REgeneration Zine: Returning To Balance

E R egener

ative

conomy

N O I T A R E N E G

ue! s s I t Firs

rom F n o i licat tive b u P h ut lec o l Y o C t s n ivi tio An Act ust Transi J Alaska ance l a B o ing T 2 n r u t e R 02 Fall 2

In This Issue...

It's Time To Rise Up

2

Understanding Just Transition in Alaska

3

Welp: Climate Change and Arctic Identities by Michaela Stith

5

Sovereign Sun by Grace Moore

11

Go Back Home by Zee The Artivist

13

Healing Myself Heals The Land by Brittany Woods-Orrison

15

Protect The Herring by Jessi Thornton

17

God Is A Moshpit by Sean Enfield

19

Cover Image: Michaela Stith, Brittany Woods-Orrison, & Gunnar Keizer at the Alaska Botanical Garden. Photo by Glo Chitwood / Alaska Just Transition Collective.

1

REgeneration is a publication by Alaska Just Transition Collective. Edited & designed by Glo Chitwood / Just Transition Communications Coordinator.

Alaskan Artists...

IT'S TIME TO RISE UP. In Alaska, art has been a way to share stories for thousands of years. We build a shared vision for healing, transition, and justice when we share art. The dominant narrative in colonized media is often untruthful and teaches us that we are helpless and hopeless in our fight for community sovereignty and equitable transition.

THE NARRATIVE IS SHIFTING. In Alaska, youth voices are powerful and demand to be heard.

As we build pathways toward a Just Transition in Alaska, our collective, organized voice is more powerful than any of our voices alone. There is no one way to do this work; creating art is a key example of how we organize.

Regenerative economies 1 and re-framing our definition of economy is crucial to building a better system of care and management of our home, rooted in values that already exist within Alaskan communities.

REgeneration is a youth-led narrative publication that highlights the Just Transition Framework through art. Our goal is to build community, amplify youth narratives, and illustrate how art creates thriving regenerative economies in Alaska.

Image: Sean Enfield at the Alaska Just Transition Summit. Photo by Ben Boettger / AKPIRG. 1. justtransitionak.org/regeneconzine

2

Understanding Just Transition In Alaska What is the Alaska Just Transition Collective?

The Alaska Just Transition Collective is an intersectional group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous led regional organizations who collaborate through an aligned vision for the future. We recognize that justice in a transition requires the full range of Alaskan experience and knowledge. Amplifying Black and Brown knowledge and diverse communities is essential to our work.

By building a practice of acknowledging the original stewards of these lands, Alaska Native peoples, we also uplift a knowledge system that has deep relationship to the lands and waters. We stand together in community to uplift a narrative of future that works with and for all of us, tapping into a full spectrum of knowledge and ways of life. With this vision, the Collective: 2

The Collective is: Native Movement 3, Alaska Public Interest Research Group 4, The Alaska Center 5, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition 6, Native Conservancy 7, and Alaska Community Action On Toxics .8

Creates collaborative spaces to transition communities from an economy based on extraction and exploitation to one based in care.

Builds networks of local leaders to foster collaboration on a large scale.

Cultivates a broad movement to connect different change-makers and move communities toward an economic, social, and political transition.

3

2. justtransitionak.org/collective; 3. nativemovement.org; 4. akpirg.org; 5. akcenter.org; 6. fairbanksclimateaction.org; 7. nativeconservancy.org; 8. akaction.org

What is the Just Transition Framework?

The Just Transition principles exist with the understanding that the problems we face (climate change, health disparities, and worker exploitation, for example) are connected.

Therefore, the tactics we use to solve problems must encompass these connected systems.

“Just Transition” is another way of saying “fair and equitable shift.” The Just Transition framework is a set of guidelines for communities to shift away from extractive economies and toward regenerative economies.

The word “economy” means “care and management of home”.

“Extractive economies” create jobs and systems in our home that take from lands, waters, workers, and families without giving back in return. There is a lack of balance in extractive economies, which is why transitioning away from industries that deplete lands and cultures is important.

“Just Transition strategies were first forged by labor unions and environmental justice groups, rooted in low-income communities of color, who saw the need to phase out the industries that were harming workers, community health and the planet; and at the same time provide just pathways for workers to transition to other jobs. It was rooted in workers defining a transition away from polluting industries in alliance with fence line and frontline communities.”

