How This Alaska Native Trailblazer Is Stewarding Alaska's Largest Lake

Igiugig is located where Lake Iliamna, Alaska’s largest lake, drains into the Kvichak River. At this time of year, sockeye salmon are just beginning to arrive in the Kvichak. These are the advance guard for millions of fish—nearly half of all sockeye on Earth—that will soon travel upriver, through the lake and into their natal streams to spawn.

The Lake Iliamna area is globally important as a salmon fishery and a stronghold for biodiversity. Yet there is only scattershot scientific data about the health of the river and lake, the tundra that surrounds them and the plants and animals that they support.

Three years ago, a group of collaborators—including Hostetter, members of Igiugig’s Tribal Stewardship office and staff at The Nature Conservancy—used federal conservation funding to begin the development of an environmental monitoring program to address this need.

“Our baseline data collection is right now identifying areas where we have gaps,” Hostetter says. “And that’s almost everywhere.” The data the Bristol Bay Guardians program will collect will inform efforts to help the region adapt to the upheavals of a changing climate.

Over the last year, a different sort of upheaval has underscored the urgency of this work. The federal agencies that help to study and manage Alaska’s wildlife and natural lands have seen deep reductions in staff and funding—making Bristol Bay Guardians and other Indigenous-led stewardship efforts ever-more critical.

The speed of these changes helped to ground Hostetter’s decision to return home. She had left Igiugig at the age of 19 and gone on to explore different careers, ultimately finding work in fisheries and natural sciences for Alaska state agencies.

Though Hostetter’s professional and personal life had brought her across the length and breadth of Alaska, nowhere could replace Lake Iliamna in her heart. “Home is where my soul is,” she says. She approached the president of the village council, AlexAnna Salmon, to discuss the possibility of creating conservation-focused roles in Igiugig for her and her research partner, Bill Kane.

A plan to merge Indigenous knowledge and western science

In 2021, the Alaska Venture Fund—a nonprofit that funds programs to support Alaska’s communities, environment and economy—hosted an Indigenous Ecosystem Stewardship Exchange Program.

Through the exchange, Hostetter was introduced to Indigenous Guardians, a Canadian stewardship program driven by First Nations. Indigenous Guardians takes a community-based approach to land stewardship that blends Indigenous knowledge and traditional stewardship practices with western science.

“I saw an opportunity to do a lot of things” using the Guardians framework, Hostetter says, from environmental monitoring across Bristol Bay to workforce development for local residents. Although many government agencies and nonprofits work in the Bristol Bay region, she explains, “a lot of it is not coordinated; a lot of it isn’t with the Indigenous communities’ concerns and ideas at the forefront.”

Inspired by this vision, the village council supported Hostetter and Kane to helm Igiugig’s newly created Tribal Stewardship Department. By the summer of 2022, they were en route to Igiugig.

As the people of Igiugig care for their home, the federal government has been a key source of support. Their efforts are guided by the 2020 Igiugig Adaptation Assessment, which was funded through a federal grant from the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In 2024, the Igiugig Village Tribal Stewardship Office and TNC received $2 million from an Inflation Reduction Act grant administered by NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management. In the coming years, this program, Bristol Bay Guardians, will use this funding to coordinate environmental monitoring, climate adaptation work and workforce development efforts.

Collecting environmental data to support the Bristol Bay way of life

A day before the summer solstice, Hostetter and Kane are boating down the Kvichak River. At the approach of the boat, a pair of tundra swans lift off. Their babies, as round and fuzzy as pompoms, dive beneath the river’s surface. Kane cuts the engine, and as the vessel noses into the riverbank, Hostetter scrambles up into an indigo patch of lupine.

They’re here to check on a stream temperature logger—one of the many ways they monitor Igiugig’s surroundings. Closer to the village, a U.S. Geological Survey streamgage is also busy taking measurements, not only of the Kvichak River’s temperature, but also its flow and volume—critical indicators of habitat conditions for baby salmon. The gage had been dormant since the 1980s but was revived in 2022 through a partnership between the USGS, Igiugig Village Council and TNC.

Deep roots

While Indigenous Guardians programs are well-established in Canada, they are just taking root in the United States. A recent development will help deepen these roots. In October 2025, the Alaska Federation of Natives—the state’s largest Indigenous organization—adopted a resolution to support Guardians-style efforts throughout Alaska. This resolution is a key step to expanding Indigenous conservation and research efforts to other communities and landscapes.

While the future is often on Hostetter’s mind, so is the past. Sitting in her cozy A-frame cabin, with its sweeping view of the Kvichak River, she describes a recent trip to Kokhanok, the village where her mother was raised. She’d taken a four-wheeler up into the surrounding hills for a moment of quiet reflection.

It was a stunning vista: the quicksilver of the lake, the sun as bright as a spotlight on the snowy peaks around her. The expansive silence—broken only by the chittering of birds and the occasional sound of a float plane—was a presence all its own, as deep and clear as the waters of the lake below.

For Hostetter, it was a scene resonant with the spirits of her ancestors, with reminders of the web of human and more-than-human relationships laced across Bristol Bay. “This isn’t the middle of nowhere,” Hostetter says, sharing a sentiment expressed by her sister. “This is the middle of my everywhere.”