Voices & Images
The Greenlandic word Ukiivik means “a place where one stays for the winter.” Now, we are wondering if there will be “a place for winter” ever again. Traveling by dogsled, skin boat, helicopter, fixed wing plane, and sailboat, our expedition will examine the traditional ecological knowledge of Arctic peoples. Talking with marine mammal hunters, reindeer herders, villagers, children, and elders, we hope to give voice to their encounter with abrupt climate change in this harshest inhabited landscape of the world as the Arctic meltdown speeds up.
Our journey will move through light and dark, through the northernmost Arctic islands and provinces in every season. With the indigenous people of the Arctic we will investigate climate crisis issues on the land and within Arctic cultures: coastal erosion as a result of retreating perennial and seasonal sea ice, the albedo effect, polar amplification, the release of methane from melting permafrost, glacial and continental ice sheet retreat, the deterioration of the gulf stream, air and ice-borne pollution, all of which is leading to the imminent collapse of the entire Arctic ecosystem: the extinction of polar bears, walrus, seals, birds, fish, and the lives and cultural traditions of those people who have lived and hunted on the barren grounds, the land, and the seasonal sea ice of the Arctic.
The voices and images gathered on the Ukiivik Expedition will document indigenous Arctic people as they face the climate crisis. Their thoughts and words are the “early warning system” for all humans as warming increases exponentially and the need to made drastic changes in how we live becomes urgent and dire.
