CERF 2023 Workshop

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Food for Thought: How Coasts Nourish Our Bodies and Communities

Sunday, 12 November, 2023 

9:00 AM – 12:00 PM | $39 Regular Price | $27 Student Price

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About This Workshop

This dynamic session will pair a live food demonstration with storytelling and moderated discussion on the intersections of foodways, culture, coastal communities, diversity, ecology, traditional ecological knowledge, equity, and accessibility. The panel will include community partners, researchers, and science extension specialists representing the Pacific Northwest region sharing their experiences of how food connects us to place, supports culture and commerce, can promote sustainable resource use, and reveals societal flaws. 

Case studies and discussion are likely to touch on such important questions as: how can research inform policies to protect subsistence practices and help preserve traditional and/or local knowledge?; how is food an indicator of healthy coastal ecosystems?; and, can we ensure equity in access to food while promoting new food-based commercial endeavors such as tourism?

Attendees will have the opportunity to leave behind their own stories of food and coastal culture as well as take home recipes and insights on food as an indicator of community well-being.

About the Presenters

Brooke Carney

 
Amara Davis

Kelly Samek

Davin Holen

Davin Holen is a Coastal Community Resilience Specialist and Associate Professor for the Alaska Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program and Collaborative Faculty at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy in the International Arctic Research Center, both at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF).  Davin builds trusted collaborations to provide data and decision support tools to Alaskans to adapt to climate and environmental changes and build resilience and better community well-being.  Before joining UAF, Davin spent 15 years at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, conducting social-science research and managing the subsistence program in Southern Alaska.  Davin has and continues to work in rural communities from the Arctic to Southeast Alaska, conducting research that informs and supports his extension activities.  Davin has also taught at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) first as an adjunct professor and now as an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Mat-Su College campus, which is near where he grew up in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.  Davin graduated from UAA with a degree in history, then spent two years in Mali, West Africa conducting natural resource management development work before returning to UAA to earn an MA in applied cultural anthropology, the first graduate of this degree program. Davin received a Ph.D. in anthropology from UAF in 2017. His dissertation, as well as current research, examines societal and economic factors intertwined with climatic and environmental changes influencing subsistence economies important for culture in Alaskan communities. Davin developed and managed the website Adapt Alaska (adaptalaska.org) hosted by Alaska Sea Grant. 

As a lifelong Alaskan and a researcher who has worked closely with Alaska Native communities for over 20 years, learning about and participating in activities essential for the subsistence way of life, Davin continues to harvest wild foods from the landscape and waters of Alaska.  He also has extensive gardens both at his home in Anchorage and cabin in the Susitna Valley to grow food during the long growing days of summer that lasts throughout the winter.
Matt Bethel