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The Winds of Change podcast is centered on the people, places, history, and stories of Wyoming. We talk about identity, community, land, change and what it means to thrive in the state. How does someone identify with wide spaces and big personalities in small towns? Listen to folks from across our state share their connection to Wyoming and home. Or others who are pining for opportunities to invite change. And still, there are many voices who welcome the challenge. Making a life here means persistence. Some families have been here for generations and stay true, heads held high, through the blustery winters. Others are newcomers making sense of the unfamiliar winds the world continually blows in.
[00:00:00] Emy Digrappa: Welcome to Winds of Change. I am your host, Emy Digrappa. Winds of Change is brought to you by Wyoming Humanities. We are celebrating Native Voices and today my special guest is Alan Bradley She is from the tribe of Lingít from the snow covered slopes of coastal mountains to the shimmering waters of the Salish sea.
[00:00:24] Ellen Bradley is carving a path that honors tradition science and story. She is a skier scientist and filmmaker. Ellen's connection to the land runs deep. Her journey blends traditional ecological knowledge with modern science using storytelling to amplify indigenous voices. Visions for the future.
[00:00:49] Join us as we explore the power of her self-determination through her eyes. Welcome Ellen. Thank you Emy So let's talk about where you grew up. 'cause I think that is so interesting. And the Lingít Tribe. Tribe, it's Lingít. Lingít. Oh my gosh. Okay. Lingít, right? Lingít Clink it. Yeah, clink it. Okay. I'm gonna get it right, I promise you.
[00:01:20] tell me a little bit more about geographically where your tribe is so that our audience can understand exactly where you came from.
[00:01:29] Ellen Bradley: So Lingit territory stretches across Southeast Alaska and into Canada from Yakutat in the north to Kechika in the South. Um, so if you think about Alaska, um, you can make an Alaska map on your hand.
[00:01:44] It's kind of a fun trick. It's gonna look opposite on Zoom, um, but your thumb would be Southeast Alaska. Um, your hands, the interior, and these are the other channel islands. Um, so Southeast Alaska is all of your thumb from like the middle of your, the center of your hand down to your thumb. That's all Lingít territory into Canada, into Whitehorse and other places in Canada.
[00:02:05] Um, it's an area that's painted with the Tongass rainforest, which is a very popular rainforest these days in the United States. Um, it is one of the largest temperate rainforests in the United States to this day, and I. It is an area that's surrounded by archipelagos of islands, mountains, rainforest, kind of any type of geography you could think of exists in Southeast Alaska and Tlingit territory.
[00:02:32] Um, and we call it ani, which means think it land. Um, think it is how we call ourselves. Lint is like the English kind of bastardized term for how we say our own name. Um, but it's how our tribe is federally recognized. So some people to this day call ourselves clink it. Some people call us clink It, um, kind of depends on who you are and, and the context in which you are talking about us.
[00:02:58] Emy Digrappa: So is the, is the Lingít , uh, tribe, are you on a reservation?
[00:03:03] Ellen Bradley: We are not. There is only one reservation in the state of Alaska. It's Metlakatla, which is for the Tsimshian, who in many ways their historical territory is actually a part of what is now known as Canada. Um, and not really southeast Alaska, although they interacted with the islands and in the water.
[00:03:19] but no Lingit territory does not have reservations. Instead, we have, um, what are called corporations. There are regional corporations and there are village corporations. Um, it was kind of the United States and also Alaska Natives response to seeing what reservations were in the lower 48, um, and resulted in the Alaska Natives, settlement.
[00:03:43] why am I forgetting what ANCA stands for? The Alaska Natives, uh, settlement Claims Act. that was in the seventies and it really. Kind of differentiates Alaska natives than the Native Americans in the lower 48, because there's some similarities between regional corporations and the land we hold through our tribes and reservations.
[00:04:02] And also there's a lot of differences there.
[00:04:06] Emy Digrappa: so interesting. I think as I've worked with the Native Americans here in Wyoming, especially on the Wind River Reservation, some of the challenges that they face, um, one of them is holding on to their culture and their language, especially their language, I think.
[00:04:23] how, how do you deal with that?
[00:04:25] Ellen Bradley: Yeah, so language is definitely something that, um. Has fluctuated throughout time for Lingit people, since colonization, since contact. Um, it's something that now there's this awesome revitalization happening. There's classes at the University of Alaska Southeast. There's entire programs you can take in language learning.
