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Terry Halifax
Northern News Services
While the show was going on at Samuel Hearne Senior Secondary, the United States Congress was voting on a law that would open up ANWR to oil extraction. Set to music and sound sampling of Matthew Lien and photographs from Ken Madsen and Peter Mather, the show played at Ingamo Hall on Wednesday and toured the schools on Thursday.
Mather said the team gathered the images and recordings over 100 days and 1,000 miles. They travel from the calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), along the coast down through the Beaufort Delta and finishing in Old Crow, Yukon.
He said the purpose of the trek and the resulting presentation was to bring awareness to the importance of the unique area to the rest of the world.
"We're trying to protect this incredible wilderness area, but we're also trying to protect the caribou for the Inuvialuit and Gwich'in people who depend on the caribou," Mather told the Samuel Hearne students.
The show portrays contrasting images from the calving grounds to the development that's occurred in Prudhoe Bay.
Lien drew a big laugh from the crowd with an audio sample of U.S. President George Bush stuttering through a speech dubbed over the call of an Arctic ptarmigan.
The show evolved out of something Lien and Madsen had started in 1992 called the Annual Wildlands Concerts.
They'd go into threatened habitat and record sounds and images and assemble them for presentations throughout the Yukon.
"We try to educate people in a way that makes them feel the essence of the place, not just through words on paper," Lien said. "We try to use images and music to inspire people."
In 1998, ANWR became the focus of the project that has since toured across the continent.
"We played some big theatres and halls with a nine-piece performance ensemble, huge projection screens and surround sound that we hung in the theatre for environmental effects," he said.
The scaled-down show that was presented in Inuvik allows the group to reach out to the smaller communities.
By the end of the presentation at Samuel Hearne, the audience learned that the amendment to President Bush's Energy Securities Act was defeated.
"That's good news, but it doesn't mean it's safe," Mather said. "They're going to try again next year and the year after," he said. "The reason it's not going to happen is because your parents and your elders and people around here have been fighting to protect that area."
"It's important that you carry on that fight." Lien said the Caribou Commons Project is organizing a march to the U.S. capital from Seattle, Washington beginning Aug. 24.
"We know a lot of people who want to support the project but don't know how they can participate," Lien said. "The Walk to Washington will give them a way."
He says they have already seen the project branching out to include walks from all over America.
"There is another parallel walk starting from the northeast and another one coming up from Florida -- this could become like a spider web all converging on D.C.," he said.
The timing of the walk was planned to bring awareness to the project before Americans go to the polls.
"We're scheduled to get into Washington in November -- right before the Senate elections," he said. "It's a three-month human migration."
For more information on the project check the web site at: www.cariboucommons.com