- Climate Justice Alliance

“Regenerative economies” show us how care and management of home can be balanced. Resources and labor are sustainable because of this balance. In regenerative economies, industries value the offerings of lands, waters, and people and give back to them without stripping our home of resources and affecting communities negatively for profit.

Equitable regenerative economies have existed in communities of color in Alaska for millenia, so we use the phrase “Remembering Forward” as a reminder that the solutions to economic crises already exist within the fabric of our communities. We must lay the groundwork for a fair transition to an economy that cares for communities and the land.

TRANSITION IS INEVITABLE. JUSTICE IS NOT. Photos by Always Indigenous Media; Ben Boettger / AKPIRG; Glo Chitwood / Alaska Just Transition Collective

4

Welp: Climate Change and Arctic Identities [Excerpt] Michaela Stith When the sun came back to the Arctic in 2019, my desperate feelings of hopelessness faded into the horizon like the rain clouds of November and December. The many compounding feet of fluffy snowflakes amplified the sun’s light and the shimmering highlights of the ocean. I saw people carrying skis around, studs crunching ice under boots, young couples holding hands under the grand holiday lights strung up downtown. The winter wonderland set a trance upon Tromsø.

I took advantage of the beautiful time with Michelle, an Inuk researcher from Canada who interned at the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat, and Chilon, a friend from the Congo who moved to Norway when he was nine years old. Our friendships entailed cultural differences but, in my opinion, our motley crew shared more similarities than we even imagined at the time.

When I first introduced Chilon and Michelle, we drove north along the coast of Tromsdalen until Tromsøya’s city lights faded to the horizon.

Past 8:00 p.m, the sun had already set two hours before. Chilon, Michelle, and I ventured out to see the aurora borealis. Chilon’s hands rested on the steering wheel while he remarked on the last time he drove out here.

“I wanted to see the little towns… Tønsvik, Oldervik, Breivik.” He glanced at Michelle and me, crowded into the passenger and middle seat in the truck’s front seat. "You know vik means bay in Norwegian.” I imagined Chilon in the scarf, beanie, and peacoat he often wore,

5

towering over the locals in those coastal towns at over two meters tall, broad at the shoulders, and skin deep as mahogany. He guffawed. “You should have seen their faces when they heard me speaking Norwegian.

No one could look away from my beautiful face.”

Chilon asked Michelle why she came to Norway. At the Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat, she was most interested in the use of Indigenous knowledge in the Arctic Council’s Research.

“Studying biology at university for the past four years, I noticed a lot of things that I learned from growing up on the land, and traditional knowledge in general, were missing from the curriculum,” Michelle said, warming her hands in front of the car’s vent.

With two Inuit parents, Michelle used to go hunting with her family. All the cousin children would take turns practicing with bows, and every morning on Canada’s Thanksgiving weekend she and her cousin were tasked to hunt for partridges. Partridges are the same bird as ptarmigans, the Alaska state bird, and they’re known for being so daft that you could walk up to one and catch it with your bare hands. But instead of a partridge, she and her cousin always came back with a bucket of blueberries or raspberries.

“I’m tough as nails now, but I was kind of squeamish as a kid,” Michelle laughed. “My mom used to tease, ‘She’s more of a gatherer than a hunter."

Back home, Michelle led a team in documenting photos, traditional names, and stories about birds in Nunatsiavut, the very first Inuit land claims area established in Canada. Nunatsiavummiut achieve a level of self-determination under the Nunatsiavut government: it is still a part of Newfoundland and Labrador government, but has the ability to make laws about health, education, justices, community governance, culture and language in the region.

Michelle knew firsthand that such arrangements had their limits. On a family vacation in Alberta, Michelle’s family had visited the “Badlands,”

6

where the Canadian government did not allow humans to touch the ancient rock formations.

But Michelle still loves to scream, “I’m from Labrador!” from the rooftops, and her Inuit culture was just as important to her dad. Her dad gathered loose rocks and stacked them atop one another, forming two legs at the base, a torso and a head to build an inukshuk and communicate with other Inuit travelers. When environmental managers caught him, they nearly called in RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to arrest him.

It is important to note that the RCMP was originally founded to enforce the transfer of Indigenous territories to the federal government by relocating people, forcing them to stay on reservations during famines, and warring with people who did not submit. In Canada today, the RCMP kills Indigenous people at ten times the rate of white people.

Working at the Arctic Council, Michelle and I were able to meet Sámi, Dene (Athabaskan), Unangax (Aleut), Gwich’in, and Inuit from Greenland and to Russia who shared similar experiences. They were fighting to practice their culture in their homelands, to include their multigenerational knowledge in Arctic biodiversity management and climate change action, and to have some control over the lands they always stewarded. And while people in the Arctic share these experiences, they are linked to global systems of colonialism and exploitative capitalism.

