Nunakka / My Two Lands
Location
John Q. Imholte Hall, Room #113
Event Website
https://2026undergraduateresearchsy.sched.com/event/2Ix8G/nunakka-my-two-lands
Start Date
15-4-2026 3:00 PM
End Date
15-4-2026 3:30 PM
Description
Land holds a lot of complex meaning, and to many Indigenous peoples has in itself an important voice in the construction of history and place. Discussions of the history of the grounds of the University of Minnesota Morris tend to be truncated and unemotional. My goal with this project is to express the ephemeral and emotional aspects of history and place as related to Indigenous ontological constructions of land. To express these complicated truths, I am developing a short autoethnographic film in Iñupiat depicting Morris territory. In an accompanying methodological and theoretical I argue for the legitimacy of art-as-method and for the role of land itself as a participant in anthropological work. By doing so, I contextualize the film within visual anthropology. I focus on the land occupied by UMN Morris, and speak the language of my ancestral lands of Nome, AK, because I am suspended between these places. This tension is essential to my identities and understanding of land-as-place. In this multivocal and multimedia project, I surface these complexities, providing an entry point for non-natives, non-anthropologists, and non-academics to engage with place, identity, and the voice living in places in both art and academic mediums.
Publication Date
2026
Nunakka / My Two Lands
John Q. Imholte Hall, Room #113
Land holds a lot of complex meaning, and to many Indigenous peoples has in itself an important voice in the construction of history and place. Discussions of the history of the grounds of the University of Minnesota Morris tend to be truncated and unemotional. My goal with this project is to express the ephemeral and emotional aspects of history and place as related to Indigenous ontological constructions of land. To express these complicated truths, I am developing a short autoethnographic film in Iñupiat depicting Morris territory. In an accompanying methodological and theoretical I argue for the legitimacy of art-as-method and for the role of land itself as a participant in anthropological work. By doing so, I contextualize the film within visual anthropology. I focus on the land occupied by UMN Morris, and speak the language of my ancestral lands of Nome, AK, because I am suspended between these places. This tension is essential to my identities and understanding of land-as-place. In this multivocal and multimedia project, I surface these complexities, providing an entry point for non-natives, non-anthropologists, and non-academics to engage with place, identity, and the voice living in places in both art and academic mediums.
https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/urs_event/2026/oralpresentations/2