Nyla Innuksuk is an Indigenous director from Canada and she recently released Slash/Back, a horror / sci-fi movie about a group of Inuit girls who save their remote arctic community from an alien invasion. She says that the horror genre has always been a big part of her life. Her mom — being a fan as well — introduced it to her, actually. One day when Nyla and a friend were having a sleep over, her mom rented Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds for them. They were 8 years old. That was the same year th...
Dec 31, 2022•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 53
Mossy Kilcher is a homesteader, a musician and an ornithologist. When she was young, she was afraid of nature. It was just so big and there were so many ways to die. But the more time she spent outdoors, the better she understood it. Making music and recording bird songs helped. She realized that it wasn’t about taming the wilderness or dominating nature — like her father believed — it was about living in unison with it. That if you take care of it, it will be there for you when you inevitably n...
Dec 18, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 52
In the mid-90s and early 2000s, Josh Medsker documented the Alaska punk scene. He started out as a fan, attending as many shows as he could, and then he began documenting the scene. For about three years, he wrote for the University of Alaska Anchorage student paper, “The Northern Light,” the city’s alt-weekly, “The Anchorage Press,” and for his own publication, “Noise, Noise, Noise.” Articles, interviews, anything he could do to help tell the story of punk in Alaska. The scene was so vibrant an...
Nov 30, 2022•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 51
Crystal Worl is fresh off of two big projects. A mural in downtown Anchorage and a commission for Google. The mural depicts and applies traditional Alaska Native traditions and symbols — the formline art of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian, for example. It’s 120-feet long, the largest thing she’s ever designed. The Google skin, titled “Primary Ravens,” depicts ravens, which represent the Creator and are always playing tricks. What she likes most about these pieces is that they’re public. They do...
Nov 18, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 50
Priscilla Hensley is a writer and a documentarian. Before she started working on documentaries, her job history was varied — she had worked in communications and, having made a few short films herself, had some prior knowledge of filmmaking. There was also a period of time when she considered herself a poet. All these jobs have helped her to become a jack-of-all-trades. Her time in communications has helped a lot with her documentary work because so much of filmmaking is about logistics and maki...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 49
Melissa Chimera creates mixed media paintings and installations that are research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. Her portraits are fictional, but they’re based in empirical fact. She combs through the public record of peoples’ lives, collecting information to better understand them beyond what DNA can tell us. She includes elements and details of what she finds into her paintings. She says that the Philippines are a confluence of so many tragedie...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 48
Before he got to the level he’s at now, Tlingit artist James Johnson taught himself the fundamentals of the Tlingit artform — he taught himself how to draw, how to carve, how to sharpen his knives. He taught himself the fundamentals of formline. His dad taught him the importance of traditional knowledge — that when you create a piece, you create it for your clan. Be it a paddle, a bowl, a bentwood box, a mask, a rattle, a totem pole. He says that in the old days, once the carvers were finished w...
Sep 30, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 47
Dog musher Aliy Zirkle has always felt a strong connection to animals, dogs in particular. She tells this story about how when she was a kid and lived in Puerto Rico, there were a couple of stray dogs that pulled her around on a skateboard. Mushing was in her blood, even then. For 30 years, mushing has been everything to Aliy. It’s been her passion and her career. And understanding her dog’s abilities and their limits has been key because if you break that — if you break their trust or you ask t...
Sep 24, 2022•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 46
Rob Kinneen has been an ambassador for Alaskan cuisine through his guest chef appearances, speaking engagements, cooking demonstrations and private caterings. His work has revolutionized how people see and understand the state’s traditional foods. His understanding of traditional foods goes back to growing up in Petersburg, Alaska, where he remembers clamming with his uncles, fishing with his dad and picking berries. There was also venison and the first time he had fresh asparagus — it was so mu...
Sep 06, 2022•1 hr 41 min•Ep. 45
Kim Rich is a journalist and an author. She wrote the classic memoir “Johnny’s Girl,” it’s about her tumultuous upbringing in Anchorage’s underworld. Back in the 1960s, her dad, Johnny, worked Anchorage’s nightlife — gambling houses, prostitution and get-rich-quick schemes. Her mom, Ginger, was an exotic dancer. She had mental health issues and spent years of her life in a number of institutions. Both of their lives — Johnny and Ginger — were cut short, leaving Kim to fend for herself at a young...
