The Land Use and Environmental Change, Selawik National Wildlife Refuge Project Jukebox contains interviews with elders in the community of Selawik, Alaska talking about the history of land use and environmental conditions on the Selawik Refuge in the early to mid-20^th century, including information on traditional family settlements, muskrat hunting and trading, other key subsistence activities, and resource distribution and abundance.

The Selawik National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1980, and encompasses more than two million acres of land in the Selawik River valley and Kobuk River delta in northwest Alaska, an area that has a long history of occupation and use by Alaska Native people. Understanding the natural environment of the Refuge over a long time scale is important for gaining insight into long-term ecological change, and understanding changes in land use over this period provides information on the Refuge’s cultural resources, subsistence practices, and long-standing human relationships with the landscape. First-hand knowledge held by Iñupiaq elders is a vitally important source of information for understanding theses historic environmental and land use issues.

Funding for this project was provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Oral history interviews were conducted in Selawik and Kotzebue, Alaska in February 2018 by Karen Brewster of the Oral History Program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Susan Georgette, Nichole Hanshaw and Siikauraq Whiting all of the Selawik National Wildlife Refuge. Iñupiaq spellings in the transcripts were provided by Hannah Paniyavluk Loon of Kotzebue. The Selawik Project Jukebox was created in Drupal in 2019, and the information in this project reflects the context of the original creation date. Some information may now be out of date.