Viola “Vi” Waaghiyi’s birth name was Pangunnaaq Waaghyi and she was born January 24, 1959, Sivuqaq, Savoonga, St Lawrence Island, Alaska, to the late John and Della Waaghiyi.

Waghiyi was born and spent the first seven years of her life on Sivuqaq, the traditional name for Saint Lawrence Island. Sivuqaq is remote island is located in the northern Bering Sea in Northwestern Alaska about 685 air miles from Anchorage. The people of Sivuqaq have close ties to the Yupik communities of Ungaziq and Sireniki on the Siberian coast and have the same dialect as their relatives in Siberia. Her relatives were also some of the first known inhabitants of Sivuqaq.

Over four decades later, Vi Waghiyi was living in Anchorage, staying at home raising her four sons when she saw a 2002 newspaper article about the high rates of Polychlorinated Biphenyls, known as PCBs and the high cancer rates linked to PCBs in the Yupik People of Sivuqaq. It was based on the community-based participatory research of Alaska Community Action on Toxics and the tribes of Sivuqaq. This article would alter the course of her life and help the Sivuqaq Yupik granddaughter of a reindeer herder find her voice as a citizen scientist and advocate for her people and the Arctic.

Waghiyi’s family lived a traditional lifestyle on Sivuqaq and participated in community gathering, hunting, and village leadership. Her Apa (grandfather) was orphaned during a famine.  He served in the U.S. Territorial Guard and was a reindeer herder. He also helped to establish the community of Savoonga. Her grandmother was a midwife and healer. Of her grandmother’s own 12 children, only four survived. Even when difficult times came to the area causing loss, sickness and famine, her grandparents persevered.

Her father, John Waghiyi, Sr. enlisted in the Alaska National Guard serving and retired as a ranking officer.  He also served in Alaska’s Territorial Guard. Waaghiyi, Sr. helped to found Chukotka Native Ministry and was an ordained pastor and postmaster in Savoonga. Her mother Della was an ordained elder. As the youngest surviving child in a family of six, Vi describes her upbringing as loving and nurturing.

Historically, families traveled back and forth between Siberia and what is now Alaska to visit and trade. According to historical accounts, the forty-mile trip took a full day in a skin boat using sails and paddles. The people of the area then and now relied on a subsistence lifestyle consisting of whales, walrus and other marine mammals, fish, birds, eggs, reindeer and wild plants for food.

During the Cold War era, a U.S. installation known as “Northeast Cape” was built on Sivuqaq about 60 aerial miles from Savoonga, the nearest village. The military established bases at Gambell and Northeast Cape to provide radar coverage and military surveillance for the military between 1952 and 1972. Her father helped build the base and worked at the Northeast Cape site as did many other residents at the time.

Materials used to build and support the military bases included fuel products in above and ground storage tanks, PCB containing electrical transformers and other equipment, various 55-gallon drums of toxic chemicals including paint, solvents and pesticides, material, metal debris, and hazardous waste that leaked and spilled as it was left to decay.

By the time she read the article in the 2002, the Sivuqaq Yupik People who lived, camped and worked at Northeast Cape, had been experiencing serious health harms such as low birth-weight babies, miscarriages and cancers for a couple decades. Her father had died of cancer.  In her immediate family of eight, half had cancer. Her mother had heart disease, strokes, diabetes and cancer and her youngest baby was stillborn. Meanwhile, the people of Sivuqaq had been getting sick with various cancers never before seen on the island and more were dying.

Also, by 2002, Waghiyi had seen some things. Being a shy, quiet child, she was affected by her experiences moving to Nome at the age of seven and being taunted for being Alaska Native and not speaking English. She masked the pain and fear with alcohol and drugs. She had never seen racism until she moved from her childhood home, and it hit her hard. At the age of 18, she ran away from home and left Alaska altogether.  She spent years moving from place to place and battling addiction. In 1985, Waghiyi’s father was diagnosed with a rare liver disease. Terrified at the thought of losing him, she quickly quit her job in Seattle to return to Alaska to be closer.

Watching her family get sick was not the only loss she experienced – she also suffered three miscarriages and would later be diagnosed with cancer herself.

Evidence began to emerge linking these health issues to the former U.S. military sites on the island and it began to make the news. Additionally, researchers from the non-profit Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT) help connect other pollutants known as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP’s) from across the planet to those found in far flung Arctic regions.

Waghiyi describes being shocked to learn that there could be a chemical cause of so much sickness since her people who have lived off the land in a traditional way. They were far removed from where toxic chemicals were created yet people were sick and dying.

Waghiyi knew she had no experience in the environmental field. She knew she lacked a college degree. She had just decided to perhaps get a degree in accounting. However, when she fully realized the crisis being caused by toxic chemicals, she put aside her fears and all she had been through and answered a job posting she saw with Alaska Community Action on Toxics. Vi Waaghiyi was inspired to take action.

With her new job at ACAT she was embarking on a mission to, as she describes it, face environmental violence and racism that to her, had become very urgent and extremely personal.

Waghiyi challenged herself to read every report and learn everything she could about what was going on in her Island and the Arctic. She read scientific journals, medical reports, studies, reports and data. She kept a dictionary on her desk and looked things up word by word in order to understand the full scope of contamination and its effects in the environment, wildlife and her people.

