Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT
It’s 60-below-zero on Feb. 11 in Eagle Village, Alaska, and Jody Potts-Joseph is sewing a pair of mukluks for Jessie Holmes, a good friend and co-competitor in the 2026 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
Later, she and her husband Jamey will care for the 29 dogs in their kennel. Then she’ll spend time on other business near and dear to her: the Hungwitchin Village Corporation, of which she is president, and Doyon Limited, a regional Alaska Native Corporation of which she is a director.
She might talk with the Alaska Wilderness League about the next steps in the fight to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and then check in with the program she founded to connect young Indigenous Alaskans to the land through snowboarding. Finally, she might call The North Face Explore Fund Council and the team working on the film she’s producing, “Beautiful Resistance.”
She doesn’t sleep much.
“One of the things I tell my family is, I’ll rest when I’m dead,” said Potts-Joseph, Han Gwich’in. “I wish I didn’t have to sleep. There’s more I want to do.”
The former star of NatGeo’s “Life Below Zero/First Alaskans” is a musher with a mission: to bolster interest in mushing among young Indigenous Alaskans and call attention to the environmental changes that are affecting traditional lifeways.
Potts-Joseph is one of 36 mushers competing in this year’s Iditarod, a 975-mile race over a steep mountain pass, wind-swept interior plains, frozen rivers and the icy Bering Sea coast to Nome. The ceremonial start takes place on March 7 in Anchorage, followed by the official restart in Willow the next day. Mushers and dog teams this year hail from five countries and four U.S. states.
The field is a formidable one. Twelve mushers and teams are past Top 5 finishers and three of those are past champions: Jessie Holmes of Brushkana, Alaska, 2025; Ryan Redington of Knik, Alaska, 2023; and Thomas Waerner of Torpa, Norway, 2020.
Three mushers are Indigenous Alaskans: Kevin Hansen, Inupiaq; Redington, Inupiaq; and Potts-Joseph. Another, Jesse Terry, Anishinabe, is Indigenous from Canada.
Mushers and teams have tested their mettle in several races since the 2025 Iditarod.
Holmes and his team – also familiar to fans of the NatGeo reality TV show “Life Below Zero” – are on a winning streak. After winning the Iditarod in March 2025, they went on to win a third consecutive Kobuk 440 title the following month. In January, they won their second consecutive Copper Basin 300.
Redington and his team finished fifth in the Kuskokwim 300 in January. Hansen, an Iditarod rookie, and his team finished second in the Kobuk 440 in April 2025 and second in the Knik 200 in January. Iditarod veteran Josi Shelley and her team won the 750-mile Yukon Quest Alaska, the last great challenge before the Iditarod, on Feb. 16.
Potts-Joseph and her dogs proved in 2025 to be a team to watch. They placed second in the Yukon Quest 200, and Potts-Joseph won the race’s Vets Choice Award for outstanding dog care on the trail. They also came in second in the 185-mile Percy DeWolfe Memorial Mail Race, and seventh in the Kobuk 440.
“I have incredible dogs,” Potts-Joseph said. “They’re really awesome, special in their own way, and they all have their strengths. They’re all bush dogs, and I would say they’re pretty tough and pretty happy. We definitely have a really strong bond.”
The Iditarod begins with a ceremonial start on Saturday, March 7, with the official start to the race on Sunday, March 8.
Cultural preservation
As she and her team prepare to compete in the Iditarod — North America’s premier long-distance sled dog race — winning isn’t on her radar. To her, this is about cultural preservation.
The First Peoples of this land traveled with dogs and dog sleds since time immemorial. The dog sled is to Alaska Native cultures what the canoe is to Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast and the horse is to Indigenous peoples of the Plains
Snow machines began replacing sled dogs as the primary mode of transportation in bush Alaska in the 1950s, dimming a part of Indigenous culture. The late Joe Redington (1917-1999) saw the transition and founded the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1973 to keep the Alaskan dog mushing tradition alive.
