'Belonging' in Elim
East Coast filmmaker's family ties lead to tribal life documentary
by Tammy Judd
"The people that I met were truly amazing," says Marsh Chamberlain; his voice waivers slightly. "They are the reason that I need this film to be completed and in the right way, that's why I'm trying to find the funding to go back."
The 23-year-old filmmaker had just recalled hearing a story from an elderly man who as a young boy had been sexually abused. The man talked about how that experience led to his substance abuse and a lot of pain in his life and then told how he came out of that.
The elder was one of several Alaska Native people who impressed Chamberlain with their stories during summer 2007 when he began gathering footage for a documentary film.
"They truly had an amazing impact on my life, something that I will never forget," says Chamberlain.
He was in the village of Elim that summer by way of his cousin, Nathan Nagaruk, 32, who is Inupiaq. Nagaruk, the previous summer, had visited Chamberlain at his home in New Hampshire.
The two got to talking about Nagaruk's experiences as a tribal Alaskan losing his friends to suicide. About growing up and loving his culture but also seeing people suffer from being pulled between modernization and traditional ways. About the desire to stick with traditional values but also recognizing he'd need to move to go to school. About how much he missed the traditional lifestyle after moving away from Elim.
During their conversation, Chamberlain, who is Caucasian, began to have a deeper understanding of his cousin's life and told him he wanted to learn more.
Nagaruk, who lived in Anchorage, had intended to go back to Elim after school, but life continued on and he hadn't gone. He told Chamberlain that he and his wife had decided to move to Nome, which he felt would give him the chance to reinvest himself in traditional ways, such as hunting, and to be closer to his childhood home.
He suggested that Chamberlain, who was studying cinematography and media arts at Ithaca College in New York, could come and make a film about issues Native Alaskans face.
Chamberlain started doing research that fall and winter, calling people, making contacts and learning as much as he could about Alaska Native culture.
"At the time it was a very socially centered project. It was me trying to find out as much as I could about the struggles of Alaskan tribal people with substance abuse and suicide, because that's really what Nathan talked to me the most about," says Chamberlain.
He was able to get a small grant through his school. It wasn't a lot of money but enough to support him for five weeks that summer. He put some things on credit cards, which allowed him to bring a camera along so he could "capture the stories of all the people that I met."
Chamberlain was intrigued and wanted to learn as much as he could and hoped to capture what he was learning on film.
"I felt that I was very successful and excited about the opportunities and the people that I met. It was really an amazing experience over those five weeks," says Chamberlain.
Open doors in Nome
Doors were opened for him by his aunt, Chris Perrigo, 56, of Nome, a Caucasian and longtime Alaskan having moved to Alaska as a teenager. While living with a family in Elim, she met and married an Inupiaq man. The couple had three children, including Nathan and two sisters. Their dad died when Nathan was 10, according to Chamberlain.
"Being out there, I never really knew how amazing a person my aunt was," says Chamberlain. "She is as much of a tribal person as you can really find. She visits Elim a lot. And when I was out there, that's how I got a chance to be invited to Elim, because of people she knew."
His aunt talked with them about Chamberlain's project and helped him get in touch with them. Some people at first were unsure about him being there because he wasn't invited.
"There's not a great history of filmmakers coming in and doing things right — or really anyone, any kind of outsider," says Chamberlain. "Their ways of life have been thought by a lot of people as kind of tourist attractions instead of, well, they're human beings, you know, so she helped me break in and gain some trust with some people."
In the course of conducting those interviews, he wanted individuals to be comfortable and conversational. Chamberlain says, "They couldn't have surprised me more with the stories that they talked about and the openness they had. They truly were amazing discussions."
That summer was the end of Chamberlain's sophomore year. As he continued working on his degree and school assignments piled up, the film became a side project. He didn't have money or support to continue and he wanted to do it right.
"It was too important for me to just throw it out there unfinished or sloppy or anything like that. The people that I met really had an affect on me and really, truly changed my perspective, and I knew the film had to do that as well," says Chamberlain.
He ended up doing a lot of editing on the film during his senior year, using it as a thesis project. But in the editing process he realized he had to go back "in order to really show the hardships and triumphs behind the real lives of the people I met."
So while the film has been in post-production for almost three years, Chamberlain completed school, is in the process of setting up his own production company, and supports himself as a production assistant and freelancer in New York.
Summer return
He's also been searching for funding to come back to Alaska since realizing he needs additional footage to complete the film. He plans to return to Alaska this summer for follow-up interviews with tribal individuals and visits to other parts of Alaska, and he hopes to talk with politicians, professors and professionals who work in various fields to offer balance.
"Basically this documentary, if I were to put it any way at all, it's about the choices and obstacles of cultural identity for the Alaska tribal people and that is especially true for the youth who I have, from the people I've talked to, it really, truly is obvious that they are the future of the first Alaskans just as youth everywhere are the future, they're the next generation," says Chamberlain. "There are a lot of shocking facts out there that you can throw out, but that is the bottom line and the bottom question, the most important question the film will ask and the film will tackle is how can the youth choose between modern and traditional ways of living."
The film, with its working title "Wild Belonging," will focus on different sides of that question and on "the human experience." While Alaska has been looked at as having a wealth of natural resources, people sometimes forget about the people who live there, Chamberlain says. "You look at the two sides of that. You have the environmentalists; you have the mining companies and the sort of political idea of searching for oil and natural gas and other forms of energy. And then on the other side you have subsistence and tradition. So you're basically having the subsistence and traditions versus modernization and jobs. And you have people on every side."
Sorting through the different perspectives and opinions of many people will make the film innovative, says Chamberlain.
"Because instead of focusing just on the difficulties of polar bears or the political push for Alaska's abundance of natural resources, 'Wild Belonging' will show the lives of what I happen to think of as a forgotten people, the tribal Alaskan people," he says.
As a documentary filmmaker, he wants to be fair, show a balanced argument since "there are positives, negatives, pros and cons for each one. And everyone has their own perspective."
Projects to come
The film is just the beginning of what Chamberlain hopes will evolve into other projects. For example, he hopes to develop a video project that would start in Elim and involve donated cameras, editing equipment and support so village youths and adults could film themselves, their elders and relatives, and their everyday lives. The videos could then be used as a way of "getting their voice out in the world."
Other organizations, such as Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, have begun to work with Chamberlain to help him find funding for the three to six weeks of production he needs this summer in order to finish the film.
And he sees that collaboration continuing on with the idea of the video project.
"It's just the starting point. The film is really just the beginning of what I hope will be a truly heavy impact, a positive impact for tribal Alaskans," says Chamberlain.
He's is optimistic that funding will come through, and his goal is to finish the film in late September or October. He envisions the 90-minute documentary going into the film festival circuit and he hopes public television will play it.
"The film, although it is specific to a select few individuals and families of Alaskan tribal people, it truly connects with the rest of the Alaskan tribal culture and the tribal cultures all across the world. They all face very similar hardships with climate change affecting their way of life," says Chamberlain. "It's a dramatic documentary that will show the good and the bad, the positive and the negative, the hope and the hardship, and the heartbreak that surrounds the erosion of the Alaskan tribal culture and what individual and organizations are doing to stop it but the main focus again is the cultural identity, the question of where Alaska tribal people think they belong and what their future holds for them."
Tammy Judd can be reached at 907-348-2438 or tammy@alaskanewspapers.com.