KOYUKUK

2021 | 1080p HD Video | Color | Stereo Audio | Yukon River, Alaska | English; Deg Xinag | 00:08:07

The newest chapter of a long-term collaboration between myself and the Alaska Native village of Gitr’ingithchagg, a Deg X'itan village home to 81 people. This is a meditation on mixed Indigenous identity, spirit worlds, death, language loss (residential school survival), and animal surrogates.

Low-res camera trap footage from river ecology surveys is combined with interviews of Alaska Native elders, and music performed and composed by the artist, an attempt to find words after the deaths of our grandfathers and fathers, an attempt to find meaning and understanding after lifetimes of misunderstanding and miscommunication, after colonial weight is finally shed through death.

The Deg Xinag language was mostly eradicated by Bureau of Indian Affairs due to neo-colonialist policies. Elders were threatened if they spoke Deg Xinag, and were told their children would be taken away if they continued to speak their language. Children were punished in schools for speaking Deg Xinag. A gut-wrenching communication gap between generations followed: most of the language and many traditions have been lost. Painful family dynamics have ensued, with little ability to communicate nuance between generations, and yes there is love, but also misunderstanding, confusion, deep desire to understand, and grief.

Though Deg Xinag is considered mostly extinct, younger generations and surviving elders are now working together to re-establish culture and hang on to the words and ways that have survived. Especially important are the dynamics of the Yukon River and its tributaries, the Koyukuk bears and salmon, the dance and promise of eternity in interrelationship.

View here: https://vimeo.com/433456127