“A big part of it for me is helping keep this part of our culture alive, that connection to the land and our ancestors,” Potts-Joseph told ICT of mushing with her dog team.
“There are so few Native mushers anymore,” she said. “It’s thriving down in the Yukon-Kuskokwin Delta, which is really awesome. But there haven’t been any Native people running dogs out here in my homelands in decades. Mushing is, I feel like, just so on the verge of being gone all together.”
Other Indigenous lifeways are under threat as well.
Alaska Natives are experiencing rapid lifestyle shifts driven by climate change. Permafrost is thawing and sea ice is shifting, affecting subsistence fishing, foraging and hunting.
The Yukon River salmon fishery is experiencing a severe, multi-year decline, with record-low returns of chinook and fall chum salmon since 2020. A moratorium on fishing for Yukon River chinook salmon is in place in Alaska and Canada, creating a food security crisis for Indigenous communities who rely on salmon for subsistence and cultural purposes.
“We haven’t been able to fish for salmon on the Yukon River for six years now,” Potts-Joseph said. “And we’re facing many more years of not fishing.”
The salmon is a critical part of the circle of life here. Bears fish for salmon and leave the salmon carcasses on land. Those carcasses are further consumed by wolves who carry the carcasses to the safety of nearby trees. Nutrients from those salmon remains are absorbed into the soil and tree roots. Plentiful salmon years can be determined by the size of a tree’s rings, according to the Raincoast Conservation Society.
Alaska sled dogs ate — and enjoyed the health benefits of — salmon too. The omega 3 fatty acids in salmon made the Alaska sled dog suited for tasks, travel and weather in the interior: good skin and coat health, strong joints, enhanced cognitive function, a bolstered immune system and heart health.
“We fed salmon to our dogs when I was growing up,” Potts-Joseph said. “We didn’t need to buy kibble. It was a very sustainable way of living on the land and a sustainable way of transportation. It’s a lot harder, especially on the Yukon River, to maintain a dog team without the salmon.”
Like coming home
Alaska Native mushers and their teams traverse ancestral routes in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, often accompanied by the Northern Lights dancing in the night sky. The Northern Lights — Yikęįh łithithik’an in the Gwich’in language — have spiritual significance to Alaska Native peoples.
“I think a lot about my grandpa because I’m mushing on trails that my ancestors established and set up thousands of years ago,” Potts-Joseph said. “My husband and I have reopened a lot of old trails that my grandpa put in back in the mountains for his trap line. That is really special, so yes, it is a lot about cultural preservation. All of us as Native people hold a lot of pride in who we are, and we’re still here.”
Potts-Joseph’s dogs will make a culturally splendorous start and finish at the Iditarod. They’ll wear beaded dog blankets made by Native women from Alaska, Canada and the Lower 48, in response to a callout Potts-Joseph made on social media a month and a half ago.
“Our people — when we had big village gatherings before a family arrived from a trap line or from another village for a community gathering — they would put their best gear on themselves and their dogs,” Potts-Joseph said. “And so I’m really excited that my dogs will wear these beautiful beaded dog blankets for the start and the finish of the Iditarod.”
Residents of Alaska Native communities turn out at all hours to celebrate the arrival of mushers and dog teams at checkpoints along the route. It’s often a time of reunion for mushers, friends and relatives, a time when elders pass on knowledge.
“From my first Iditarod to my last, it was always so good to go to all of the different villages,” said Yup’ik Chief Mike Williams Sr., a veteran of 15 Iditarods and a two-time recipient of the event’s Most Inspirational Musher award. “People in the Athabascan villages were excited and happy when I arrived and when I got to Ruby in the Yukon, I felt like I was home. From Unalakleet on up to Nome, people celebrated my arrival.
“I think that’s how Jody is going to feel. They’re going to appreciate her and cheer for her. Those are going to be very happy towns.”
