July 2009
 Documentary
filmmaker Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson (Inupiat)
has begun the oral history-based series History of the Iñupiat
for the Alaska Native Education Program which is run by the North
Slope Borough School District (NSBSD) in Barrow, Alaska. The first
episode, 1961 The Duck-In, had its theatrical premiere
at the 2006 Native American Film + Video Festival. In 2009, for script development of future projects, she was awarded a Sundance Institute Ford Foundation Film Fellowship. Edwardson has
taught video production in Iñupiat villages through the
NSBSD's program Youth Speak. She is the videographer and editor
of Amiginikun: On Sewing Boat Skins, which won the Best
Traditional Culture Film at the Native Voice Film Festival in
2005. Edwardson received a B.A. from Colorado College in Colorado
Springs and lives in Barrow, Alaska.
"Being raised in a rural Inupiaq community taught me to
sew the threads of our shared stories into the films I make today.
I strive to honor these gifts I have been given in all my creative
endeavors. In the way I tell stories and what I tell, I seek to
be respectful of the community's collective wishes and needs while
nurturing my own creative voice. This means that sometimes a story
that I am aching to tell has to sit on the burners until I find
the right road to tell it."
Screened by NMAI
Image credit:
Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson - photograph by Ray Kious
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