LOSING GROUND

Short Synopsis

Above the Arctic Circle, a poor indigenous village that is swiftly eroding due to global warming is short-listed as one of Alaska’s most endangered communities.

Description/Treatment

Nearly a century ago, Alaska Native villagers living on the North Arctic island of Kivalina began to notice their shoreline was shrinking. Decades later, a modern-day Inupiaq society of hunters and mothers, preachers and teenagers have inherited this erosion problem--only now--the situation has intensified by an accelerated rise in warming ocean waters. Time on the vanishing island is quickly running out and that means the impoverished community of Kivalina must move, but where and with what money?

LOSING GROUND is the compelling documentary film of an indigenous “family” and their perpetual hunt for a better life in the political world of climate change. For more than two years, American Indian filmmaker Jenni Monet immerses herself into the daily routine of struggle and survival nearly 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Kivalina. Physically isolated from the Outside world, it’s where internet technology, cell phones and satellite TV have oddly substituted for some of the most basic needs like running water, adequate health care, and jobs. In her pursuit to better understand the complex dilemma dealt to a community of 400 Alaska Natives, Monet learns that the sea and its storms are merely the backdrop to a seemingly endless series of battles--with poverty, with sickness, with overcrowding, with addiction, with lost culture, with lost hope. And as the village attempts the impossible, to stop the sea using man-made walls; and promotes the improbable, by launching a historic climate change lawsuit against the planet’s most powerful energy lobby; the real leviathan comes in confronting the maddening maze of government bureaucracy that has exhausted community endurance for the relocation relief process. In this endearing human portrait of contemporary Inupiat life, Monet helps expand today’s discussion about race, class and climate change in America today by bringing an unrepresented history and current quandary of US-indigenous relations to the fore. The pieces of the film also add to the greater whole on why Alaska Native communities are more than a cultural antique--but in crisis of vanishing--and reminds us why we should care of its passing from the American landscape.