The significance of the Biden-Harris administration for the world’s women and girls cannot be overstated. The current status of women and girls is grim. The COVID-19 pandemic and four years of dangerous policies designed to strip women and girls of their reproductive and economic autonomy and punish them—first for their biology, and second for their gender—have slowed and even reversed decades of progress toward gender equity. Systemic racism and policies meant to further exclude and disenfranchise minority communities have targeted women of color with tragic results.

The United States is in the midst of a maternal health crisis. Indigenous and Alaska Native peoples are 2.3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts. In Alaska, unequal socio-economic status, lack of access to hospitals and quality health services, systemic racism, and a history of colonization drive these disparities in maternal health outcomes. “Weathering”—the deterioration of communal health outcomes caused by persistent socio-economic disadvantages—contributes to many poor maternal health outcomes for Alaska Native women. On top of these systemic problems, climate change impacts threaten to widen the existing disparities for Alaskan Native women.

At this time of year, in Russia’s far north Laptev Sea, the sun hovers near the horizon during the day, generating little warmth, as the region heads towards months of polar night. By late September or early October, the sea’s shallow waters should be a vast, frozen expanse.

But not this year. For the first time since records have been kept, open water still laps this coastline in late October though snow is already falling there.

Each year, 700 women in the United States die as a result of pregnancy-related complications. In fact, the United States has the highest maternal mortality ratio of all high-income countries—16.7 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. For Indigenous/Alaskan Native women, that number is even higher: Indigenous/Alaska Natives are 2.3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts. While recent years have seen growing national attention to the U.S. maternal mortality crisis, research and advocacy for Indigenous peoples’ maternal health in the United States has been limited. This research gap includes the Alaskan Native peoples—Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and multiple Diné tribes.

The polar regions of Antarctica and the Arctic have long captured the world’s imagination as seas and continents covered in unending ice. But the reality of the two regions is quickly shifting, with cascading consequences for the globe.

“We need more Indigenous midwives,” said Claire Dion Fletcher, an Indigenous Potawatomi-Lenape Registered Midwife and co-chair of the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives (NACM), at a recent Wilson Center event with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Confederation of Midwives about Indigenous midwifery. Globally, Indigenous women experience worse maternal health outcomes than non-Indigenous women. In the United States, risk of maternal death is twice as high for Native women than white women, while in Australia the risk is four and a half times higher.