Stories of Our Landscapes
July 11 & 12, 2025
Join the McCarthy-Kennicott community in celebrating the stories of our landscape through weaving diverse socio-environmental perspectives by featured panelists and community members.
Day One:
July 11 @ 6:30pm - Kennecott Recreation Hall
Changes in the Land, Panel-led Community Discussion
Moderated by Howard Mozen
Joined by the Wrangell Mountains Field Studies Students
Join us for a panel-led community discussion about the changes unfolding across the McCarthy-Kennicott landscape. We will consider how environmental changes, as well as the evolving impacts of tourism and business, shape our experiences of place and identity. This will be an open, community-based discussion where all attendees are welcome to share their voices.
We seek to hold inclusive discussions, and honor the diverse voices of area residents who have observed our landscapes for generations. All attendee voices and landscape observations are welcome during the discussion. We want to hear from you!
We welcome panelists:
Stephens Harper, Mark Vail, Robin Mayo, Danny Rosenkrans, and Joey Boots-Ebenfield
Day Two:
July 12 @ 6:30pm - Kennecott Recreation Hall
UNEARTH Film Screening and Panel-led Discussion
Join us for a film screening of the UNEARTH documentary, which discusses the community activism and socio-environmental implications of the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay.
Following the screening, we will hear from panelists, representing the Copper River Watershed Project and Trout Unlimited. We will explore how the film’s themes of land stewardship and community-based responsibility extend to the McCarthy-Kennicott landscape, and how to get involved.
We welcome panelists:
Colleen Merrick (CRNA), Amy Scudder (CRWP), and Tica Drury (Trout Unlimited)
About UNEARTH Film
2024, 93 minutes
“This film reminds us of the promise that activism holds in the face of fatigue and disillusionment.”
— Erin Brockovich, in Variety
Directed by John Hunter Nolan
Co-directed by Auberin Strickland & Dunedin Strickland
Executive Producer Erin Brockovich
Produced by Auberin & Dunedin Strickland, John Hunter Nolan, Gina Papabeis, Eyal Levy
UNEARTH takes place on Alaska’s Bristol Bay—a region that supplies half the world’s wild-caught sockeye salmon and sustains a 10,000-year Indigenous legacy—a proposed copper mine looms, which would be North America’s largest, threatening to upend both ecosystem and culture. Aube and Dune Strickland spend summers aboard their fishing boats, sustainably harvesting half the world’s wild-caught sockeye amid one of the planet’s last pristine watersheds. Christina and AlexAnna Salmon carry on their Yup’ik people’s 10,000-year legacy of stewarding this land and its fishery—twin pillars of culture and livelihood now facing existential threat.
Though Pebble representatives arrive with envelopes of cash and big promises—insisting that fishing and mining can coexist—the siblings quickly uncover a web of lies and back-door deals that ignore reputable science and dismiss community interests. To see the stakes in action, Aube and Dune trade their fishing boat for a camper van and tour mining sites across the American West, meeting residents who live in the shadow of active and abandoned mines. Their journey illuminates the mining industry’s systemic recklessness—rooted in colonial extraction, boundless capitalism, and deceptive politics—and lays bare how a single tailings-pond failure could poison watersheds, fragment wildlife habitat, and shatter ecosystems built over millennia.
Back in Bristol Bay, Christina and AlexAnna mobilize grassroots resistance. With their homeland, livelihoods, and Indigenous culture on the line, they organize community forums, petitions, and public demonstrations—harnessing solidarity to strengthen democracy and challenge the status quo. Alongside emerging leaders experimenting with regenerative solutions, their tireless activism offers a beacon of hope, proving that united communities can turn back the forces of systemic destruction and protect a way of life for generations to come.