Three women set sail on a 350 mile expedition through Alaska’s massive Tongass National Forest, exploring how clearcut logging in this coastal rainforest could affect wildlife, local communities and our planet’s climate. Take action at https://www.LastStands.org - submit a comment & help end the destruction of this coastal rainforest.
Production | Wild Confluence Media & Last Stands
Funding Partners | Peak Design, Patagonia, Sitka Salmon Shares, Audubon Alaska & The Wilderness Society
Director & Editor | Colin Arisman
Producer & Narration | Elsa Sebastian
Cinematography | Gleb Mikhalev & Colin Arisman
Story Advisors | Duct Tape Then Beer, Faith E. Briggs & Natalie Dawson
Original score | Aled Roberts
Additional music | Liz Cooper and The Stampede, Kēpa & Y La Bamba
Animation | Kalakala
Motion graphics | Luke Kantola
Title design | Lee House
Audio post production | Ridgeline Sound
Colorist | Arianna Shining Star
Featuring | Elsa Sebastian, Natalie Dawson, Mara Menahan & Marina Anderson
When we are open to learning, teachers take on many forms. They are friends we share stories with over campfires. They are birds, whose sudden presence in our lives leave us wondering, “Why did all the Snow Buntings stay on the Chilkat River so much longer this year?” They are elders who tell us to pay attention to the way a feather lands on the ground because it can show us how to say soft words that leave a beautiful mark. They are campaign managers and chiefs of staff who tell us how to shorten our sentences so that the words are memorable. They are the enduring curves of the eroding Arctic Coastal Plain, grumbling glaciers calving into warmer waters. It is possible that these sentinels of change are our greatest teachers of all, giving us the inheritance of knowledge told in the stories of their changing forms.
Every day, we find ourselves with a rich inheritance of responsibility: “the responsibility to live thoughtfully and intelligently, to question - never to assume, or trample, to observe with passion, to think with patience, to live always caringly,” as poet Mary Oliver reminds us. When we think about the work we do and the energy we each bring into the world as part of a continuum, the challenges before us become opportunities to share knowledge and learning across unprecedented space, creating movements for change. We saw this momentum in the final tally for the recent public comment period in the Tongass National Forest. Our entire community of advocates submitted over 170,000 comments in support of reinstating the Roadless Rule on the Tongass. After the comment period closed, Audubon did a virtual screening of Understory to an audience of over 200 people in Vermont, sharing the similarities of the old growth forests of the Tongass with those of the Northeast United States. Our community of advocacy is built from our shared, inherited responsibility for the stewardship of old growth forests, Arctic coastlines, and eelgrass estuaries.
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| Sacred Lands Not For Sale, Stop Arctic Oil Extraction. Photo: Natalie Dawson |
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| Tell the U.S. Department of the Interior that their new analysis must comply with the law, follow the science, and consider the concerns of Indigenous communities. Take Action. |
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| Yellow-billed Loon. Photo: Bob Wick |
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| Please urge your representatives in Congress and President Biden to act quickly to permanently protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Take Action. |
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| American Golden-Plover. Photo: Mick Thompson |
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