“What about you, Chilon?” she asked. “What brought you here?”

“I’m from the Congo,” he answered, eyes on the road. With one hand, he gestured toward the homes and peaceful scene outside the truck. "It's one of the poorest and richest countries in the world. I wish my country would be like others, but I don’t think I will see it in my lifetime. Powers in the West will leave us in chaos to keep control over the minerals especially.”

From outside the Congo, Chilon only saw media that depicted Africans

7

as dumb, poor, or bloodthirsty. In this Arctic setting, his name, manner of speaking, and physical presence were striking. At the clubs, drunk Norwegian boys called him names, trying to test him or pick a fight. It seemed that Norwegians would do anything to make him fade into the background. Chilon continued, “My proudest achievement is knowing myself and my roots as a Black man.”

The refugee crisis and postcolonial warfare that brought Chilon to Norway can be traced back to the eve of Congolese independence in 1960. When Chilon was barely a figment of his parents’ imagination, a young leader named Patrice Lumumba gained a large following in the Congo. He advocated for pan-African independence among the many Black peoples living under Belgium’s violent, capitalist rule. For more than two hundred years, Belgians had extracted raw minerals and free, forced labor from the previous stewards of that land. During the Cold War, the United States sought strategic control over raw minerals across the world, and Belgium was convinced that the United States was planning to usurp their colonial control. When Patrice Lumumba came to power and declared intentions to liberate Congo from all colonizers, the US and Belgium both developed plans to assassinate a leader whom Chilon’s parents supported.

In one of the most important assassinations of the twentieth century, a competing Congolese political party allied with the United States and Belgium killed Lumumba just seven months after independence. The event rocked the new nation, and its government has never since gained stability. Today, American companies still profit from resources extracted by armed factions in the Congo—companies only need to report which products incorporate minerals that are not “DRC conflict free.”

“We are living in a world where people are like wolves,” Chilon said, eyes fiery. With only the passing streetlights periodically illuminating the car, I could still see how deeply personal this history was to Chilon.

Deep lines formed canyons between his brows as he finished: “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”

Those inequities—disproportionate control over land, resources and

8

power—are the root of environmental injustice. Because many Indigenous and Black peoples have been displaced and our lands dispossessed, we don’t have economic or political control over our environments. This is also why we see unfair wealth in the hands of white, western people.

From Canada to Alaska to the Congo, white decision-makers excluded Indigenous peoples from decision-making processes about their own homelands. They used assimilation projects to separate us from the very core of our identities. And today, Black and Indigenous peoples are still not adequately represented in decision-making bodies or provided rightful control over their land and resources. We know the colonial foundation for our current state was laid centuries ago. It may be centuries more before it disappears. In the meantime, we all need recharge. Personally, I have to remind myself that I am worthy of laughter, relaxation, and joy.

Michelle rolled down the window and gasped, “Wait! Let’s park.”

We climbed down from the truck. I lifted my hood and zipped the parka, which made me look like a jumbo-sized marshmallow, Chilon wrapped his scarf around his face, while Michelle donned a windbreaker and not much else.

Directly above us, green flaming tendrils rippled and whirled across the star-speckled sky. Wind whipped around our heads while all three of us stood open-mouthed, gaping at the magnificent view. The northern lights moved like a dance ribbon, rippling back and forth in waves.

Then parts of the ribbon would branch off, creating a chorus of lights the brightest electric green you can imagine. High up north and a bit outside the city, Troms was one of the most accessible places worldwide to experience such a show.

"I’ve never seen them this clear and crazy,” Michelle remarked. I hadn’t either; back at home in Anchorage, the aurora borealis was rarely visible because of the city’s light pollution. It was moments like this that inspired me.

9

One of the biggest misconceptions in our world is that current inequalities are just destiny; that individualism and greed are human nature. I fully believe that we are capable of transitioning to new types of economies and governance that treat Black and Indigenous peoples equitably. As humans move into the future, we need to: Advance community control over resources, especially by redistributing extreme wealth.

Re-localize production and consumption.

Move from militarized police states to governments of deep democracy, where realities on the margins of society are as important to decision-making as majority rule.

Retain, restore, and develop cultures and traditions, particularly of Black and Indigenous peoples.

Restore ecological balance by replacing the colonial, consumerist mindsets with reciprocity and sacredness.

Of course, we aren’t taught this in schools. We need to begin by learning the histories of the places we live and grew up in. Through our relationships with other Black and Indigenous peoples, we can build even more knowledge about the systems of oppression that connect us.

Michaela Stith is the Climate Justice Director at Native Movement and a Black, mixed-race Alaskan born and raised in Dena’ina Ełnena. She has traveled to all eight Arctic countries working with frontline Indigenous communities about the impacts of climate change. For one and half years Michaela worked at the Arctic Council Indigenous Peoples’ Secretariat in Tromsø, Norway. This excerpt from her debut book, Welp: Climate Change and Arctic Identities, is set in early 2019 in Tromsø—660 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

10

Sovereign Sun Grace Moore My name is Grace Moore (she/her) and my Yup’ik name is Agnivan. I am a queer artist who specializes in acrylic painting, wood burning, and beading. I was born and raised on Dena’ina Ełnena and left the state to pursue my degree in education on Nuwuvi Southern Paiute Lands (Las Vegas). I find much of my inspiration for my art and creations from my Yup’ik culture and the beautiful lands of Alaska.

"When I think of returning to balance, I imagine waters filled with fish, migratory paths protected, Native lands acknowledged, and our wildlife abundant. To me a way to achieve that is Native Sovereignty. Sovereignty is not only the freedom to self-govern, but also the duty to protect the land we are on and keep the world in balance. This is shown in my piece with Akerta (the sun), bearing her tunniit (traditional tattoos) watching over the lands, waters, and animals. She is the Sovereign Sun."

11

"This piece is a wood burning of a mountainous Alaska vista and a meandering river. Above the mountains there is Akerta (the sun in Yugtun) bearing traditional Inuit tattoos (seen on the forehead, cheeks, and chin). This creation was done on a piece of Japanese Beetle Wood which is known for its darker cross sections seen in the sky. It is finished with a poly-urenthe gloss.

The piece measures 14.5” across."

12

Go Back Home Zee The Artivist Aloha! I’m ‘Zee the Artivist’!

BIPOC artist. Just turned 24. Born & raised in Hawaii, I’ve been in Alaska since 2015, so now I’m a full time mom raising a son in Anchorage, Alaska. I always grew up with a love of art and it being my anchor point of who I am. I truly bloomed from being an artist when I did my first ever art showcase at Covenant House Alaska First Fridays, where homeless youth express themselves through any medium of art. Since 2018, I have hung my art in tattoo shops, coffee shops, and dispensaries. I believe I am an activist as much as I am an artist. They are one of the same coin.

"We grow up, and we find the world isn’t what we feel like it should be. The first heartbreak of our existence is that revelation. With a heavy heart we get stuck in periods where we can’t find ourselves. Existing can feel like a burden with everything outside trying to tell us how to be inside; what to be inside; who to be inside. These things alter the reality of ourselves. They impact us in ways in which we become just like the outside of us. Cruel. Shattering. Split. Frustrated.

Most times lost. Experiencing life gifts us things that are beautiful but also gives us things we don’t ask for. The child in us becomes hurt, reminded of that first heartbreak. The first one always changes us. It shakes the world we know, and our inner child responds."

13

"This image represents the understanding that to return to balance is to find out what nurtures us. Nurture the hurt that yearns to be bigger on the outside. To draw out the knives that were put in our backs. To give ourselves grace as much as we easily punish ourselves. To return to balance is to return to our inner child.

What balances giving love is to receive it. When we do this, we don’t just return, but we welcome the balance that heals our inner child. Find the balance you deserve."

14

Healing Myself Heals The Land Brittany Woods-Orrison Brittany is Koyukon Dené from Rampart, Alaska, a village along the Yukon River. She grew up spending summers in the village learning how to live off the land with no running water and spending the winter in the city of Fairbanks going to school. For high school she decided to attend a state-run boarding school in Sitka, Alaska with students from every region. After having a successful student athlete career in high school, she continued this journey with the women’s wrestling team at Menlo College where she earned a psychology degree. Brittany ended up in a culinary career in the Bay Area of California post-graduation during the pandemic.

Brittany saved money from this job to go on a year-long roadtrip across the country to reconnect with relatives, uplift Indigenous stories, and learn about land and waters.

During this roadtrip, Brittany secured a career in telecommunications as a broadband specialist for Native Movement and Alaska Public Interest Research Group. Brittany has since returned to Alaska to champion digital equity, rejoin community, return to culture, and reconnect with living off the land.

