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As thirteen leaders in research with Alaska Native communities, we came together in a workshop to self-define the role of boundary spanners within our cross-cultural contexts. We utilized convergence methods and participatory decision-making facilitation. Reflecting on chronic challenges and current issues of trying to do co-production of knowledge, our group discussed the boundary spanner role and how to create systemic change. We represented different career stages, gender identities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, ages, backgrounds, and job positions. We wrote this paper to illustrate positive and negative aspects of this role as framed in a typical career journey. The role is often not sustainable, includes a degree of conflict and lacks support. We recognize that boundary spanners can act as enablers of boundaries. Healing is often interwoven with Indigenous and individual self-determination. Our workshop ended with the development of strategies to create systemic change through mentoring the next generation and addressing funding inequity and the cultural divide between communities and science/policy. A key concept from the workshop is the rejection of the term “boundary spanner,” because ideally, there should not be one individual doing the spanning duties, but everyone within the science/policy sphere working to dismantle boundaries. 

ABSTRACT. Well-being and equity are increasingly identified as integral to environmental governance and improved sustainability outcomes. Greater consideration of these dimensions has generated calls for more data and new methodologies capable of collecting, evaluating, and converting social and cultural data into formats deemed more useful to decision makers. These efforts expose gaps and challenges related to an over reliance on quantitative data, especially when it comes to adequately accounting for the well-being of Indigenous communities. Located along the western shore of Nanvarpak (Lake Iliamna) in southwest Alaska, this paper examines Indigenous conceptions of well-being and provides insights on how to better account for the well-being of Indigenous communities in sustainable governance. Carried out in partnership with the Tribal Nation of Igyaraq (Igiugig), we draw on ethnographic and interview data to identify and examine three foundational elements of Indigenous well-being: (1) land relations or nunaka (my land, my birthplace), inclusive of one’s responsibility to ensure continuation of a way of life defined by connections to ancestral lands; (2) sovereignty; and (3) effective governance. We pay special attention to the implications of Indigenous well-being as primarily expressed and achieved through enactments of sovereignty and nation-building. We draw attention to the need for greater investment in diverse scientific expertise and data but caution against assuming that more science will lead to better governance. There is a need to acknowledge the ways in which dominant Western science-policy structures do not serve Indigenous communities. Our research suggests that you cannot adequately account for Indigenous well-being without explicit consideration of governance, and the often taken for granted value assumptions and political conditions that quietly frame policy debates and scientific understandings of what data are considered useful and what impacts are considered acceptable. This paper demonstrates the fundamental importance of centering sovereignty in not only well-being and equity considerations, but as a central tenet of ethical scientific inquiry and environmental governance more broadly.