Walking In Two Worlds: A Tale of Alaska’s Tongass

NARRATED BY PETER COYOTE

Worlds collide in the Tongass National Forest, the largest temperate rainforest on earth, when the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) turns tribes into corporations and sparks a lengthy logging frenzy.

Walking in Two Worlds journeys to the Tongass to reveal its splendor and shed light on the devastation and division resulting from the Settlement Act. The Tongass is rich with old-growth trees, salmon-filled rivers and wildlife. Alaska’s Tlingit and Haida Indian tribes have depended on this forest for their culture and survival.

The Settlement Act resulted from a massive collision of Washington bullying, big business and Native American naiveté. The result was a swath of tragic scars in a magnificent forest wilderness. Natives struggled to adapt to new roles as corporate shareholders.

For one Native brother and sister, this transition divided them. While the brother led the native corporation's clear-cut logging, his sister became a fierce leader in the battle to stop the destruction. Then a life-threatening illness drew them back together as one sibling offered the other a life-saving gift.

A story of division and redemption plays out showing the possibility of healing both the forest and the native community.

Preview link available upon request. Contact support@videoproject for more information

A Film by Bo Boudart

62 Minutes

Scene Selection • Closed Captioned

Grades 9 – Adult

Item #: WAL-109

Journeys to the Tongass to reveal its splendor and shed light on the devastation and division resulting from the Settlement Act

Starting at $89

Licensing Options

K-12 Schools, Public Libraries, Community Groups -$89 K-12 DVD + Digital File - $139 Colleges, Businesses, Institutions: DVD - $300 Colleges (DVD with Digital Site License) - $400 Community Screenings: Please Complete 'Host a Screening' Form found on top menu bar K-12 School District pricing available. Please inquire at [email protected]

Reviews and Festivals

"Highly Recommended. Editor's Choice. Best of 2015. Engaging, thought provoking, troubling, inspiring, and hopeful. One can’t but help wonder if there is a way to respect nature, live in harmony with the environment, maintain cultural traditions from the past, and embrace modern society. You will wrestle with this yourself as you learn about a chapter of US history that is rarely told."
— Science Books and Films (AAAS)

“Tells the story of the ANCSA in all of its complexity and diversity. The film succeeds by tracing the impacts of ANCSA through the lives of real people. At the same time it illustrates beautifully how indigenous values…have helped to overcome these early frictions to insure that new institutions more consciously align with old institutions.”
— Thomas F. Thornton, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor & Senior Research Fellow, University of Oxford

"Highly Recommended. Exceptional viewing for wildlife activists, contemporary American historians, high school and college students, and humanitarians. Forces viewers to consider the meanings behind the traditional, the contemporary, the desire for economic progress, and the act of 'selling out' ..."
— Educational Media Reviews Online

"A moving film about the complexities of native control in a world of aggressive industrial influences. Use with environmental classes and in indigenous and anthropological studies."
— School Library Journal

"A fine bit of filmmaking, clearly and powerfully illustrating the impact and (presumably) unintended consequences of privatization and corporatization of indigenous lands and even the people themselves. Students and the general public will understand it and be moved by it, while scholars will find their theories and concepts forcefully represented by it."
— Anthropology Review Database

“The film reflects the hearts and souls of the people who live close to the land -- and what the true cost has been by embracing western economic values.”
— Roby Koolyeikh Littlefield, Sitka, Alaska

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