[00:04:43] there's entire programs for the youth in Juneau to get in. It's called TCLL, Lingít Culture Language. I always forget the second l. Um, but it's for young kids and they're very immersed in Lingít language and culture in school. and I think those things are absolutely beautiful for Lingíts who don't live in Alaska.
[00:05:00] Lingít and Haida, our tribe runs a bunch of language courses over Zoom, um, at different levels with elders and with language teachers. Um, so right now we're in this awesome revitalization movement and it hasn't always been that way. There was definitely a generation before me that didn't hear as much of the language, um, especially if you weren't living in southeast Alaska and in villages or in communities.
[00:05:25] and so it's kind of ebbed and flowed and we've definitely gotten to some scary areas. Covid definitely took away a lot of, language speakers from us, and that is so sad and tragic and there's such a beautiful movement happening in community right now to keep language going, to keep it in the homes.
[00:05:44] and that gives me so much hope for what language especially will look like in the future for our people.
[00:05:50] Emy Digrappa: Tell me about your family, and where you grew up and did you speak the
[00:05:56] Ellen Bradley: language? So my family, um, my grandma moved our family down to Seattle in the sixties. many reasons why she made that choice for herself.
[00:06:05] Um, and in a lot of ways that choice wasn't really hers to make. She was kind of forced in a lot of ways to do it from colonization, from the way that contact and from settlers, uh, how they changed our land and our ability to live communally and in culture and with language. Um, and so my grandma moved our family down.
[00:06:25] To Seattle. My dad is the youngest of seven, so he has a lot of siblings. I have a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins. Um, and I grew up in a household where we didn't have language in the house because my dad was the youngest of so many siblings and living in Seattle at the time. Um, he in many ways was raised by.
[00:06:44] Of course his mom, who was a single mom and also his siblings in a time when it was not good to be a native person. And he was told by his siblings that when he went to school, um, that it, he shouldn't tell people who he is and where he came from because of the stigmatization, um, the racism of the time.
[00:07:04] And so for him, it wasn't as present. Though my grandma did speak the language. Um, I don't think it was as present in the home as maybe it would've been, uh, other times. And so for me, language wasn't present in my home growing up. it was something that I came into more as I became a young adult and wanted and felt the importance of returning to the land and returning to the language that I started to learn language.
[00:07:30] And I'm a very, very, very beginner language learner. There's only so much language you can learn over Zoom. but one of my cousins actually just got into that University of Alaska Southeast language intensive program, and I think that's so exciting and is really charting the path for my family of how we can return back to the language.
[00:07:49] Emy Digrappa: Well, and and the way you say it is, so, uh, right on. Right on. I, I grew up in a Hispanic family, big Hispanic family, one of seven just like you. I, I'm the middle child and, uh, it, there was a time, and just like your dad said, when, speaking another language or teaching your kids another language was really a difficult task because of where we were at that time.
[00:08:18] And so I really honor and commend him that he realized that, you know, when you wanted your kids to go to college and go farther and. And learn more. You really did need to assimilate and it's, it's a difficult thing because you wanna hang onto your culture, but yet you want your kids to succeed. So you're always like balancing those two things all the time.
[00:08:47] Ellen Bradley: Yeah, and I should specify my, my dad is the youngest of seven. I have an older brother. Um, my mom is, my mom is not Lingít and so that's like the structure that I grew up in. But many of my aunts and uncles still live in the Seattle area and did when I was younger. So I got to spend a lot of time with family growing up.
[00:09:07] Um, I got to spend a lot of time with my grandma growing up until she passed when I was unfortunately very young and I wish that I got to spend a lot more time with her. but yeah, that's my family situation of not growing up on our traditional homelands. Um, but my mom actually happened to go to high school and ketchikan, which is one of the southern areas of our Lingit territory.
[00:09:27] Um, and so she still has really good friends who live in Ketchikan and we are so fortunate growing up that in the summers we would go visit her friends and I got to spend a lot of time on our traditional homelands and have that connection, um, to home even though we were growing up away.
[00:09:41] Emy Digrappa: How did you decide that you were going to.
[00:09:45] Really delve in to your cultural heritage as a Native American and start your journey in learning their history, their language. What, what was the passion that made you, that drove you to do that?
[00:10:01] Ellen Bradley: I think it's been a lifelong journey for me. I've always known who I was and where I came from. That was something that was really important to my grandma, um, and to my family, my aunts and uncles.
