Young Native filmmaker updates tradition with documentary (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Young Native filmmaker updates tradition with documentary

By DAWNELL SMITH
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: January 7, 2007)
http://www.adn.com/life/arts/story/8544194p-8437947c.html

A few years after Alaska statehood, federal officers arrested Barrow
hunters for harvesting eider ducks in the off-season, March to October
-- the very months ducks migrated to Barrow -- and subsequently set off
what some people call the Duck-In, an Inupiat protest over U.S. law.

The Inupiat had hunted ducks as a source of fresh meat long before the
feds showed up to enforce the Migratory Bird Treaty of 1918, so when
word got out that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service arrested Tommy
Pikok and John Nusunginy for hunting out of season, other hunters lined
up at the door with dead ducks in their hands, quietly subverting the
law and awaiting their fate before the federal government.

It took decades for their names to be cleared, but 138 hunters made
history in 1961 by turning themselves in under the charge of hunting
out of season. In doing so, they asserted their traditional way of life
while also paving the way for the next generations.

While the Duck-In lives in the memories of elders, the story now exists
on film for their grandchildren. "History of the Inupiat 1961: The
Duck-In" provides a historical account of that year and is the only
Alaska Native film slated for the World Indigenous Film Festival next
weekend.

FILM AS A BRIDGE BETWEEN GENERATIONS

Though born in 1979 -- 18 years after the Duck-In -- filmmaker Rachel
Naninaaq Edwardson understands the historical and cultural relevance of
that protest because she researched and directed the 30-minute
documentary. Through film, Inupiat stories can be shared even as fewer
and fewer young people learn the language and interact with their
elders.

As the upcoming film festival demonstrates, indigenous people all around
the world have embraced film as a way to tell stories and create art,
said Steve Alvarez, organizer of the festival and director of cultural
education and strategic initiatives for the heritage center.

Native Alaskans lag behind in professional filmmaking, he said.

"By showing what other indigenous people are doing around the world, I
want to show Alaska Native people that they can jump on the bandwagon."

Cathy Rexford, who co-organized the Native Revolution Film Festival
during the 2006 Alaska Federation of Natives Convention and worked as
associate producer for the documentary on the Duck-In, said Alaska
Natives are adept at passing their stories, values and traditions from
generation to generation, and film offers another way to do that.

"Film provides us with a strong voice that is both contemporary and
traditional and is a powerful tool with which we can raise important
issues," Rexford said. "Perhaps our stories can be compared to a flint
rock, and filmmaking the act of striking it. A dialogue sparks from
their union that has the potential to move our people forward in a way
no other medium can."

Edwardson sees "The Duck-In," her first historical documentary, as a
pilot for a continuing series on Inupiat history. The Alaska Native
Education Program, run by the North Slope Borough School District, paid
for the film with the idea of using it to supplement textbooks to teach
history, she said.

Ideally, Edwardson hopes to secure long-term funding to do films that
cover Inupiat history from before Western contact to the current day.
In time, she'd also like to see film and television production
companies bloom on the North Slope, generating a generation of
filmmakers to tell the Inupiat story.

"Filmmaking has, since high school, held my interest as a storytelling
form," she said. "It encompasses so many other art forms, and is also,
as I see it, a way to add to the rich storytelling tradition of our
people."

Film will never replace oral storytelling, she said, but she thinks it
can strengthen the relationship between young people and elders,
especially when most young people no longer speak Inupiaq but have
access to entertainment media.

Ultimately, Edwardson wants her films to encourage interaction between
generations, develop cultural and historical understanding, and show
"what our elders have accomplished (in order) to keep our inherent and
inalienable right to live as Inupiaq."

Alvarez, who saw a screening of "The Duck-In" in New York last year,
said the film "really communicates the disconnect between federal
agencies and the Native people," he said. "It's well put together with
interviews with elders, archival footage of the time and well-crafted
narration."

POWER THROUGH UNITY

The film puts the Duck-In into historical context as well.

"It was a seemingly small thing, this isolated event," she said, "but it
really set the stage for the changes that were coming."

The solidarity shown by Inupiat hunters at the Duck-In inspired a
meeting of Inupiat people that led them to create organizations to
counter federal and state laws, policies and projects like Project
Chariot, Edwardson said.

Project Chariot proposed using nuclear explosives to develop a harbor
about 30 miles southeast of the Inupiat village of Point Hope. The U.S.
Atomic Energy Commission canceled the project in late 1962.

Like the hunters of the Duck-In, Edwardson wants to preserve her culture
and way of life.

"I would like to think that this story can remind us of our strength as
a people and our ability to unify to protect the rich and invaluable
cultural heritage we've received from our ancestors," she said.

Filmmakers can make a difference by telling the stories of their people,
she said, because "societies construct values through the stories we
perpetuate and pass to our children. Without the presence of Inupiaq
stories in the media, our society will become less and less Inupiaq."

The law that led to the arrest of those duck hunters didn't change for
decades, but the Inupiat protesters made their point. The feds turned
their heads when traveling to rural Alaska for years after the Duck-In,
and the Inupiat people continued hunting the way they always did.

"HISTORY OF THE INUPIAT 1961: THE DUCK-IN" will show during the World
Indigenous Film Festival at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Alaska Native
Heritage Center. Admission is free.