In 2008, the photographer Scott Sternbach travelled to the world’s southern extreme to create “Antarctic Souls,” a project that focussed on the thirty-odd researchers, biologists, cooks, pilots, and boat captains who are involved in a federal project to study the effects of global warming on the region. Sternbach, who currently serves as the director of photography at LaGuardia Community College, has long dreamed of visiting the far north as well. He recently got his chance thanks to a grant from CUNY, which sent him to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in Alaska, where he spent eight weeks photographing one of the state’s last living tribes, the Neetsaii Gwich’in.
“I was turned on to the idea of going to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to photograph back in the late seventies, during one of the heated political battles to open up the refuge to oil exploration,” Sternbach told me. “I felt then and now that the people most affected by these political actions are the local Native Americans who have lived and survived there for centuries, and that they should be given consideration, as should the wildlife and wilderness, which make up the refuge. Today the fragile Neetsaii Gwich’in culture is not only continually threatened by oil and mineral exploration, it is also caught in the crosshairs of the global warming crisis, as the polar regions warm and shift the natural balance that is crucial to the survival of all that is connected to ANWR.” Here’s a selection from Sternbach’s time among the Neetsaii Gwich’in.