"From 2021-2022 I went on a road trip journey around Turtle Island with the goals of reconnecting with relatives as well as learning about the lands, waters, stewards, and myself. "

15

Watch The Film: Click the "Play" button or go to bit.ly/healingfilm

Healing Myself Heals The Land

This piece is currently featured, alongside others, at the Anchorage Museum.

Stories For Climate Justice is on exhibit through Winter 2023.

16

Protect The Herring Jessi Thornton Jessica Thornton (she/they) is an artist, printmaker, designer and arts organizer. She was born in Ȧbo, Finland, raised in the Netherlands, and she currently lives on Ahtna and Dena’ina lands in Palmer, Alaska. Her art practice has evolved from her many years as a community organizer and is deeply tied to the social and environmental justice movements that she supports. Alongside her personal art practice, she also works as the Arts in Action Coordinator for Native Movement, where she focuses on building capacity for Arts in Action across Alaska.

For more information about Native Movement, please visit: nativemovement.org. For more information about Jessica's personal work, please visit jessicathorntondesigns@gmail.com or her instagram @jessicathorntondesigns.

17

"I began this drawing on the plane back to Anchorage after a week in Sheet'ka with Native Movement. We were generously hosted by Louise Brady and the Herring Protectors–an Indigenous-led grassroots group focused on protecting herring and the culture and communities that are so deeply tied to this keystone species. One of the evenings we were blessed with a sunset boat trip with a view of grey whales playing beside our boat and hundreds of humpback whale spouts along the horizon. A few days later, as we walked along the beach, I found washed up kelp completely covered in herring eggs - a delicious gift that I had had the chance to try just the night before during the Yaaw Koo.éex'. My illustration features all of these things–the herring eggs on the kelp, the tiny but so important herring, a beautiful humpback whale dancing in the water, and of course the iconic volcano that you can see from town."

" When I thought about the theme of this zine–returning to balance–I thought about this image and its representation of that balance. While the whale takes up the majority of the space, the real subject of this piece is the herring. And just like the herring, we all have our unique role to play in the movement to return to balance.

When we work collectively and in right relationship with each other and these lands and waters, we can make a huge impact together."

18

God Is A Moshpit

[Excerpt]

Sean Enfield I was born a punk. Twisting and shoving until I coiled the umbilical cord around my neck—a homegrown noose. Eventually, the doctors stopped asking my mom to “Push! Push!” and requested scalpels. When they finally untangled the mess I’d made, my body looked so blue my mom thought I’d already died. She is Black; my dad, white. But my body looked alien upon birth—bluish purple, the color of a drowning victim.

Since then, I’ve spent many years in that pursuit of positioning myself in the world. Churches call such a narrative, “testimony.” Only, the church version is told in a straight line, stretching its way from sin to savior and resolving with a conventional, Christian God. Because my family didn’t attend church until puberty had taken control of my body, my testimony has always been warped by anxious, agitated movement, and so my testimony must return to that memory of birth—a memory in which my body was almost annihilated by my own restless need to position myself.

In a mosh pit, I’m an unstable body. Shoving and stumbling across a venue. My center of gravity sits perched upon a seesaw. Everyone else moves with poise and grace; whereas, I fall out of chairs without any force but that of my own maladjusted equilibrium. I came to mosh pits in search of bodies who stumbled as gracelessly as mine. In the right crowds, the mosh pit is nonviolent—this collision of bodies. A testament to the different ways we move. Some say God provides balance, but I liken God to a moshpit, bodies convened in reverential movement. In the wrong crowd, however, the pit is chaos—demons exorcised in public. A testament to the toxicity festering in bodies who’ve never questioned their position in the world. Still, even amongst dancers known for ugly dancing, my lack of balance differentiates me from those in control of their fits. Other moshers flail with purpose; whereas, I stumble, tripping over my own left foot, and wait for other bodies to correct my course.

19

At the shows I frequented, I was either the only Black body or one of a few. White suburbanites, it turns out, have as much pent-up aggression as they have testimonies. Where could Black bodies mosh? Scanning white crowds with a handful other brown-skinned bodies sprinkled about like pepper over rice, I developed a keen eye for spotting other Black folks at rock concerts. Before the lights dimmed, we would exchange silent, knowing nods. Then, the band would take the stage and the mosh pit would mix us into the whiteness. My testimony was one of searching.

