America Reframed

Children Of The Arctic

Children of the Arctic is a year-in-the-life portrait of Native Alaskan teenagers coming of age in Barrow, Alaska - the northern-most community of the United States. For these teenagers growing up has become a little more complicated than it was for their ancestors who originally named this place "Ukpiagvik" ("where we hunt snowy owls"). They are the twenty-first century descendants of a culture that has endured for millennia on this isolated, but rapidly changing tundra. The harvest of the agvik (bowhead whale) remains the heart of their culture - in the fall, motor boats and modern methods are used, whereas, in the spring, whaling crews use the umiaq (a seal-skin boat made by hand) and ancient traditional methods.