Alaska Village Forced to Relocate as Thawing Permafrost Swallows Homes

The Yup’ik community of Nunapitchuk in southwestern Alaska faces an unprecedented challenge: their ancestral homeland is literally disappearing beneath their feet. As climate change accelerates permafrost thaw, homes throughout the village are sinking into the once-frozen ground, forcing residents to make the difficult decision to relocate their entire community to higher ground.

For centuries, the Yup’ik people have maintained their traditional way of life in this remote corner of Alaska, where children play by rivers while adults fish and hunt across the vast tundra. However, rapidly warming temperatures—nearly four times faster than the global average—are fundamentally altering the landscape they’ve called home for generations.

Permafrost, the permanently frozen soil that once provided a stable foundation for buildings and infrastructure, is now melting at an alarming rate. This thaw creates unstable ground conditions that cause structures to sink, tilt, and become uninhabitable. The situation has become so severe that Nunapitchuk residents see no alternative but to abandon their current location entirely.

This dramatic relocation represents more than just a logistical challenge—it’s a profound disruption to a way of life deeply connected to specific lands and waters. Nunapitchuk joins a growing number of Alaskan communities grappling with climate-forced migration, highlighting how the Arctic’s rapid environmental changes are displacing Indigenous peoples who have sustainably inhabited these regions for millennia. The village’s plight serves as a stark reminder of climate change’s immediate, life-altering impacts on vulnerable communities worldwide.