Chatter Marks

Museums in a Climate of Change: EP 71 How climate change is affecting the traditional Sámi way of life with Anne May Olii of the Sámi Museum in Norway

Anne May Olii is the Director of the largest Sámi museum in Norway, RiddoDuottarMuseat. The museum manages photographs, art and information on Sámi cultural heritage. Anne May says that the museum is thinking 100, 200 years into the future, about how what they’re documenting today will affect and inform Sámi people in the future. For example, the vitality of reindeer husbandry — something the Sámi people have been practicing for generations — is a concern. On top of climate change causing diminishing grazing areas, the Norwegian government is taking land from the Sámi people by putting things like windmills and power lines on their land.
Anne May says that the museum is focused on documenting these changes, to keep a record of the past and the present in order to inform the future. That there’s a strong possibility that northern countries will be looked at for guidance in a future affected by climate change. She has a vested interest in Norway. In addition to her work at the museum, she’s a farmer, her husband is a reindeer herder, her kids are farmers and reindeer herders, and she’s of Sámi heritage. 
In this Chatter Marks series, Cody and co-host Dr. Sandro Debono talk to museum directors and knowledge holders about what museums around the world are doing to adapt and react to climate change. Dr. Debono is a museum thinker from the Mediterranean island of Malta. He works with museums to help them strategize around possible futures.

Museums in a Climate of Change: EP 70 The myth of climate indifference with Miranda Massie of the Climate Museum

Miranda Massie is the Director and founder of the Climate Museum in New York City. The Climate Museum uses the power of arts and cultural programming to create an ongoing and progressive conversation surrounding the climate crisis. Her institution is committed to inspiring climate activism through art. The work she and her crew does invites people to recognize their own ability to act on climate change. It’s an advocacy museum, she says, where they hope their audience will take action, to consider themselves as climate ambassadors who actively engaged in climate change action.
Miranda says that appealing to a rationalist perspective doesn’t work. That’s actually how she found her way to creating the Climate Museum. It was 2012 and Hurricane Sandy was wreaking havoc on New York City. She lives in the city, so she watched as the effects of climate change were brought to her front door. Before that, she had understood climate change on a rational level, but faced with the destruction caused by the hurricane she was compelled — emotionally — by the urgency and the challenges of the climate crisis. So, she made a radical shift, she quit her job as an attorney and created the Climate Museum. Her mission then as it is now, was a deep civic shift toward climate dialogue across people’s personal and professional lives. A ubiquitous understanding and acceptance of the crisis that will lead to meaningful climate policy.
In this Chatter Marks series, Cody and co-host Dr. Sandro Debono talk to museum directors and knowledge holders about what museums around the world are doing to adapt and react to climate change. Dr. Debono is a museum thinker from the Mediterranean island of Malta. He works with museums to help them strategize around possible futures.

Museums in a Climate of Change: EP 69 Imagining the future with Lath Carlson of the Museum of the Future in Dubai

Lath Carlson is the Executive Director of the Museum of the Future in Dubai. The Museum of the Future is dedicated to telling stories about how humans might adapt to current global crises. Right now, the climate crisis is the most pressing issue. For example, the main story takes people on a journey to 2071, where they experience a world where people have adapted to climate change by collecting solar energy from the moon and beaming it back to earth, giving clean energy to the majority of the world. In order to ensure the science behind these ideas, the museum worked with collaborators from around the world who vetted the science, including people at NASA and at the European Space Agency. Recently, Stanford University proved that this technology wasn’t just something created by a museum, it was actually possible.
The Museum of the Future opened its doors in 2022 and since then over 20 world leaders have visited. Lath says that this is important because climate change is an issue that requires international collaboration. These leaders are among the ones in a position to make changes that will positively impact their countries. Because climate change is an issue that requires large-scale structural changes, the best thing individuals can do is lobby their governments for change. Lath goes on to say that the best hope we have for addressing some of these complex challenges is more Indigenous knowledge than scientific understanding because scientific understanding and reductionist understanding is, in a lot of ways, what got us to where we are today.
 