[00:10:12] Um, it was always to know exactly where we were from, who our people were, um, and to have a very strong understanding of culture, even if language wasn't so much of a part of it when I was younger. But it's definitely been this lifelong, uh, journey with ups and downs and I think. Really, as I found myself in my undergrad was when I started to dive more deeply into, um, culture and trying to find language, resources and access to learning language.
[00:10:40] Um, and I don't know what I. The catalyst for that was in my life. I think there's a part of it that I was studying environmental studies in biology and was really coming at that from a perspective of like growing up in a world of climate change and understanding that the reason we were in this position of a changing climate was because of colonization and capitalism and the impacts that had on the way that humans interact with the environment and how that wasn't always the case.
[00:11:09] That there are many people who have lived with the environment in much more harmonious ways that did not lead to climate change and that it was this outside force and an outside change in culture that led us to where we are and, and studying climate change and studying human interactions with the environment.
[00:11:29] It was so important to me to have a better understanding of who I came from and how our cultural knowledge and the ways that we interacted with the lands we had been living with for tens of thousands of years felt so central to that question of like, how did we get here to climate change and what do we do now that we exist in this world of a changing climate?
[00:11:51] Um, so I think that's when things became maybe more personal and in depth to me, where I was doing a lot more of that historical research on my own people reading a lot more books, um, applying those concepts to my own life and my own like career aspirations or passions in life around how we can create a better world for everyone.
[00:12:12] Um, but it really has always been present in my life and that's something I'm really grateful for, that not everyone has been able to have throughout their life
[00:12:20] Emy Digrappa: That is a really great explanation and it kind of takes me down on a journey with you to understand how you, one, you're an ecologist, right?
[00:12:33] Ellen Bradley: Is that what your degree is in? Uh, it was in biology and environmental studies, but yeah, ecology is my discipline of choice. Okay. have you always been a skier? Yeah, I was really fortunate that my parents brought my brother and I skiing when we were really young. it was something they didn't start doing until they were in their twenties, um, something they just didn't have access to.
[00:12:54] And then once they did, and once they had kids, they, I think they really saw the importance of this being a way to connect with the lane, but also a way to move your body and just have fun and find joy in the world. so they put my dad, my brother and I in, uh, ski school at really young ages, and then it became this family activity for us.
[00:13:12] And just like, I felt like the one really big thing that we did together, um, throughout the years. And it's something that obviously has carried me throughout my life to the position I'm in now as a professional skier, this being my career and what I do with my life. And, um. So grateful to them. 'cause that's a privilege.
[00:13:30] Not everyone has, right? Not everyone has access to all outdoor recreation sports. But especially a sport like skiing that is so inherently expensive. Um, cost prohibitive. And there are many other barriers than just the cost.
[00:13:43] Emy Digrappa: Yeah. Oh my gosh. So you live right on the mountain?
[00:13:49] Ellen Bradley: Yes, I do. Our backyard is, um, the Indian Peaks, um, are behind the set of mountains that are in our backyard.
[00:13:57] We look out at like the Devil's Thumb area, and then on the other side of our house, you kind of can look over and see Winter Park.
[00:14:04] Emy Digrappa: Oh my gosh. That's perfect place for you guys.
[00:14:07] Ellen Bradley: Yeah, we're really fortunate to live where we do. It's very beautiful. Right out our backyard.
[00:14:12] Emy Digrappa: I ordered one of those, um, cameras for wildlife trails.
[00:14:17] Do you guys have those? Do you use those?
[00:14:20] Ellen Bradley: Um, we use a lot of really small cameras like GoPros or DGI makes these like tiny cameras.
[00:14:27] Um, but they don't have quite the like ability to zoom or magnify as well as like a big normal camera. But a lot of the filming we are doing is like, follow cams of each other or like POV cameras, so.
[00:14:38] Emy Digrappa: Okay. Okay. Yeah, because I'm learning all about this, Well, one of the things that I was really curious about is how you decided to mix together your degree in ecology or biology or, you know, your degree with, uh, skiing, storytelling, and filmmaking.
[00:15:00] Ellen Bradley: Yeah, so for me it was a really natural combination because I think for me, skiing was part of how I became a scientist and found such an interest in science. Um, skiing is such an awesome tool to get to spend time on the land that brings you to ecosystems that you may not spend time in without skiing.
