After the latest catastrophic storm hit Western Alaska, displacing more than 1,500 people, killing at least one and leaving villages in ruins, residents face an existential crisis.

Will the wide delta that fans out between the lower Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and has supported one of the circumpolar north’s largest Indigenous populations for millennia continue to be a place where Alaska’s Yupik people can live?

One elder has his doubts.

“We’re not going to be well. Storms are going to get worse, and it’s not going to be livable,” said Mike Williams Sr., a tribal leader from the Kuskokwim River village of Akiak. “We’re past the tipping point, maybe.”

Fairbanks-based scientist Torre Jorgenson, who has studied the region for decades, has doubts as well.

Intertwined climate change forces

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