In this Chatter Marks series, Cody and co-host Dr. Sandro Debono talk to museum directors and knowledge holders about what museums around the world are doing to adapt and react to climate change. Dr. Debono is a museum thinker from the Mediterranean island of Malta. He works with museums to help them strategize around possible futures.

EP 68 Frances changed my life with John Gourley

John Gourley is the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of Portugal. The Man. He grew up in a cabin in Trapper Creek, Alaska, living close to the land. His parents ran the Iditarod — a 1,000 mile-long sled dog race through some of the most treacherous conditions in the world. It takes skill, endurance and fortitude. For John, it’s a lot like being in a band, but instead of making it to Nome, they’re trying to make it to their next gig. It’s its own endurance race that really only considers the present. It’s a lifestyle that lands somewhere between frugality and stardom. Between spending a dollar a day on food in their leaner times and performing at Red Rocks and Radio City in times of prosperity. It’s been a journey that was never about winning a Grammy or critical acclaim, it was always about the music. 
John says that when he writes music, he thinks of snowboarding. Of cliffs, jumps, rollers and powder. Hatcher Pass — the mountains John grew up hiking and riding — is in his rhythm and the lyrics. That association is intuitive for him. Simply put, throwing yourself off a cliff or off a jump is like throwing yourself into music and performing. Sometimes you lose and sometimes you win. But you learn from your failures and you’re buoyed by your wins. And it’s in those winning moments that give you the strength and the reassurance to continue. Like snowboarding or the Iditarod, there are always gonna be struggles, but it’s how you work through those struggles that define you.
This new album, “Chris Black Changed My Life,” was marked by struggle and uncertainty. Three band members went to rehab, John broke his jaw, their good friend Chris Black passed away and John and Zoe’s daughter Frances was diagnosed with DHDDS, a rare neurodegenerative disease. It’s been a lot, and navigating it is ongoing. The three who went to rehab are doing much better now and John’s jaw is on the mend. Chris is missed and thought about often, and after an exhausting amount of research, Frances is in treatment.
Photo by Maclay Heriot

Ep 67 Culture comes from our environment with Cordelia Qiġñaaq Kellie

Cordelia Qiġñaaq Kellie specializes in cross-cultural communications. It’s a position that gives her the space and the opportunity to learn about how cultures interact at the community level. For the last two years, she’s worked as the Special Assistant for Rural Affairs for Senator Lisa Murkowski, where she helps to build and strengthen regional and statewide rural and Alaska Native relationships.
She says that in her line of work people often use the term “cultural conflicts” to describe disagreements that arise because of different values and belief systems. However, she prefers the term “cultural contrasts” because not all the time do those things conflict. She gives an example: Whenever her mom’s Inupiaq family would visit, she was expected to tend to and revere her elders, whereas when her dad’s parents would visit from Washington state they wanted to tend to the children. She recognized that these behaviors weren’t in conflict, each one just had a different set of expectations. So, it’s important to learn and to talk about the contrasts before they become conflicts. It comes down to recognizing, understanding and respecting other cultures — their values and their tenets.
Cordelia grew up in Wasilla. The first time she visited the lands of her heritage — Utqiagvik and Wainwright — she was a young adult. She remembers seeing the environment that her mom had been describing to her for so long and how striking it was. Her biggest takeaway was seeing other Inupiaq people. It was her first time in an Inupiaq community and so much of it reminded her of her family. It gave her an incredible sense of belonging because until that point the only other Inupiaq people she encountered were part of her family. It was the first time she realized that she was part of this bigger network of people.

EP 66 Inuit soul music with Qacung

Qacung and his brother, Philip, started Pamyua almost 30 years ago. The idea was to honor both sides of their heritage — African American on their dad’s side and Yupik Inuit on their mom’s side. The gospel music they heard in church and the traditional songs and dancing they experienced in their Native communities made a powerful impression on both of them. In fact, Pamyua’s sound would eventually be called tribal funk or Inuit soul music, and their performances looked a lot like a traditional ceremony with music and dance. The idea connected with people from the very beginning. Two weeks after they came up with the idea for Pamyua, they were performing in front of high school audiences, including the school they both graduated from, Wasilla High School. There were ten shows in all and they received $1,000 for all of their performances.
 