Aug 11, 2022•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 44
Jimmy Riordan is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who’s currently in-residence at the Anchorage Museum, digitizing and archiving the work of Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta musicians, as well as all the other Alaska music he’s collected over the years. He spends a lot of time in thrift stores and going through junk bins and scouring the internet — anywhere old records might exist. When he first started listening to old Alaskan albums and radio programs, he thought he was going to hear a lot of tour...
Aug 01, 2022•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 43
Nyabony Gat says that her immigrant story started 22 years ago. In 1992, when her parents and older siblings fled from South Sudan and found refuge in Ethiopia — the Second Sudanese civil war was going on between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. It was a long and bloody war and it caused four million people to be displaced. Nyabony doesn’t remember much from her childhood. She knows that she was born in Ethiopia and she knows that she and her family came to...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 42
When interdisciplinary artist LaMont Hamilton was young, he drew portraits of figures that he admired — Jimmy Hendrix, Che Guevara, Malcom X. He called it “scribble art,” a term he invented to describe abstract art that, the longer you look at it, the more it reveals. Then, as he got older, he became interested in photography. But he says that his first love, the one that he considers to be the foundation of his work, is poetry. He says that a lot of what he does cannot easily be translated to w...
Jul 05, 2022•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 41
Charles J. Tice is a visual and literary creative in Anchorage, Alaska with an emphasis on photography and gonzo journalism. He's currently in-residence, at the Anchorage Museum, working on a project called Artist Proof #6. It’s a book that’ll feature 100 photographs of strangers, assisted by a narrative. The writing is important, he says, probably the most important part of the project. So, he works on a typewriter because it’s less about technical precision and more about getting his ideas ont...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 40
Photographer Young Kim says that it’s weird to live in a place that’s so big and so busy that people aren’t checking up on each other. He prefers smaller communities where everyone knows each other. His longing to be part of something tight-knit might come from his early childhood, when he and his family lived in Sand Point, a town of about 600 located along the Aleutian Islands. Young’s sense of community has, at times, been reinforced by growing up in the restaurant industry. Specifically, he ...
Jun 01, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 39
Rico Worl owns a business in Juneau that aims to distribute money spent on Alaska Native art back into Alaska Native communities. His business is called Trickster for the raven in Alaska Native culture that represents the Creator and is always playing tricks. Trickster began as a skateboard company, so there’s that association too. In fact, the idea for it started when Rico painted his clan crest onto his longboard and skated around Juneau. Before the pandemic, Juneau saw about a million tourist...
May 16, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 38
Cal Williams is an activist and community archivist. He sees his involvement in activism as more of a pull than a draw. He didn’t plan it, it just happened. Seven days after he was born, Pearl Harbor was bombed and most of the men in his life went to war. So, the influences he had at those early ages came from the women in his life. He saw how they did what they could to help the war effort. He’s 80 now, and his list of achievements are extensive. They include the president of the NAACP of Alask...
Apr 22, 2022•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 37
Ben Huff believes that photography is gloriously incomplete, that it has the potential to start a conversation, but it takes the viewer to finish it — to bring their own history and their own knowledge to the table and fill in the blanks. That’s one of the things that’s wonderful about photography, he says, it prompts a narrative. It introduces a concept or an idea for further examination. Much of his work is interested in exploited landscapes, in the things that we’ve brought to places. His rec...
Apr 11, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 36
James Dommek, Jr. grew up in Kotzebue playing basketball. Most kids did — it was and still is a big part of the rural Alaska experience. In the summertime, they played all night because the sun was out. And in the wintertime — despite the cold and ball going flat — they would still play. In 1996, James moved to Anchorage, where he continued playing basketball for a while, but eventually moved on to playing music. He became as obsessive about music as he was basketball and, after high school, he ...
Mar 19, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 35
Jennifer Loofbourrow is the owner of Alpine Fit , an Alaska-based outdoor clothing company that specializes in offering a variety of fit options for different body types. Jennifer’s active, outdoor lifestyle influenced her decision to start the brand. From 2004 to 2009, she kayaked the outer islands of Alaska's southeast coastline. In that time, she gained an intimate understanding of what basic gear is needed on those trips and how it’s important to consider things like weather and the duration...
