The Gwich Documentary Analysis

In my opinion, the most similar story to solar storms within the film, homeland: four portraits of native action, was the portrait of the Gwich’in tribe in Alaska. The Gwich’in tribe, shown in the film, pride themselves on their traditions including their connection to the porcupine caribou that live within the arctic national wildlife refuge. This area is so important to this type of caribou as it is the only area in which the caribou will breed. As the Gwich’in state within their website “Big oil companies and some members of the U.S. Congress want to drill in the coastal plain which would put the future of the Porcupine Caribou Herd at risk.” The Gwich’in claim to be spiritually connected with the caribou, their livelihood and culture are

In solar storms the threat to their community and culture is the construction of multiple dams close to their homes, the majority of the tribe members that live around Bush, Dora-rouge, Agnes, and Angel all feel a deep connection to the land and especially the waters surrounding them. Angel states “Water ran all across the earths surfaces in every way it could --- I understood this water to be the source, the origin of land” (224). The construction of the dam was changing the structure of the land and water surrounding it, “With more than one dam being built, much land was now submerged, an entire river to the north had been flooded and drowned. Other places once filled with water, were dry” (205). I think the destruction of water for “the beautiful ones” in Solar Storms is an example of what would be to come for the Gwich’in if they lost their caribous. Angel recalls that “Dora-rouge had done home to die in a place that existed in her mind as one thing; in reality it was something altogether different. The animals were no longer there, nor were the people or clans, the landmarks, not even the enormous sturgeons they’d called giants; and not the water they once swam in. Most of the trees had become nothing more than large mounds of sawdust” (225). With the removal of what’s most sacred in their culture, the whole society could potentially collapse and break