Chatter Marks

EP 049 On roots, family and heritage with Priscilla Hensley

Priscilla Hensley is a writer and a documentarian. Before she started working on documentaries, her job history was varied — she had worked in communications and, having made a few short films herself, had some prior knowledge of filmmaking. There was also a period of time when she considered herself a poet. All these jobs have helped her to become a jack-of-all-trades. Her time in communications has helped a lot with her documentary work because so much of filmmaking is about logistics and making things happen. Her poetry has helped with her screenwriting. She says that the most important thing she’s learned about screenwriting is to start. Just put the story on paper. You don’t need to have great spelling, you can drop words, and you don’t need to storyboard everything. Just start writing. And then, later, you can worry about editing and rewriting.  
Priscilla grew up recognizing and honoring her Inupiaq heritage. Her dad, William Hensley, is a key figure in Alaska Native land rights. He’s known for his role in the creation of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. As a result of the act, Alaska Natives retained 44 million acres of land and about 1 billion dollars to settle Indigenous land claims in Alaska. Growing up around all of this is a big reason she pursues telling the stories that she does. The first documentary she worked on, for example, was “We Up,” a film about Indigenous hip hop of the circumpolar North. It was produced by the Anchorage Museum. In addition to it being a family affair — her husband also worked on the film and their children tagged along — it introduced her to the power of filmmaking.
Priscilla has tattoos that commemorate her roots and her heritage. She gets them with her cousin every time she goes back to Alaska. The most recent one is on her hand, so she sees it when she’s writing or operating a camera. She says that she loves seeing her tattoos when she works because they’re a visual reminder of who she is, how she wants the world to see her, and her responsibility to being true to herself, her family and her community.

EP 48 Exploring and documenting the Filipino diaspora with Melissa Chimera

Melissa Chimera creates mixed media paintings and installations that are research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration. Her portraits are fictional, but they’re based in empirical fact. She combs through the public record of peoples’ lives, collecting information to better understand them beyond what DNA can tell us. She includes elements and details of what she finds into her paintings. She says that the Philippines are a confluence of so many tragedies. Politically, economically and environmentally. There’s really no work for the people who aren’t middle class. So they move, they immigrate for opportunity and to send money back to their family. This is the story that Melissa is telling, the one she’s trying to better understand. As a descendant of Filipino and Lebanese immigrants herself, it’s a personal one.
She’s currently in-residence at the Anchorage Museum, exploring the Filipino diaspora through research and interviews. To help make sense of all this information, she’s putting two podcasts together. “Drift: Immigration and Identity in America” is an interview series, and “Land and People” looks at practitioners and people with ancestral ties to the land. There’s also a component of cataloging what the land looks like right now for future reference. She says that as she’s interviewing people they’re also unpacking the psychology of internalized racism and what that looks like and what it feels like. It’s complicated because there are so many facets to this project — there’s immigration, there’s the socioeconomic issues, the cost of living and it’s all under the umbrella of capitalism.
Photo courtesy of Josh Branstetter

EP 47 Tlingit knowledge and art with James Johnson

Before he got to the level he’s at now, Tlingit artist James Johnson taught himself the fundamentals of the Tlingit artform — he taught himself how to draw, how to carve, how to sharpen his knives. He taught himself the fundamentals of formline. His dad taught him the importance of traditional knowledge — that when you create a piece, you create it for your clan. Be it a paddle, a bowl, a bentwood box, a mask, a rattle, a totem pole. He says that in the old days, once the carvers were finished with a totem pole — once it was raised — they could no longer touch it because now it belonged to the people. James’ dad told him that when he finishes a piece, to let it go and, like a balloon in the sky, that piece will go where it needs to go. The main thing is to focus on skill and that your skill is going to improve with every piece you do.Everything that he’s doing right now — whether it’s talking to an auditorium of 500 people or hosting a workshop for youth or working on a commission for Google — it’s bigger than him. It’s for his ancestors, for his culture and his traditions. It’s a reminder of the destruction and human toll of colonialism. It’s more than creating a beautiful piece. It’s about understanding history and sharing Tlingit knowledge. He does it for his clan, for his family and for his contemporaries — all of the other northwest coast artists striving to reach the golden age of their artform that occurred in the 1700s and early 1800s, after steel was introduced to their culture during the fur trade.

EP 46 Life after dog mushing with Aliy Zirkle

Dog musher Aliy Zirkle has always felt a strong connection to animals, dogs in particular. She tells this story about how when she was a kid and lived in Puerto Rico, there were a couple of stray dogs that pulled her around on a skateboard. Mushing was in her blood, even then.For 30 years, mushing has been everything to Aliy. It’s been her passion and her career. And understanding her dog’s abilities and their limits has been key because if you break that — if you break their trust or you ask them to do too much — then they lose confidence in you as their leader. So, Aliy made sure she knew every one of her dogs — their individual personalities, their eccentricities and their limits. Skunk, Commando, Mismo, Mac, Pedro, Rubia, Beemer, Viper, Quito, just to name a few. She knew and knows all of them. They’ve taught her indispensable truths, like how to live in the moment and how to appreciate the present because that’s all we really have.In 2021, she raced her last Iditarod. It didn’t turn out the way she anticipated. Her plan was to win — to be the first racer to pass under the Burled Arch — but about 200 miles into the race, she crashed, hit the back of her head on the ice and was dragged by her arm for an indeterminate amount of time. She had to be airlifted to the hospital, where she found out that she had suffered a concussion, something that she’s still recovering from.As a musher, she has relied on her toughness — her ability to get through difficulties out on the trail on her own. That it’s her and the dogs — Team Zirkle, the fan favorite — out there in the Alaska wilderness. The team that always finishes the race. That’s been her biggest struggle throughout all of this — that she didn’t finish her last race. It weighs so heavily on her sometimes that it’s best just not to think about it. She says that the whole situation still seems a little surreal and that she’s still trying to make sense of it.