There are many complications in navigating life and in finding new metaphors for God, but spare me any metaphor that ignores the physical body or that suggests we all move the same along the same path. I prefer the Christ of the Trinity, God made manifest in a body. I like to imagine him pre-Messiah when he was in his twenties, bumping awkwardly into other bodies as he sought his place in a crowd. Then, he died, rose again, and became spirit, and unless you’re eating transubstantiated communion wafers, we’ll have to remember His physical body some other way. The world will never be balanced, and so religion prescribes a semblance of balance.

Many religions, though, are unbalanced and stilted in the makeup of their crowds, and the rigidity of doctrine doesn’t help to orient oneself in a constantly shifting world. The mosh pit offers some exchange of physical energy and the occasional outstretched hand, but they, too, are often pasty white affairs, harboring men who act out a violence within and beyond.

I have long looked for a better way to move than that encouraged by angry men. I have longed for a space in which graceless people of color, gawky queers, clumsy minorities—all those hyperaware of their body in order to survive—can move with the reckless abandon of the white majority. A mosh pit for the bodies who've been mowed down in grocery aisles, bullied along sidewalks, trampled in parking lots. A mosh pit for the bodies who’ve been mowed down in grocery aisles, bullied along sidewalks, trampled in parking lots.

20

My testimony lingers in a very different pit, with a very different crowd, at a very different show. Nü Sensae, a Californian punk band fronted by a jean jacketed woman who sings with the ferocity of feral cat, had come to town to play one of my college town’s many hole-in-the-wall venues. Throughout the crowd were quite a few bodies that resembled mine, coalesced with many more that didn’t. We were all moving, we would all collide, we would all hoist somebody back to their feet. It was chaos, sure, but there among each other, we all knew where we needed to be at any given moment.

Atomic Tanlines, a local band, had opened the show, and during the headliner’s set, their frontwoman, Ally-Play-Nice—an arresting Black woman who wore her dense, dark afro like the heaviest of crowns—was down in the pit with the rest of us. She circled with potential energy, asserting the palpable presence of an often-disregarded body. She had nose ring with a chain that hung like a banner across her cheek connected to an earring, and she wore black contacts that when you stared into them, unlocked the mystery of a black hole.

When we collided, we exchanged testimonies, the narratives of our bodies’ pain. I knew, like me, she had also been poorly positioned in many a mostly white crowd, and yet she hadn’t withered. No, she had made herself a force. She had a highlighted streak of gold dyed into her afro, and when the light hit it, glowing down from that golden tip to her brown face, you knew some energy like God radiated off her body.

Someday, I’d learn about Black punk bands like Death who helped to pioneer the genre before their erasure by whitewashed music criticism, but in that crowd, I had already realized how much this, too, could belong to us. How radical, how liberating to assert our problems, our pains, our presence in this space so often typified by whiteness.

These were the testimonies I had longed for as I charted my own. Our bodies nodded at each other with a push and a shove and expressions radiated with gleeful sweat.

Ally had knocked my drunk ass over as guitars and drums and a powerful, high-pitched voice crescendo’d into a beautiful, dissonant

21

noise. Lying sprawled on my back, waiting for a hand to pull me back up, I better understood both my position in the world and God—I fall. Dim house lights illuminated the dust in the air.

A tangle of bodies danced overhead.

Sean Enfield is a writer and educator. He received his Bachelor’s in Literature at the University of North Texas and a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of AlaskaFairbanks. His writing grapples with race, education, culture, and identity, and has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered, Edible Alaska, and in a number of print and online literary journals, all of which can be found at seanenfield.com.

22

"What The Hands Do, The Heart Learns."

In this edition, Michaela Stith shows us how our intersectional identities create unique relationships with balance with an excerpt from their book, Welp: Climate Change and Arctic Identities. Grace Moore shares their balance with self and the land through a unique wood-burned piece entitled Sovereign Sun. Zee The Artivist invites us to look within ourselves to achieve harmony through their work: Go Back Home. With their film, Healing Myself Heals The Land, featured now through Winter 2023 at Stories For Climate Justice at the Anchorage Museum, Brittany Woods-Orrison weaves a narrative connecting balance with self, identity, and the land. Jessi Thornton’s artwork, Protect The Herring, challenges us to identify our role within the larger ecosystem. Sean Enfield shares a cathartic writing excerpt that captures a unique vision of balance with identity–God Is A Moshpit.

Thank you to the artists featured in this first issue of REgeneration.

How To Submit To feature your art in future REgeneration publications, follow along at justtransitionak.org and watch for announcements on our blog at bit.ly/akjtblog.