Sharing Indigenous Knowledge and Voices Through Film

The dramatic environmental changes in the Arctic in recent decades have been documented by scientific and Indigenous researchers, but it is challenging to convey the lived experience in writing. Film is more conducive to sharing Indigenous knowledge and lived experience through culturally consistent story-telling  and art.  We share collaboratively produced films—made fifty years apart—that demonstrate the resilience of St. Lawrence Island Yupik (northern Bering Sea) in response to rapid environmental change.  A series of films made on the island and in the mid 1970s depict traditional subsistence and cultural activities in a time when sea ice and weather were reasonably predictable. Fifty years later, the ice is thinner and less predictable, and storms are stronger and more frequent. Films now in production depict cultural continuity as St. Lawrence Island Yupik adapt to rapid change.

Panelists:

Athena Copenhaver, Executive Director, Study of Environmental Arctic Change

Leonard Kamerling, Curator of Film, University of Alaska Museum of the North

Brendan P. Kelly, Science Director, Study of Environmental Arctic Change

Vera Kingeekuk Metcalf, Executive Director, Eskimo Walrus Commission

Deborah Raksany, Producer, Giant Screen Films