Dr. Constance Scharff Returns PNW Chapter Flag, Shares Iñupiat Findings at Explorers Club Dinner
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SEATTLE - Washingtoner -- Dr. Constance Scharff, Founder and Principal Investigator of The Human Resilience Project (THRP) and Member National of the Explorers Club, speaks at the Explorers Club Pacific Northwest Chapter's annual gathering on Sunday, September 27, at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Scharff returns the chapter's flag and presents findings from THRP's third expedition, carried out with the Iñupiat community of Nome, Alaska.

Scharff carried two Explorers Club flags to Nome and Teller, Alaska: the Pacific Northwest Chapter flag, which returns to the chapter this weekend, and Explorers Club Flag No. 12. Fred A. Eningowuk of the Nome Eskimo Community served as community liaison throughout the expedition, which drew on interviews with thirteen community members.

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The fieldwork identified four resilience practices running through Iñupiat life. Sharing (Pikkaagupsi Aitturalui) governs subsistence living: resources move through the community without entitlement or expectation of return. Spirituality and humility (Ukpaisrun and Qinuinnaq), the values community members ranked highest, grow from a worldview in which people belong to an ecosystem extending past the material world, reinforced by extreme cold and daily reliance on others. Reverence toward nature (Kammaktui Nunamituat) shows up in fishing, hunting, and foraging, tempered by real tension over how far to let cash economies reshape those practices. Avoidance of conflict (Aziusrat Sugunnai) follows from the stakes involved: in a climate where cold kills, the community lets small slights go rather than risk the shared focus survival demands.

"Returning this flag closes one chapter of the fieldwork, not the work itself," said Scharff. "The Iñupiat live these values daily. What we're tracking now is how much of this holds across every community THRP visits."

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THRP's next expedition follows in a week, to Paraguay, continuing the search for resilience practices that recur across Indigenous communities, but sit outside Western frameworks. The PNW Explorers Club Chapter dinner also carries the chapter's broader annual program, drawing Explorers Club members from across the region to the Museum of Flight for expedition reports and chapter recognitions.

About The Human Resilience Project

The Human Resilience Project is a three-year, ten-nation investigation led by Constance Scharff, PhD, into how remote and Indigenous communities sustain psychological wellbeing at the intersection of climate change and conflict. Rather than cataloguing hardship, THRP looks for what already works, treating each partner community as an epistemic collaborator whose practices may translate across cultures. Learn more at www.THRProject.com.