NMAI Environmental Film Festival

National Museum of the American Indian Hosts Environmental Film Festival Screening and Global Conversation

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian hosts filmmakers Zacharias Kunuk and Ian Mauro for the U.S. premiere of Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change—the world’s first Inuktitut-language documentary on global warming—Sunday, March 27, at 2 p.m. in the museum’s Rasmuson Theater.

This groundbreaking documentary captures the voices of those who are often overlooked in the discussion on climate change: the indigenous communities that are disproportionately affected by it. Inuit elders recall observations and customs passed down through centuries of storytelling and how their traditional ways of life are threatened by a warming Arctic. Their insight challenges mainstream accounts and reveals why climate change has become a human-rights issue for Native people.
The screening will be simultaneously broadcast online at www.isuma.tv, an independent network of Native and Inuit media, and at AmericanIndian.si.edu/webcasts. Mauro will attend the screening and Kunuk will be available via Skype for a discussion afterward moderated by a staff member of the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center. The filmmakers will answer questions from viewers worldwide via the museum’s Facebook and Twitter.

Inuit Knowledge will also open the 15th annual Native American Film + Video Festival at the museum’s Manhattan branch, the George Gustav Heye Center. The festival, which runs from Thursday, March 31, to Sunday, April 3, celebrates the creative energy of Native American directors, producers, writers, actors, musicians, cultural activists and all the others who support their endeavors. This year’s festival will focus on the theme of “Mother Earth in Crisis,” and will feature more than 100 participants from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Suriname and the United States. For more information on the festival, e-mail FVC@si.edu.

For more information on the museum’s spring programs, visit www.AmericanIndian.si.edu.