In Kanesia McGlashan-Price’s short film Tides of Tradition, Unangax̂ subsistence hunter Trever Schliebe prepares a ptarmigan bird with his mother and is seen on his boat on the water.
But hanging over the film is the biggest complaint Schliebe hears from his community: the diminishing availability of sea lions in the warming ocean water near Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands 800 miles west of Anchorage.
“As our climates are shifting, Indigenous communities are feeling the impacts firsthand,” McGlashan-Price said in an interview with Current. “A big problem is access to traditional foods, one of those being sea lions.”
The 10-minute Tides of Tradition is among six short films by Native American filmmakers focused on climate change expected to release online Sept. 13. The series is a collaboration with GBH’s Nova and Vision Maker Media.
The films will be available on PBS’ and Nova’s websites, with episodes also coming out weekly on Nova’s YouTube channel. They will be promoted in Nova’s newsletter as well as on its social media channels.
One of the films is about heat and the Navajo Nation’s “hogan” homes in the Southwest. Another looks at the Tolowa Dee-ni’ people’s ancestral fisheries on the California coast.
“You’re going to be able to feel those separate voices, but they’re all kind of reporting generally on the same subject,” said series producer Chris Neighbors.
The short films are a partner series to Nova’s three-part documentary Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine, which premiered in July and features Native American perspectives.
“This digital series takes the chance to follow through on that completely,” Neighbors said.
John Bredar, VP of national programming at GBH, said he has known Vision Maker Media CEO and President Francene Blythe-Lewis since they both worked at National Geographic, leading to the collaboration.
“Sea Change: The Gulf of Maine is a local story, but it has global implications — the air folks breathe in Nebraska, we like to say, was made in the Gulf of Maine,” Bredar said in an email. “So the partnership with Vision Maker meant the public would have a chance to hear Indigenous voices from all over the country about how a changing climate was impacting them. With support from PBS and CPB, we were able to pull together the resources to do these short films as a co-production between Vision Maker Media and GBH/NOVA.”
Tides of Tradition is the first film McGlashan-Price has produced. The 27-year-old, herself Unangax̂, is an arts and culture producer at dual-licensee KUCB in Unalaska.
She hopes to continue sharing climate change stories and amplifying Native American voices.
“One of the big things that stands out is that Indigenous people are not the ones that are causing climate change, yet we are being disproportionately impacted by climate change,” McGlashan-Price said. “I think through these films you will get to see these impacts told from the communities themselves. As Indigenous filmmakers, we are in good relationships with the communities we’re working with.”