[00:15:19] and it allows you to observe a location, an ecosystem, a landscape over time. and so for me, I think I. Growing up skiing kind of led me to the science that I do today. So when I graduated, um, when I was in this world doing science, one of the things that really drew me to bringing the things together was as I really got into backcountry skiing and backcountry skiing is science.
[00:15:46] In order to be a backcountry skier, you have to be a scientist. You have to be making observations at all times. You have to have an understanding of snow science and how snow bonds to itself and the different layers of our snow pack. You need to understand how the wind, how the sun, how the aspect, the direction of the slope were skiing on, or the slope you were approaching a ski on, um, impacts.
[00:16:10] What risks you were putting yourself at. And then you have to, um, ground truth daily the observations that you've made previously and the forecast that you are reading in order that you are determining where you're gonna ski, what's safe to ski and what the conditions might be. And to me, that's what my experience with fieldwork has always been.
[00:16:29] It's been, forecast or expectations about what we're gonna find in the field. Usually that's found through literature reviews, understanding the scope of, um, whatever discipline it is that we're looking at, and then it's going into the field and using your field work as a ground truthing method for what the literature says.
[00:16:47] And sometimes when you're in the field, you're like, yep, literature looked right. I've seen the exact same things. Observations other people have made are what I'm seeing. And sometimes it's not. Sometimes you're on a backcountry ski and the forecast said it was supposed to get hot throughout the day and the wind was gonna die down.
[00:17:04] And then sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the wind speeds up and then you have to make decisions based off of that, about what you're going to do. In the same way that if you're ground truthing during a field work day and you don't find what the literature said, may or might not happen either, if it's an experiment or an observation, you then have to make a decision about, okay, what, what could have changed?
[00:17:27] What do I do with this information? So for me it was this really natural, merging of these. Disciplines and these different activities that become so siloed in our world. Like we think of science as this one thing and we think of recreation or the way we move our body as this other thing. Um, we think of storytelling as this third thing, but the people I come from have always been all of these things.
[00:17:51] We were always storytellers, we were always scientists. That's why we could live where we lived. And we also loved to recreate. We love being with the land. We love finding joy in the land, moving our bodies with the land. And so for me. It was so natural, both from a, where I come from, my culture, my genetics, and our, my understanding of how I interact with the world.
[00:18:12] And then also in my lived reality of how I was raised, what I grew up doing. Um, and then just the proclivities of my brain to notice these things and be curious about observations. that now, that's why I feel really grateful that I get to use all of these passions together, and put my science into my skiing, my storytelling into my skiing and my skiing into my science and storytelling.
[00:18:36] Emy Digrappa: Oh my gosh, what a, what a weave. This, this is like a full on tapestry of things that you're weaving together, which is beautiful, how do you make it real for people? How do people relate to it? How do people. connect with you and learn about your journey, your story, and how are you taking that out into the world to help people understand, um, the story you're telling?
[00:19:05] Ellen Bradley: Yeah, so I think for me, because I bring all of these things that have, in modern history been considered separate, people may be confined themselves in different aspects of that. Skiers can see me as a skier because that's what I do. Scientists can see me as a scientist 'cause I can speak with them on a scientific level.
[00:19:27] Other indigenous people can understand me as an indigenous person because we have a shared understanding of historical context and also what it means to be a contemporary indigenous person. So I think for me it's a lot of like trying to, I. Share all aspects of myself with the hopes that it will connect to someone and that this story can impact someone.
[00:19:49] Um, the story that I live daily and the story that I have lived in my life, um, one of those ways I try to share that is we just finished a film project that took many years to finish that was called Let My People Go Skiing. Um, and we're really hopeful that that kind of medium like a film can be impactful for people in sharing that story.
[00:20:09] Um, but I also don't think that my story will touch everyone or be relevant or relatable to everyone. And that's why I focus on who I am as a person and, uh, recognize the things that have happened in my life that have made it so that I can do what I do now. the beauty that is being able to be involved in science, being able to be involved in storytelling, being able to be involved as a scientist and.
[00:20:34] Utilizing the gifts that I've received from those aspects of my life to try to share those gifts with others. But if other people don't want to receive those gifts, there are so many other gifts in the world to be received in, in different ways and in different mediums that, the impact I hope to have, I don't anticipate it being far beyond any of these communities.
[00:20:56] Um, and if it is, that's beautiful, and if it isn't great, it is what it's,
[00:21:01] Emy Digrappa: well, that's a very, eye-opening and healthy way to look at it. Like you, you wanna touch people, but it depends on where they are, maybe in their own journey on whether or not they receive it or, um, are grasping what you're holding out to them.
