Worth a thousand words: visual collections and a long view of the North

Abstract

Historical film and media collections in the North contain an essential, indelible message for the future — that cultural knowledge is perishable and impermanent. Throughout the world as bearers of traditional culture pass away, much of their knowledge is lost. Film and audio collections can play a critical role in preserving living knowledge, allowing us to observe, experience, and study singular, irreproducible moments of a culture’s past. As time passes, these unique recorded moments take on a vital function; they become new conduits of knowledge, a visual and aural stand-in for real experience. This paper discusses the role of museum film and audio collections in preserving cultural knowledge and the challenges of extending this resource to the classrooms of remote communities throughout the North. The paper also discusses the collaborative cultural filmmaking initiative of Sarah Elder and Leonard Kamerling, their work with partner Alaska Native communities over a period of two decades, and their setbacks and successes in producing “authentic” records of Alaska Native life in the 1970s and 1980s, records that are now part of the Alaska Documentary Collections at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

Keywords

• museum cultural film collections
• ethnographic film
• collaborative community filmmaking
• alaska native film and audio