Stories of Culture, Community, and Connection Across Alaska

Over the past several weeks, our Movie Monday series has featured a powerful collection of short documentaries created through See Stories programs. This recent series highlighted films produced during the Anchored Histories Alaska (AHA!) Intensive in Willow, Alaska, where educators from across the state explored storytelling through film as a way to document culture, history, identity, and place-based knowledge.

Each film offers a different perspective, but all are connected through a shared commitment to storytelling and community. Together, they reflect on language, music, climate change, oral histories, subsistence practices, resilience, and the importance of carrying knowledge across generations. Through the training and collaboration during our AHA! workshop, each of these educators were able to bring storytelling through film to each of their classrooms throughout Alaska. Here are the films we highlighted:

Kangiliryaraq — Elena Pavilla

Our series began with Kangiliryaraq, a film centered on Yup’ik naming traditions and the ceremonies that welcome new names into a person’s life. Through the voices of Elders and community members, the film reflects on how names carry memory, identity, responsibility, and connection across generations.

As one participant shares, “All the people that have passed on live through us.”  Names are more than labels, but names hold stories, relationships, and cultural knowledge that continue across time.

Indigenous Music of Kodiak — Serjoe Orven Gutierrez

Set on Kodiak Island, Indigenous Music of Kodiak explores the role of music in preserving and strengthening Alutiiq/Sugpiaq culture. Community members reflect on how songs, drumming, dance, and gathering together continue traditions that were once at risk of being lost.

Serjoe’s film highlights music not only as art, but as connection, bringing generations together through shared rhythm, memory, and joy.

Keeping Traditions Alive: Lepquinm Gumilgit Gagoadim — Caroline Wiseman

This film follows members of the Lepquinm Gumilgit Gagoadim Tsimshian dance group in Anchorage as they continue practicing culture, ceremony, and language while living away from their ancestral homelands.

Centered around the group’s 20-year anniversary Feast, the film reflects on leadership, responsibility, and the importance of creating spaces where traditions can continue to grow and thrive across generations.

Hope in the North: A New Home, A New Beginning — Krystyna Cullom

Hope in the North shares the stories of Ukrainian refugees who have resettled in Anchorage after fleeing war in Ukraine. Through deeply personal interviews, participants reflect on displacement, uncertainty, family, and rebuilding life in a new place.

The film offers a moving portrait of resilience and reminds viewers how community, support, and hope can shape new beginnings even during difficult transitions.

Heartbeat of Our Ancestors — Daniel Greenwood

Created in partnership with students at the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School in Anchorage, Heartbeat of Our Ancestors explores drum-making as both a cultural practice and a connection to identity.

Students describe learning to stretch, shape, and build drums by hand while also learning stories, songs, and teachings connected to those traditions. The film reflects on how cultural knowledge continues through practice, memory, and community.

Cingsiit: Legends of the Central Yup’ik Tundra

In this film, Helen Ivan, an Elder from Akiak, shares stories of the Cingsiit—small beings known in Central Yup’ik tradition. Through oral storytelling passed down across generations, viewers are invited into a relationship with the tundra shaped by respect, balance, listening, and cultural knowledge.

The film highlights the importance of oral traditions and the role storytelling plays in teaching younger generations about the world around them.

Where Ice Meets Change — Mark Jo Torrechiva

Set in Brevig Mission, Where Ice Meets Change explores how climate change is affecting subsistence life and daily experiences in the community. Elders and community members describe thinning ice, changing seasons, and the uncertainty these environmental shifts bring.

At the same time, the film reflects the resilience and adaptability that continue to sustain the community through change.

Echoes of the Sea — Russell Espina

Echoes of the Sea focuses on seal hunting traditions in Brevig Mission and the deep relationship between community, culture, and the ocean.

Through interviews with local hunters and community members, the film highlights how subsistence practices are rooted not only in survival, but in identity, teaching, responsibility, and belonging.

Growing Up in a Changing Climate — Leila Pyle

Our series also featured Growing Up in a Changing Climate, a youth-centered film from Fairbanks exploring how climate change is shaping everyday life for young people in Alaska.

Teen activists involved with Alaska Youth for Environmental Action (AYEA) reflect on shifting winters, disappearing traditions, uncertainty about the future, and the importance of collective action and community support. The film offers an honest and thoughtful look at what it means to grow up during environmental change.