[00:21:19] Ellen Bradley: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:19] Emy Digrappa: So I think, I think that's super interesting. But I think that also, with filmmaking. Now tell me the name of the film you just got done. Yeah, so the film is titled, let My People Go
[00:21:32] Ellen Bradley: Skiing. Okay. And what, what is the purpose of that film? The purpose of the film was to tell an Alaska native ski story.
[00:21:40] So in ski media and outdoor media, we so often to see Alaska being fetishized, being treated as this other, this place that exists as a playground to people. This place that exists for the outdoor industry to ship its athletes to, to prove themselves on this, um, location that's considered a mecca or the ultimate place to prove yourself as a skier.
[00:22:05] Um, and for me, those narratives never sat right in me. they were always very ignorant of the stories that existed on the land. Um, those narratives often consisted of people doing first descents, first ascents, fastest known times, um, or claiming to be the first person to do an expedition in a place and.
[00:22:25] From my understanding, from my cultural context, the stories I have been told throughout my life, none of those stories are true. And for me, I wanted to tell a story that was, what does it mean for an Alaska native skier to ski in Alaska? What is that story and how is that story different? Maybe similar in some ways to other ski media.
[00:22:47] Um, so that's kind of the journey we take on this film. And it's part of the reason it took the film three and a half years to get done is it really was a film about my experience, about my story. We didn't write the film and then shoot it. We grabbed a camera and we went to Alaska and we told a film about what it meant for me to return to my community to ski.
[00:23:06] Um, and part of that being how do we bring more Alaska natives onto the land in the winter and allow them to spend time in our own homes, in our own places in this way? Because for so long we haven't even had the access or the ability to get back on the land in this way in the winter. Um, so for me it really became about, uh, this plea to the ski industry to let my people go skiing.
[00:23:34] Um, which to me meant like, let us determine whether or not we even like skiing, do we like what's happening on our land and where it is happening and how it is happening. And without us having a better understanding of what that looks like and what the industry is, um, projecting about what skiing in Alaska is, we can't be better stewards of it.
[00:23:57] And. Better determination makers about whether or not this should be happening on our land. So it's kind of this big journey, um, in my life that got boiled down into 18 minutes. but it's kind of this huge passion project of mine, of, of how can we continue to build this better world for everyone, and specifically in this film with the context of how do we create a better ski industry with Alaska Natives At the heart of it,
[00:24:24] Emy Digrappa: are you, are you getting a lot of, attraction with it?
[00:24:27] Are, are other people really relating to your mission and your journey with this film?
[00:24:34] Ellen Bradley: I think the response we've gotten so far has been pretty awesome. Um, we got to premiere the film last month in March at the No Man's Land Film Festival in Denver, Colorado. that was really awesome. We were so lucky we received an award at that festival.
[00:24:50] Um, I was not expecting it at all at the time. This journey of making this film has led me through so many ups and downs, mentally, emotionally, physically, um, that I really got to the end of this film and was just kind of done and ready for it to be in the world and didn't really want, um, to have to interact with it too much more.
[00:25:08] So it was really cool when we premiered it that we won an award. The award we won was Best of Fest, which was an absolute shock to me, um, to be at this really awesome festival and to have that kind of recognition. Um, we've gotten to screen it a few other times and right now we're in a space of, we have some more film festivals we're gonna be go to, and we're open to screenings, community screenings all over the place.
[00:25:30] Um, no Man's Land also is on tour, and so they are screening the film and I don't even know how many places, but a lot of places all the time. so yeah, the response we've gotten is really awesome. And at the same time, part of the call to action of the film, uh, is a donation link to support the efforts that we're making in Juno to create ski programming for Native peoples.
[00:25:51] Um, and. To my knowledge, we haven't been getting as much traction on that end of things. And so for me, it's awesome to get the like verbal recognition and support of the mission of the film. The other call to action is this narrative change of our understanding of Alaska and its relationship to people outside of the lore 48.
[00:26:10] And at the same time, it's like the real goal of this film is to continue building our own agency, to bring our people into these sports so that we can create a future of what does this look like for our people. So we continuously need donation support, um, financial support for our programming.
[00:26:27] Emy Digrappa: Well, you'll have to send me, the link so I can add it into your description when I put out the podcast.
