Kivalina Archive Will Show at the Global Forum on Migration and Development 11th Summit Meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco Dec. 5–7, 2018

Kivalina is a 500-person Iñupiaq community in Northwest Alaska. One hundred years ago the U.S. federal government forcibly settled the indigenous Kivalliñiġmiut on a barrier island, a fragment of their 2200 square mile traditional homeland. Today the village is increasingly threatened by climate change. Kivalina is pursuing community relocation as part of a comprehensive climate adaptation strategy that includes improvements to basic infrastructure and access to economic opportunities to support family livelihoods. The Kivalina Archive places the “official” history of relocation, such as government geological surveys, alongside a relocation history told by the Kivalina people, including their experiences of the relocation process as well as photographs and videos documenting their everyday lives. The Kivalina Archive also aims to underscore the importance of political dialogue, public record-keeping, and informed decision-making in community-based relocation planning efforts.
The Kivalina Archive will be featured at the 11th Annual Summit Meeting of the Global Forum on Migration and Development in Marrakesh, Morocco, December 5–7, 2018. The Archive will appear with several other artworks presented by DISPLACEMENT: Uncertain Journeys, a multi-year collaborative art project that cultivates artistic responses to disaster displacement. It supports the state-led Platform on Disaster Displacement through exhibitions that provide policymakers an opportunity to reflect upon and understand disaster displacement from a visual, experiential and emotional perspective. DISPLACEMENT hopes to create engaging spaces that inspire ideas that might not otherwise emerge around a conference table, and which keep the human story at the center of policy discussions. It also seeks to collaborate with artists from the most disaster-displacement-affected regions to share their work in policy discussions.

For the exhibition during Migration Week, DISPLACEMENT has selected artwork to highlight the ground-breaking inclusion of displacement related to natural hazards and climate change within the new Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.

An online launch of the Kivalina Archive will follow the Summit. Please check back on our website for the announcement.

Addressing Sanitation as a Climate Justice Issue

Addressing Sanitation as a Climate Justice Issue

Three Degrees Warmer received a small grant from the Environmental Projection Agency's Environmental Justice Grants Program to train residents in Kivalina on how to operate the Kivalina Biochar Reactor, a nonsewered, mobile sanitation system designed by...

Supreme Court Will Not Hear Public Trust Case

Supreme Court Will Not Hear Public Trust Case

Three Degrees Warmer, in partnership with Our Children’s Trust and its national network of legal supporters, filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court last month. Today, we learned that the Supreme Court declined to hear the case…

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *