Hunger was top of mind for about 60 Kotzebue residents at a town hall event the week before Thanksgiving. Topics ranged from recent gaps in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that started during the federal government shutdown, challenges for the local food bank, and scarcity of caribou and other subsistence resources.
Northwest Arctic Takes Action put on the Nov. 17 event with a statewide advocacy group called the Rural and Indigenous Outreach Team.
“It came out of our concern for our community,” said Ruth Ann Zent, co-founder of the local non-partisan group that organized the event. “We felt like, instead of just complaining about policies, maybe we should take action to help our community.”
Northwest Arctic Takes Action formed earlier this year in response to many of the Trump administration's policy changes, from federal cuts to immigration. Zent said the group has shifted its efforts and has been working on ways to help distribute more food to the region after the delays in SNAP benefits.
“We were very worried when they were not being paid,” Zent said. “In other government shutdowns, SNAP benefits were paid, but there was a choice by our current administration, federal administration, not to pay the SNAP benefits this time.”
According to the most recent data from 2023 compiled by the nonprofit Feeding America, about 70% of households in the Northwest Arctic qualify for SNAP benefits. The same organization estimates that 18.5% percent of the region experiences food insecurity.
With SNAP benefits on pause, Zent said her group looked for other food safety nets.
“We talked to the Kotzebue Church of God Food Bank,” Zent said. “We discovered that that's the only food bank in Kotzebue, and the only food bank in our entire region.”
Zent said the group learned that the Kotzebue’s food bank has to meet several requirements to receive its distributions, which primarily come from Anchorage-based Food Bank of Alaska — and that some of those requirements can be challenging for a rural food bank.
Natalie Dickie is the church caretaker. She says the food bank serves about 300-500 people each month. Dickie agrees with Zent that food bank regulations have made it harder to send food bank goods to Kotzebue’s outlying villages.
“You are required to complete annual paperwork and training, and then you have monthly reporting requirements,” Dickie said. “Then also the food storage.”
Dickie said the food it receives from the Food Bank of Alaska has to be kept completely separate from other donations it receives, and some facilities don't have space or freezers to accommodate for that.
She says there's another challenge: not having enough food to meet growing needs.
“I do think that the community has seen that decline in what the food bank has been able to provide,” said Dickie. “We know that the food bank distributions are not enough.”
Dickie said a typical, monthly food distribution usually includes food staples like pasta, and canned fruits and vegetables and occasionally frozen meat. But that isn't guaranteed. Dickie has been managing the distributions for a little over six months and already noticed gaps.
“There were two months that we didn't receive anything from Food Bank Alaska at all,” she said.
Gaps in service are part of life in rural Alaska communities, especially in the winter. Federal layoffs and the recent government shutdown have also driven more need from communities across the state.
These challenges and inconsistencies were the motivation for Zent’s group to gather non-perishable food items independently, through local donations.
Zent said volunteers in Kotzebue packed 50-pound totes of food to be sent to each of the 10 Northwest Arctic villages on local air carrier Bering Air. She expects the food to be sent out in the coming days.
"So we're just starting, but we intend to continue that effort, to see what we can do to put together some improvements in food security," she said.
If this distribution goes well, Zent hopes the group can continue on a regular basis.
