As part of a project funded through the University of Alaska and the National Science Foundation’s Alaska EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research), Seldovia students took place in a participatory photography project that invited youth in rural Gulf of Alaska communities to visually document how harvesting, preparing and sharing wild foods shape their connection to place, culture and community health. The project also focused on reflecting on environmental change and the future of food traditions. Other than Seldovia, students in the communities of Cordova in Prince William Sound and Haines and Klukwan in South East Alaska also participated. Seldovia’s component was displayed in the local library as part of the Seldovia Summer Solstice Music Festival that took place in the community last weekend.
Muhammad Khan, facilitator from the University of Alaska Anchorage, was in the Seldovia Library over the weekend of the Seldovia Solstice Music Festival to share the photos and the process that the students went through to collect them.The project spanned five weeks in Cordova and took longer in other communities.
“We worked with nine youth from Seldovia. We had three different workshops with them, so we came here to first teach them how to do this project, so we taught them how to take photos, but also how to write captions and storytelling: so we asked them three questions, you know, the first one was what does wild food mean to them, and to take photos and write captions of them. The second question was about the concerns they had in the communities or related to climate change, and so they went out and took photos of that, and the last question was caring for the future. So, essentially, things that are already happening in Seldovia that can protect against those concerns are things that people can do in the community to protect against environmental threats or climate change and other concerns that people had. “
Another feature of the workshops focused on the importance of consent with the photographs the students took and methods for approaching people and property within the photos.
Finally, the students grouped all of the photos by themes and consolidated the themes to see what the youth were expressing through both the images and written captions. Participating students ranged in age from 10 to 17.
Khan noted this particular observation about the project in general:
“I learned how present the kids are, and observant, you know, they are of the community, and environmental changes are happening, you know. They took great photos, but the captions that they wrote were really powerful, and really jumped out to me, you know, when I was working on the project, and working to print out the photos as well, yeah, it just shows that you know kids, you know, learn by seeing and doing, so you know they're seeing a lot of changes in their communities and writing about it and wanting to make a change.”
The photos will remain in the communities where they were curated as exhibit boxes with the intention of soliciting future comment and discussion based on the images they show.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