EP 45 Revolutionizing how people see and understand Alaskan cuisine with Rob Kinneen

Rob Kinneen has been an ambassador for Alaskan cuisine through his guest chef appearances, speaking engagements, cooking demonstrations and private caterings. His work has revolutionized how people see and understand the state’s traditional foods. His understanding of traditional foods goes back to growing up in Petersburg, Alaska, where he remembers clamming with his uncles, fishing with his dad and picking berries. There was also venison and the first time he had fresh asparagus — it was so much better than the stuff that came out of the can. 
He works for the food non-profit NATIFS now, where he promotes food relief, education, awareness and accessibility of traditional foods. He says that this position is a one-of-one, there’s nothing else out there like it. It’s not so much a job as it is what he does, and who he is as a chef and as a person of Tlingit heritage. 
In his late-40s now, Rob says that he started to really notice the negative effects that alcohol was having on his body and his lifestyle. So, over two years ago, he became alcohol-free. He says that, right now, he’s proud of being exactly who he wants to be — he has more hours in the day, and his mind is clear and he’s confident.

EP 44 Johnny’s Girl, a neon Anchorage and a life of her own with Kim Rich

Kim Rich is a journalist and an author. She wrote the classic memoir “Johnny’s Girl,” it’s about her tumultuous upbringing in Anchorage’s underworld. Back in the 1960s, her dad, Johnny, worked Anchorage’s nightlife — gambling houses, prostitution and get-rich-quick schemes. Her mom, Ginger, was an exotic dancer. She had mental health issues and spent years of her life in a number of institutions. Both of their lives — Johnny and Ginger — were cut short, leaving Kim to fend for herself at a young age.
Through research, interviews and recollection, Kim would write about her parents to try to work out her feelings and understanding of them. She found that her dad was a complicated man, and that her mom was a tragic figure — loving and caring, but in the throes of mental anguish.
She’s always put a lot of thought into describing and understanding Anchorage as a city and the people who live there. In her book, she describes it as neon — both physically neon and existentially neon. The bright, flashy lights of downtown Anchorage and the pioneer spirit of the 60s influenced her perception. It was a place of endless possibilities, where anyone could do anything; a place you could run away to and remake yourself in whatever image you wished.
Today, Kim says that she’s enjoying getting older and that she feels like she’s finally mellowing. She lives in Louisiana — teaching journalism and trying to get used to the fact that her kids have moved out of the house — but she still considers Alaska home.

EP 043 Digging for Alaskana with Jimmy Riordan

Jimmy Riordan is a multidisciplinary artist and educator who’s currently in-residence at the Anchorage Museum, digitizing and archiving the work of Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta musicians, as well as all the other Alaska music he’s collected over the years. He spends a lot of time in thrift stores and going through junk bins and scouring the internet — anywhere old records might exist.
When he first started listening to old Alaskan albums and radio programs, he thought he was going to hear a lot of tourist music and songs about things like reindeer and caribou. But he soon realized that there was a lot of diversity in what he was hearing. There was hip hop, psychedelic rock, metal, punk. He even found a record of soundbites from people talking about their experience during the 1964 earthquake. 
His motivation is that of a fan, driven by interest and excitement. If he can provide a service that is useful, in exchange for all the information and all the stuff that he’s getting, then that’s what he’s looking to do. His fascination with the music of Joe Paul is a good example. Joe Paul is a country and gospel singer originally from Kipnuk, Alaska, a community along the Kuskokwim River. And one day, while out digging for Alaskana, Jimmy came across one of his albums, “Eskimo Songs, Stories and Country Music.” He was floored by it and says that it rejuvenated his interest in collecting.

EP 042 Navigating two different cultures with Nyabony Gat

Nyabony Gat says that her immigrant story started 22 years ago. In 1992, when her parents and older siblings fled from South Sudan and found refuge in Ethiopia — the Second Sudanese civil war was going on between the central Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. It was a long and bloody war and it caused four million people to be displaced. 
Nyabony doesn’t remember much from her childhood. She knows that she was born in Ethiopia and she knows that she and her family came to the United States when she was 3 or 4 years old. Other than that, she’s had to rely on stories from her parents and her aunts and her uncles. Those stories are helpful in understanding her identity, but they’re not a perfect substitute. She says that only personal experience can fill that void.
Today, she works with Alaska’s immigrant and refugee community. She helps them overcome challenges and achieve their goals. And in that process, she says, they’re helping her better understand her background and herself.