As part of her work, she began interviewing elders who were around when the bases were abandoned to gather their knowledge. She interviewed elders and knowledgeable people in her communities, and watched hours of footage.  This research helped Alaska Community Action on Toxics determine that communities on Sivuqaq have four to ten more PCB exposure than the average American in the lower 48. Waghiyi, her colleagues, and academic partners as well as Community Health Researchers from Sivuqaq also identified exposure from pesticides, heavy metals, solvents and other toxic substances in former military installations on Sivuqaq. This work was one of many collaborative projects involving Waghiyi and her ACAT colleagues where they have worked alongside Sivuqaq Yupik environmental health researchers and in partnership with Sivuqaq Tribes and community members.

Waghiyi began making countless research trips across rural Alaska began speaking at conferences and workshops across Alaska, the U.S. and internationally. The more she learned, the more determined she became. The more determined she became, the harder she worked.

By 2011, Waghiyi became well-known as a collaborator and co-author of peer reviewed, science-based articles. To date, nine of those papers may be found on National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences website as part of a list of projects completed with grant funding for Community-Engaged Research.

She served on international panels and began interacting with leaders and scientists from across the world.

Waghiyi participated in studies of and was co-author on papers about topics such as thyroid hormones in a cross-sectional study of a remote Alaska Native population, exposure to perfluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances, endocrine disruption and differential gene expression in sentinel fish and the health implications the Yupik Indigenous residents. She wrote about persistent organochlorine pesticide exposure related to a formerly used defense site on Sivuqaq, environmental exposures and reproductive justice. She covered organochlorine and metal contaminants in traditional foods and polychlorinated biphenyls in serum of the Siberian Yupik people from St. Lawrence Island, Alaska to name a few.

In 2012, Waghiyi was part of an expert group who submitted a report to the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues titled “Indigenous Women and Environmental Violence – A Rights-based approach addressing impacts of Environmental Contamination on Indigenous Women, Girls and Future Generations.”

She saw the connection between mothers and babies and was quoted in one report stating “A woman offloads her body burden of chemicals to her first breast fed child and more with each child after.  “These toxic exposures are multigenerational,” she said.

In 2013, Waghiyi was recognized by leaders of her home community of Savoonga, Alaska for the dedication and devoted service as an “Ambassador of St. Lawrence Island for protecting health and human rights.”

She received the 2016 Environmental Achievement Award from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in “Recognition of Valuable Contributions to Environmental Excellence in Alaska. And in 2021, she was one of five women of color presented the Rachel’s Network Catalyst Award for women environmental leaders of color.

Also in April of 2021, Waaghiyi was one of 26 people appointed by President Biden to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. The advisory council provides advice and recommendations on how to address current and historic environmental injustices across the United States. The Council was established to confront longstanding environmental injustices and to ensure that historically marginalized and polluted, overburdened communities have greater input on federal policies and decisions. She has since been reappointed to that council.

Besides PCB’s Waghiyi’s work examined Persistent Organic Pollutant’s (POP’s) found in the Arctic, microplastics, climate change and the overall health effects of these toxins on humans.

In 2022, she was featured in the International Pollutants Elimination (IPEN) report “Women Leaders: Addressing Chemicals and Waste Issues” that highlights women’s leadership through ten organizations from around the world working to address chemical health threats.

Waghiyi is quoted there stating “The more I’ve gotten to learn about the environmental violence and health harms, I can’t see myself doing something else.” “I’ve challenged myself to learn as much as I can, and now know I have to be at my best to be a voice and advocate for injustices we are fighting in my community and globally in black, brown, low-income people,” she said.

The IPEN report also states that research shows Arctic Indigenous women have some of the highest chemical concentrations in their breast milk on the planet as a result of these harms.

Waghiyi received the Alaska Conservation Foundation’s Caleb Pungowiyi Award for Outstanding Achievements by an Alaska Native Individual in November 2023.

In July 2024, she received a Movement Builder award from Coming Clean Inc. and the Environmental Justice and Health Alliance to honor her leadership and tireless work for environmental justice.

When asked how Vi keeps going without giving up on these difficult issues, she said, simply, “I come from strong fierce ancestors and warriors, family and elders gone before her…I have big shoes to fill.”  In fact some of Vi’s inspiration comes from Annie Aghnaqa (Akeya) Alowa, an Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame inductee from 2016. Annie Alowa famously said “I will fight until I melt,” a motto adopted by Vi which she carries in her heart and on a sign in honor or Annie. She also credits her colleagues at Alaska Community Action on Toxics for standing with her.

Through her work, Waghiyi feels she has found her voice and encourages young people to use theirs too. She has made it her mission to inform policy makers everywhere about what is happening to the natural environment and in her people and across the Arctic and relentlessly works for change.

She encourages the next generation to learn as much as they can to ensure that their languages, creation stories, songs and dances and their traditions and cultures as Sivuqaq Yupik People continue and to be proud of their background and way of life.

Waghiyi buried her brother to cancer two years ago, which after these years working on environmental issues, she believes may also have been due to legacy military toxics.

When asked about how to encourage others to pay attention and to work through the difficulty, she said simply, “We have a beautiful culture and tradition and it’s our right…to have toxic free food, clean air and clean water. This is a burden we did not create and it is a crisis – it really is an environmental and health crisis. But we must do this. Because, well, we’re still here. We’re still here.”

Waghiyi is married to Tom Rouse. Between them they have six sons, 13 grandchildren and are currently raising a grandson.

“Indigenous Women and Environmental Violence – A Rights-based approach addressing impacts of Environmental Contamination on Indigenous Women, Girls and Future Generations.”

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences website

https://veterans.alaska.gov/alaska-territorial-guard/

Background on the people of Sivuqaq from the Smithsonian Institute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo0u5lqmpPk

https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2023/1/feature/2-feature-community-based-research

International Pollutants Elimination (IPEN) report

Alaska News Nightly story on microplastics