Depending on the year, mushers may pass through Huslia, home of George Attla Jr. (1933-2015), the Athabascan musher known as the Huslia Hustler. He placed fourth in the first Iditarod in 1973, won the Fur Rendezvous in Anchorage 10 times, and won the Open North American eight times.
Or they may pass through Ruby, home of Emmitt Peters (1940-2020), the Athabascan musher known as The Yukon Fox, who won the 1975 Iditarod and had five more top 5 finishes.
“I think mushing instills a lot of pride in our people,” Potts-Joseph said. “In our communities, so many people share their stories with me. I can see this little sparkle in people’s eyes when they talk about growing up with dogs and old Indian tricks about mushing and dogs. There’s still a lot of great traditional knowledge out there and I love connecting with elders. They give me advice and tips and pointers and I really appreciate that. I love the conversations in the villages.”
Alaska Native culture is reflected in some of the special awards given during the Iditarod. The first musher into McGrath (mile 311) receives beaver fur musher’s mitts with Athabaskan beadwork on moose hide, handcrafted by Loretta Maillelle, and a beaver fur hat made by Rosalie Egrass. Maillelle and Egrass are Athabascan.
The first musher into Kaltag (mile 714) receives a check for $2,000 and 25 pounds of salmon from the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.
Northern Air Cargo presents the Herbie Nayokpuk Memorial Award — $1,049 and a flight jacket — to the musher chosen by checkpoint volunteers as best epitomizing Nayokpuk’s spirit of mushing the Iditarod. (The check represents the roughly 1,000 miles of the race, and Alaska’s status as the 49th state.)
Nayokpuk (1929-2006) was an Iñupiaq musher who was known as the Shishmaref Cannonball. He competed in the Iditarod 11 times and finished in the top 10 eight times, one of those times placing second.
‘The land demands respect’
Alaska is as unpredictable as it is breathtakingly beautiful. Alaska comprises 665,384 square miles — roughly 17.5 percent of the total U.S. land area — with cold desert tundra, vast boreal forests and wetlands, temperate coastal rainforests and rugged mountainous terrain.
Mushers often expect the unexpected. Jeff King was within about 20 miles from the finish line and his fifth Iditarod championship in 2014 when he and his dogs lost the trail in a blizzard and had to call for help. He dropped out, as is required when summoning help. Nic Petit had a five-hour advantage over the field in 2019 but was forced to drop out when his dog team was spooked and refused to cross a section of Bering Sea ice near Koyuk, 130 miles from the finish line in Nome.
“The land deserves respect. The land demands respect,” Potts-Joseph said. “You just have to know that there’s going to be a lot of things that are out of your control and you’ve got to try to make smart decisions. And sometimes you end up making all the right decisions and you still end up in a freak storm like that.”
She added, “I’m interior Athabascan through and through, and this is my country. I know this land. But once I get out to the coast, I feel like I’m in a much different place, in a foreign land. So, I definitely have a great deal of respect for those places. And you know, you can’t let fear control you. I have to go out there and just take what comes and do the best that I can for my dogs.”
MORE INFO
Alaska Native winners of the Iditarod
Twenty-six mushers and teams have won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race since the first running in 1973, with nine champions winning the race more than once. Six of those 26 champions are Indigenous.
*1974: Carl Huntington, Athabaskan
*1975: Emmitt “The Yukon Fox” Peters, Athabaskan
*1976: Jerry Riley, Athabaskan
*2011: John Baker, Iñupiaq
*2019: Pete Kaiser, Yup’ik
*2023: Ryan Redington, Iñupiaq
Alaska Native women in the Iditarod
Six Alaska Native women have competed in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race since the first running in 1973.
*1982: Rose Albert, Athabascan
*1983: Roxy Wright, Athabascan
*1988: Lucy Nordlum, Iñupiaq
*1990, 1991, 1992: Beverly Jerue Masek, Athabascan
*2022: Apayauq Reitan, Iñupiaq
*2026: Jody Potts-Joseph, Han Gwich’in