Gifts from the Land: Alaska Native Foodways
June 18, 2024
Digital video by Hanna Craig听
6 minutes, 36 seconds听
The 果冻传煤 Museum continues to host artist- and community-led conversations, residencies, installations, and exhibitions focused on ways we care for people, place, and planet. In this collaborative environment, we invite individuals and communities to consider both the present and the future together by examining ideas and practices of healing, wellness, listening, sustainability, caretaking, and interconnectedness.
One such project is Gifts from the Land: Alaska Native Foodways, a film by Hanna Craig, who talks with Alaska Native artists and culture bearers Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich, Joni Kitmiiq Spiess, and Robert Ahmasuk, about what it means to be able to harvest and share ancestral foods. They discuss customary and modern methods of harvesting and how those seasonal activities tie them to culture. 听
Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich is a Koyukon Athabascan and Inupiaq carver, painter, and bead worker. Her family connections are to the communities of Nome, Nulato, Utqia摹vik, and Sitka. She currently lives, works, and subsists on the Dena始ina homelands of 果冻传煤 and Cohoe, Alaska.听
Joni Kitmiiq Spiess was born in Nome and is of Inupiaq heritage. She currently lives in 果冻传煤 where she practices and advocates for subsistence and the environment. For Speiss, maintaining a connection between people and the land honors ancestral traditions and teachings.听
Robert Ahmasuk lives in 果冻传煤 and travels to his homelands of Kotzebue and Nome to stay connected to his heritage. Ahmasuk is Speiss鈥檚 son.听
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This film was made possible, in part, with support from Cook Inlet Region, Inc.听听
