in the flood zone, as well.

The flooding happens because, when all the snow melts, the water levels rise a little bit, and then it'll go into town, and all these homes right here are impacted from that.

Even in the past five years, we've seen significant changes, especially with the amount of snow.

Last year we had a very large snowstorm.

And in some parts of town, we had 20 feet of snow, which is an incredible amount of snow.

And then afterwards, that brings in flooding.

Every single year we're impacted by the ice breakup.

It tends to come further and further into town, which is pretty impactful for a lot of families.

Because Kotzebue's on a spit of land, and we're surrounded on all sides by water, if we were to start building up, we would be building up in these hills up here.

A lot of elders and a lot of people are starting to talk about what that might look like.

But right now, we're just trying to make sure that our current community could withstand any type of storm or flood or another typhoon, possibly.

>> TALAHONGVA: It's August when we return to Hooper Bay.

Now that ice and snow aren't covering everything, you can see ponds of water everywhere.

It's almost like the village is floating on the spongy tundra.

The waves of the Bering Sea are breaking close to people's homes.

>> Springtime, we mostly come here after the ice is gone.

We go hunt our seals way out here, around this whole area.

>> TALAHONGVA: Edgar Tall is the chief of the Native Village of Hooper Bay.

Do you ever get tired of hearing the ocean?

>> No.

I like to stay.

It's the only place where I like to be.

>> TALAHONGVA: Chief Tall takes me out to the only set of dunes left that protect Hooper Bay.

>> You see here, you see the cloudberries.

This is what we're picking right now.

>> TALAHONGVA: Oh, wow.

And can you eat these?

>> Yes.

Right now they're soft.

>> TALAHONGVA: Oh, my gosh, that's so good.

With relocation still years away, Chief Tall tells me he's focused on short-term planning.

>> Right now our plan is to, uh, protection in place before we move because we can't move any faster.

There is still process to do.

And paperwork, lot of paperwork and stuff.

>> And the protection in place, we are helping each others do that.

>> We do have some grants that were approved, but those are little grants, and, you know... >> TALAHONGVA: When you say little grants, what kind of amount are we talking about?

>> Like $4 to $5 million.

We've got $1.5 to, uh, fix up the landfill.

That's not even gonna make a dent.

And, you know, hard to get grants, but those were earmarked to us from, uh, Senator Murkowski.

These guys here, they're getting ready to go berry camp, go get some cloudberries.

>> TALAHONGVA: How long do they go for?

>> Till they fill their barrels.

If not, they don't get lucky.

>> TALAHONGVA: So this is what it's like all summer long, people are headed out to... >> Yeah, first you've got your egg hunting.

Then you've got your fishing.

And then you're gonna go berry camping and get some berries.

In a few weeks, they're gonna go moose hunt or bird hunt.

Subsistence is a must.

Always.

Always.

>> As long as we're able to continue to practice our traditions, tell our stories, we will always have the basic building blocks to maintain the culture and to continue to grow it.

>> I love the people.

I love what the land has to provide.

I love what the water has to provide.

I love this land.

>> TALAHONGVA: Before we leave Hooper Bay, we watch Agatha Napoleon making care packages to send to her daughters, who moved away years ago.

>> My children grew up on these, like me, so they crave it.

All the foods that I pack them, their little souls, their little hearts need it.

Even if they have moved, they have to eat it.

There have been families that have moved away because they're afraid that the next big storm, we could be all underwater.

And it's scary.

And, yeah, we are talking about relocating.

But there is no place like home.

I am a Hooper Bay-er.

I am from-- in Yup'ik: "Naparyarmiut."

I am from Hooper Bay.

(waves crashing) >> Wow, this is the highest I've ever seen the water in Kotzebue ever.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org >> For more on this and other "FRONTLINE" programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ "Alaska's Vanishing Native Villages" and "Crime Scene: Bucha" are available on Amazon Prime Video.

"Alaska's Vanishing Native Villages" and