Mar 14, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 34
Julie Varee is the Community Outreach Archivist at the Anchorage Museum. So much of her life has been dedicated to helping others. She grew up in a household — back in Gary, Indiana — that put a lot of energy into philanthropy. In fact, her earliest memory is of tagging along with her mom and her grandmother to help the elderly people in her neighborhood. That sense of purpose and charity would define her professional life well into adulthood. Julie got out of philanthropy and development at 60 ...
Mar 02, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 33
Chloe Ivanoff is new to the kelp farming industry in Kodiak. She says that because it’s such a new industry in the United States, there’s always something to learn or something to innovate. The process of kelp farming, for instance, is still being tweaked. Kelp spores are gathered locally and brought to a lab where they’re grown. When they’re ready for a larger grow environment, the kelp is set in the ocean along a group of grow lines. However, once they’re in the water, they’re at the mercy of ...
Feb 07, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 32
Ralph Sara is the host of the Anonymous Eskimo Recovery Podcast, a show that features conversations with guests who are working through alcohol and drug addiction, many of which are Indigenous People. Ralph’s heritage and his past informs many of these discussions. He grew up in Bethel, where he says that almost every household on his street was affected by alcoholism, including his own. That’s where his relationship with alcohol started, with his own family. He says it goes back to his first me...
Jan 28, 2022•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 31
In this episode, Cody talks with three fellow Alaskan podcasters about what it's like creating podcasts about Alaskans. Alice Qannik Glenn hosts “ Coffee & Quaq ,” a show that celebrates and explores contemporary Native life in urban Alaska. In it, Alice sits down with Alaska Native thinkers, doers and changemakers to discuss issues that affect Alaska Native people, their culture and their environments. She also hosts and produces “ Resolve ,” a show about missing and murdered Indigenous wom...
Jan 24, 2022•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 30
Author Seth Kantner was born and raised in Alaska, among the animals and the wilderness, and his writing reflects that. It draws from personal experience, often dealing with themes that involve animals, the environment and living off the land. He says that when he was a kid, his family was entirely attached to the seasons and food from the land. Both decided what they would do every day, be it hunting, fishing, picking berries or chopping wood. Seth continues to live this way of life. In the win...
Dec 30, 2021•1 hr 31 min•Ep. 29
The Teen Climate Communicators program is hosted by the Anchorage Museum and offers activities and conversations around the past, present and future relationships between people and the land. Those involved, learn about how climate change is affecting Alaska’s diverse landscapes by hearing from Museum and community experts. Climate change is an ongoing conversation—one that is constantly evolving. So, to talk about it responsibly and thoughtfully, requires an ongoing education. That includes cit...
Dec 28, 2021•1 hr•Ep. 28
Joining this conversation are artists Stuart Hyatt, Dan Mills and Christina Seely. Stuart uses sound to understand our relationship with the natural world. Dan uses maps in paintings and collages as a way to explore ideas of historic and current events, including issues like colonialism. Christina uses photography to address the complexities of both built and natural global systems. All of their work—Stuart, Dan and Christina—is featured in the Anchorage Museum’s exhibition “ Counter Cartographi...
Nov 30, 2021•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 27
Brian Brettschneider is a climatologist and a research scientist. He collects data and analyzes it. And within that mountain of data, he believes many of the secrets of the world exist. But extracting meaning from all that information is a big challenge. It takes time, education and technology. With its many research institutions located in arctic environments—including universities and weather stations—Alaska is important in the global conversation surrounding climate change. Brian says that, i...
Nov 27, 2021•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 26
Aaron Leggett explains the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA. ANCSA was established on December 18, 1971, and is a landmark policy for many reasons. As a result of the act, Alaska Natives retained 44 million acres of land and about 1 billion dollars to settle Indigenous land claims in Alaska. It also divided the state into 12 regional corporations and almost 200 village corporations that split the money and the land. Before ANCSA, the traditional way the United States had negotiate...
Nov 02, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 25
Journalism has been part of Julia O’Malley’s life since elementary school, where she remembers carrying around a notebook to keep track of what her classmates were doing. Then, in high school, she wrote for her school newspaper. But her love for cooking goes back even further. In fact, one of her first memories is of being 2 or 3 years old and mixing blueberries and milk in her toy kitchen. The dinner table was a sacred place in Julia’s household. Sitting down and sharing a meal was important an...
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 24
