But the threat is more complex than rising seas alone. According to the Future Tuktoyaktuk project, the community faces an unprecedented convergence of climate threats. The west shore retreats by up to three metres annually, accelerating to five metres during major storms. Tuktoyaktuk Island — the natural breakwater protecting the harbour — erodes at 1.8 metres per year and will be breached by 2050. Meanwhile, permafrost up to four metres thick beneath the community is thawing as ground temperatures increase — up 2 C since the 1970s, potentially causing 2.6 metres of ground settlement by 2100. The Arctic Ocean itself is transforming, with shrinking ice coverage making way for waves of unprecedented height. This perfect storm of threats means critical infrastructure faces systemic destruction within decades. Scientists project the health-care centre and half of the cemetery will disappear within 50 years — forcing the community to confront not just relocation but the possibility of moving graves, something foreign to Inuvialuit culture.

In her cramped, attic laboratory above the hunters and trappers committee office, Deva-Lynn Pokiak sits surrounded by water testing equipment and research papers, planning for the day her community might have to abandon everything and start over somewhere else. At 33, she carries the weight of an impossible job: she is Tuktoyaktuk’s relocation coordinator, tasked with preparing for a future no one wants to imagine.

Pokiak’s attic space doubles as a laboratory for the Northern Contaminants Program, where Pokiak monitors mercury in the surrounding waters. Two young assistants work alongside her: Miley Wolki, who dreams of studying anthropology, and Gabriel Côté, a research student from Montreal. The makeshift lab reflects the community-led approach that has become Tuktoyaktuk’s new strategy for dealing with outside researchers.

“Research isn’t coming in here telling us what they need to research anymore,” says Pokiak. “They’re coming, asking us: what are our priorities and what are our needs and what do we want? What do you want us to research and monitor?”

This shift is the result of years of advocacy from the community’s leadership against extractive research practices. “We have strong leadership because they pushed back and said, you know, ‘no more research until we get what we need back from you,’” she says.

Shishmaref, an Iñupiat community of 600 people on a narrow barrier island in the Chukchi Sea inhabited for over 4,000 years, has been fighting erosion since the 1990s and has yet to secure the funding needed to move.

Pokiak has learned the difference between “retreating” — moving structures back from immediate threats — and full “relocation,” which means abandoning a site entirely and starting over.

The views of community members about relocation are mixed. The hamlet has invested in shoreline protection measures, buying time while longer-term plans develop, but Pokiak knows these are temporary fixes. “People are saying, why spend all this money on the beach instead of relocating us now?”

The Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk has identified potential relocation sites along the inland highway to Inuvik, where Pokiak’s team is taking permafrost core samples and to ensure any new location will remain stable as the Arctic continues to warm.

The afternoon light — though in July it could be any hour given the endless Arctic day — catches the determination in Pokiak’s eyes as she prepares for another water sampling expedition. Balancing her role as a single mother to a five-year-old daughter, community liaison, researcher, and relocation coordinator, she embodies the resourcefulness that has allowed Inuvialuit communities to thrive for thousands of years in one of Earth’s most challenging environments.

Tuktoyaktuk submitted a proposal about four years ago that resulted in $53.7 million in federal funding for shoreline protection. The project was completed at the end of April of last year — a massive undertaking involving precisely engineered rock armour designed to buy the community time. The total cost of the project ended up being just under $60 million.

Elias is clear about what this expensive engineering represents — it’s disaster mitigation and adaptation, not disaster prevention, buying perhaps 20 to 30 years while the community prepares for relocation.

The timeline haunts Elias’ calculations. Scientists warned five years ago that Tuktoyaktuk would be covered in water within 30 years. But the bureaucratic process of securing relocation funding and executing such a massive project could easily consume those remaining years.

“What I’m afraid of is that if nobody’s listening to us, you almost have to wait for a catastrophe to happen before they say, ‘okay, let’s evacuate this community,’” Elias explains. “We don’t want that. We’re trying to be proactive.”

In a modest mobile home he ents for just under $2,000 a month, Obie David James Anikina sits at his kitchen table, black coffee in hand, his black hair emerging from beneath a baseball cap. At 55, his soft-spoken manner carries the essence of someone who has spent years watching the land change in ways his ancestors never imagined.

For nearly six years, starting in-late 2018, Anikina worked as a climate monitor, part of a team that began with a dozen community members interested in documenting the changes happening around Tuktoyaktuk. Over time, the group winnowed down to a core of dedicated observers, including Anikina and another colleague, along with a few younger community members who remained consistently available.

Using penetrating probes to measure how deep the permanently frozen ground extends, Anikina and his team documented the gradual thaw that threatens not just Tuktoyaktuk’s foundations but the entire ecosystem of the region. “It’s been melting,” he says simply.

“We know it is melting. It changes all the time and every day we need to adapt.”

The biological changes are equally dramatic. During summer plant and berry monitoring walks, Anikina documented plant life growing “at least two weeks earlier” than in the past. “That’s a big deal because people are thinking, you know, what the regular berry time is, and they go out and they find they’re already dropped off or they missed out.”

The permafrost thaw creates unexpected effects. Methane released from thawing permafrost acts as a fertilizer, creating unnaturally lush vegetation. “Within the last five years we’ve had a spurt, really spurted growth. It’s getting like the southern communities.”

Storms had grown so fierce that she recalls timing the waves just to get out her front door without getting wet, terrified she might wake up one morning to find her porch gone. That spring, local contractors moved four houses threatened by erosion — including Cockney’s grandparents’ home, her mother Noella’s next door, and two neighbours — seven to eight kilometres inland to Reindeer Point, a subdivision created specifically for relocated homes. Each house was assessed by an engineer to determine if it could withstand the physical move, then hauled intact across an ice road and set down on freshly laid gravel pads.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Cockney was in Whitehorse, where COVID-19 restrictions had shut everything down. She managed to make her way back to help with the move and support her 83-year-old grandmother through the trauma of moving the family homestead.

“How long after did she pass?” Cockney asks herself, the pain evident on her face. “Months. Really. Yeah. That, uh, August.”

Now, four years later, the house faces a different kind of destruction. The relocated homes at Reindeer Point were placed on gravel pads that hadn’t been given enough time to settle. “The year they actually did move it, you could walk out here and the ground would sink,” Cockney says. With each seasonal freeze-thaw cycle, her erratic home shifts.

The instability is viscerally apparent. Cockney asks her 15-year-old son Isaac to flop down on the bed in his room upstairs and the entire house shakes from the movement.

“That’s the unevenness of it. If we move too much, the place shakes because of the unevenness of the ground.” Each spring when the snow melts, the ground grows soft and the house sinks further. The foundation problems have spread throughout the home, affecting not just the base but the walls and framework. When the wind picks up, the walls flex. “I don’t expect it to last for a whole lots of years,” admits Cockney. Her son completed a school project on erosion, but Cockney hopes her children can focus on school and their future rather than dwelling on the housing crisis surrounding them.

The bureaucratic response has been as unstable as the ground itself. While federal funds paid for the massive coastal protection project, relocated homeowners like Cockney find themselves caught in administrative gaps.

She doesn’t qualify for Elder housing subsidies because she is too young, and attempts to discuss the ongoing structural problems with hamlet officials have gone poorly. In fact, one conversation about the condition of her house went so badly that she not only got no help but ended up quitting her job at the hamlet office.

“It wasn’t our fault that the house had to be moved,” she reflects with frustration. “If Tuk is in a state of emergency, as the [former] mayor described it, because of erosion, because of climate impacts, the feds should be stepping up to help.”