Journeys North: Pole to Pole

Journeys North is a new series filmed in Alaska, examining how the indigenous tribes of the Arctic and their culture was forever changed by the explorers and pioneers of the 18th and 19th century and the early ethnographic filmmaking that followed in their wake.

POLE TO POLE is a meditation on the concept of Native as an ever changing identity. This double projection reexamines how nature and mankind coexist together in the hostile environments of an imagined North and South Pole. The artist sings to the natural environment and manmade technologies as a way of reawakening their innate spirits. It asks the bigger question of what it means to be Native; as a part of nature, as a human being, as a non derogative cultural identity or simply as part of the land in which one stands.

The editing of this black and white video is partly inspired by early ethnographic photography and anthropological films on the subject of Native peoples such as Nanook of the North.