The only doubt Qacung and his brother, Philip, had in the beginning of Pamyua was whether or not their elders would accept it. They understood that they were making drastic changes to traditional dances and traditional songs. Their elders’ stamp of approval came quickly, though, and from that point on they never had any doubts that people would accept and enjoy their music and their performances. Qacung says this is because music is an international language, you don’t need to understand the Native languages being spoken or sung to receive its message.
 
Qacung says that he and his brother have become uncles to up-and-coming Native artists. They share industry knowledge, opportunities and even their own pitfalls throughout the years so that future generations have a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t work. It’s a position he takes pride in. He loves being able to advocate and support new artists on the ins and outs of the business end of things because it’s something he and Philip didn’t have.

EP 65 Anchorage made me who I am today

Aaron Leggett is the president of the Native Village of Eklutna and the Senior Curator of Alaska History and Indigenous Culture at the Anchorage Museum. He grew up in Anchorage, so his memories of it involve all of the memorable and formative experiences that made him who he is today. The same is true for the other two people joining the conversation, Julia O’Malley and David Holhouse. They’re both longtime journalists from Alaska and from pretty much the beginning of their journalism careers, they were the voice of the people. Alaskans who reported on cultures and countercultures, crime, food and anything else newsworthy that happened in their close-knit community. 
At its core, this is a conversation about what a place means to its inhabitants. How it shapes and molds them. It’s about why David, Julia, Aaron and myself all continue to try and capture the Anchorage we grew up in, before Alaska was so connected to the rest of the world. For my part, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to capture the essence and the feeling of the Alaska snowboard and skateboard scene of the 90s and early 2000s. Holthouse talks about his memories of the Anchorage punk scene in the mid-90s, another lively and sometimes provocative group of people. Aaron remembers a heavy metal group of Alaska Native guys who wore leather jackets, had long hair and smoked cigarettes. They were metal and they were Native. When recalling these stories, there’s fondness, melancholy and nostalgia — a feeling Julia says is a cousin of grief. That if you become too nostalgic, you might lose track of how to listen to the present moment.

EP 64 A responsibility to be optimistic about the future with Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly is an interdisciplinary artist who builds sculptural ecosystems that address human consumption and resilience, with an underlying theme of how they might play into our ability to preserve through catastrophic events. Two of her past projects — Waterpod and Swale — were barges that periodically docked in certain areas of New York City. Both depended on a level of nomadism and self-sufficiency. She describes Waterpod as a self-sufficient living space on the water that was a shelter, grew its own food, cleaned its own water and was also a space where she could make artwork. Swale came next. It was an edible landscape and it applied many of the skills she’d learned from Waterpod. Things like navigating a large vessel though city waterways and how foraging for fresh foods could work in a city with so many rules and regulations. 
Her artwork always comes from a personal place. In 2008, after numerous surgeries and trips to the hospital, she was diagnosed with Celiac disease. It was a painful journey. For so long, she didn’t know what was wrong with her. So, the diagnosis was a relief. She finally had a word to attach to what she was experiencing. That’s when she became interested in food. Specifically, she became aware of the inaccessibility to fresh foods — how expensive they are and how many rules and regulations prohibit people from growing their own food in public spaces. At one point, she learned about how a community garden had been shut down due to a real estate development. That was when she realized that spaces like that weren’t protected and could be easily taken away.
Her interest in the idea of consumption and resilience goes back to her childhood, when she didn’t always have the things she wanted. She was born in Rockville, Connecticut, but she grew up in Summersville. Both are small towns that are close to nature. She tells this story about how, when she was a kid, she and her siblings would make a game out of running as fast as they could to reach a neighbor’s barn before he let off a warning shot. So, when she moved to New York City, where manmade structures dominate the landscape and overconsumption is common, she began to think about how that affects us, how being so reliant on outside inputs can deprive us of our independence. The sheer scale of the trash cycle in New York City, for example, devastated her. Three nights a week, she would see trash piled up on the sidewalks, sometimes taller than her.