Lessons from Newtok

Towns don’t get much more different than Newtok, Alaska, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. But the recently relocated Yup’ik village near the Bering Sea coast and the resort town on the tip of Cape Cod have one critical aspect in common: the relentless advance of erosion.

That shared vulnerability was the inspiration behind “Lessons from Newtok,” an Alaska Sea Grant-supported effort that brought together students from Newtok and Provincetown to share photos and writings about environmental change and adaptation in their respective hometowns. The project aims to spread awareness of coastal resilience and to have the students draw strength and inspiration from each other’s stories.

“We’re in a place where we need connection and we need to see alignment and similarities in each other, and I think that’s what this project brings, is a sense that we have a lot more in common than we thought,” said Alaska Sea Grant Coastal Resilience Specialist Katie Basile, who is co-leading the project. “We have a lot of these huge issues that are so overwhelming, but together we can figure them out.”

The village of Newtok was forced to relocate due to rapid erosion of the banks of nearby Ninglick River exacerbated by thawing permafrost. By the end of 2024, everyone in the community had moved to a site called Mertarvik, nine miles away. In Provincetown, residents are confronting sea level rise, worsening storms, and increasing coastal erosion, to the extent that some homes are being raised to stay above storm surges.

Basile had been working in Newtok on a photojournalism project when she was approached by Provincetown photographer Emily Schiffer about a potential collaboration. Beginning in 2024, Basile and Schiffer each taught photojournalism classes in their respective communities, with Bethel-based Basile working with about eight Newtok/Mertarvik high school students via remote and in-person visits. Basile’s and Schiffer’s students shared their photos and writings with each other and also met via videoconference.

In 2025, “Lessons from Newtok” was accepted to Photoville, an outdoor photo exhibition held in New York City, under the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. Basile and Schiffer raised funds to each bring some of their students to the exhibition. “They got to go to the opening together and played basketball at the Brooklyn Bridge basketball courts, had meals together, and toured the International Center of Photography,” Basile said. “It was a magical, magical time.”

In May of this year, former Newtok students (and cousins) Daisy Carl and Glennesha Carl—who are now freshmen at the University of Alaska Fairbanks—accompanied Basile and Alaska Sea Grant faculty Davin Holen and Sean Kelly to the National Adaptation Forum in Pittsburgh, where the group led a 90-minute workshop focused on storytelling. Then Basile and the two students travelled to Provincetown, where they collaborated with the local students on art projects, shared mussels with them on the beach, visited sand dunes to observe local erosion, and took the ferry to Boston to make a presentation to MIT Sea Grant.

“These kids are coming from such different backgrounds, and now they’re kind of bonded for life,” Basile said. “They’ve learned so much from each other… That connection is strong and that curiosity about how to adapt is really strong too.”

The program is continuing in both Mertarvik and Provincetown, and KYUK Public Media has shared essays, photos and a video from the first cohort online. Basile said she hopes to ultimately have more of the students’ photos and writings available online, and to pilot an educational curriculum based on the project.

“To get kids engaged in the challenges we’re facing a little bit earlier means they’re going to be that much more prepared for it,” Basile noted. “But to do it through art and story means that it’s hopefully less daunting.”