Story by Keri Moskowitz, Gulf of Maine Research Institute

For the Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy Reserve, or Sipayik, the ocean has always been a teacher. Located in what is known as Downeast Maine, along the shores of Passamaquoddy Bay, generations of indigenous people have lived along the coast, learning from the tides, the land, and their elders. But today, the coast is changing more rapidly. Coastal erosion is slowly removing land. Land that already has a history of loss.

In the summer of 2023, inspired by a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, to attend Climate Change in My Community, a workshop hosted by the Arctic and Earth Signs project of NASA’s Science Activation (SciAct) program, SciAct’s Learning Ecosystems Northeast (LENE) team began working with partners, including Indigenous leaders and scientists, to ask an important question: What does coastal erosion mean for people who have already lost land?

As of November 2024, planning was underway at Sipayik Primary School. The goal was to bring together Western science and indigenous knowledge so that students could understand the changes occurring in their own community.

Lessons began in March 2025. For five weeks, nine fifth graders explored erosion in many ways. They visited local countryside sites and listened to elders share stories about what the coast used to be like. Students used these stories to measure changes, both on the coast and through maps in the classroom. They built erosion trays with simple materials to test how waves shape the land. They measured current high tide lines and compared them to historical ones. They studied old photographs and aerial images from 1942 to 2023 to see how much the coast had moved. They even compared 300-year-old tribal maps with projections of future floods.

The students learned that science does not only live in textbooks. As one observer shared, “Our people were scientists without having to go to school.”

The students were curious, engaged and proud. They saw that resilience is part of who they are. They have always adapted by clinging to the culture.

In June 2026, students were invited to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute to present their work to REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) scientists, staff, and interns. They traveled 3.5 hours to take advantage of this opportunity and the trip was worth it. During the question and answer portion that followed the slide presentation, someone asked if learning to read the different maps was difficult. One student responded with a reminder: These weren’t just maps, but NASA satellite images.

Future goals of the project include inviting more elders and adding more field sites to the work, strengthening linguistic and cultural connections, sharing student learning with other Native youth, and planning resilience strategies such as wetland restoration in coordination with tribal leadership. When the students were asked if they planned to continue their studies and work on this cause once their time in the classroom was over, they all responded emphatically “YES.”

In Sipayik, the story of erosion is not just about the disappearance of the land. It is about memory, knowledge, identity and the strength of a community that continues to learn from the shore.