[00:26:33] But I think it's interesting that, uh, you've made this leap first, loving and enjoying skiing and learning skiing from your family and it becoming part of who you are and then going to college and. Becoming an ecologist and then now a filmmaker. So that must have been quite a jump. what encouraged you to, to go into filmmaking?
[00:27:00] Ellen Bradley: Yeah. It was not necessarily a choice I made for myself. Um, it wasn't something that I sought out to be the filmmaker behind this film. part of our process, we had pitched this film to a brand, and they were, who sent us on our first trip to tell a story, as an article form. And they also funded us to bring a filmmaker and a photographer on this project, knowing that the intention was eventually to make a film.
[00:27:29] There were a few other people behind the film at the time, and unfortunately due to some, Interesting circumstances, that brand fell out. and at that time we were hoping to make this film, uh, more long form. So it was gonna be a feature length film, hopefully going to be around about an hour mark.
[00:27:47] And at that time when the brand fell out, everything crumbled with this film. We had already started it and we started to have, the makings of the film. And because it was a story obviously so close to my heart, it was about me. It was about my journey going home to ski. I couldn't really just let it go at that point in time.
[00:28:06] So that was when I kind of ended up having to step up into this filmmaking role, which was quite the pressure to put on myself at the time because I don't have any training as a filmmaker. I do not know what I'm doing to this day, and the film is out. and so that was a whole like journey with a new journey of itself, of how to make a film, how do all of a sudden become a director of a film with no experience, um, how to produce a film with no experience, and then also how to deal with the emotional reality of being the subject of a film.
[00:28:37] That is so emotionally, uh, deep and about my own real experience and facing intergenerational trauma. Um, and at the same time, I think there was no better person to be in that role because if it was a film about me, and I'm a person who has very strong boundaries about what I would or would not wanna share with the world about my experience, there was no better person to set those boundaries than myself.
[00:29:01] And at the same time, I still didn't know what I was doing. So it was a very interesting journey from ecologist to filmmaker of, I wouldn't say that there's a lot that's applicable between the two of like the logistical skills of what it means. So, don't know if it's a suggestion I would make to other people.
[00:29:21] and at the same time, it, it happened to work out, uh, not with a lot, not without a lot of, uh, trials and tribulations, but we, fortunately did finally produce a film. Um, and that's honestly pretty cool.
[00:29:34] Emy Digrappa: Oh my gosh, that is so cool. I was just thinking, when you were talking about you jumping into that role without knowing anything about filmmaking, and all of a sudden you're the director, you're, you're writing your story, you're, you know, probably doing the script.
[00:29:54] You know, just all this stuff, being on location and just figuring it out. Oh my gosh. What a huge undertaking. Good for you.
[00:30:05] Ellen Bradley: Thank you. Yeah, I would be lying if I didn't say it was very difficult and there weren't many times that I thought about quitting, giving up on the story, like banking the footage for some other use.
[00:30:18] and there were many different things. Maybe even some would consider signs that we should have given up on the film. And that was really hard on my mental health throughout the process. Absolutely. And at the same time, somehow through it all, we made it to the other side. And, um, yeah, I don't know if I will be doing it again anytime soon, but we did it.
[00:30:38] And I can check the box. The film is done, um, and I'm ready for whatever comes next in my life.
[00:30:44] Emy Digrappa: Yeah. Oh my gosh. But that is so cool. You, you learned a new skill. I mean, you learned a new craft, you learned, You stepped across that invisible line in your brain that says you can't do this, but you did.
[00:30:59] And that is a huge accomplishment.
[00:31:02] Ellen Bradley: Hmm. Thank you Emy.
[00:31:03] Emy Digrappa: Good, good for you. Oh my gosh. I'm just thinking I'd probably be like, you're like, okay, we're in this, but, oh, I don't know. I might just have to stop here. But I, I get that you probably woke up in the morning going, are we really doing this? Am I having this dream?
[00:31:25] Many times, yes. We need to stop. We need to stop this dream. I need to get off, get off the train. But a lot of times, once you're in it, you've gotta, you just gotta stay in it and that really talks a lot about the human spirit, I think. you sometimes don't know what you're capable of until you just like, go for it.
[00:31:47] And then you realize, and I think skiing's a lot like, like that too.
[00:31:51] Ellen Bradley: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:52] Emy Digrappa: Mountains and you're experiencing something, and you think, oh my gosh, I can't do this. But you can. I mean, you can. And then when you do it, you're like, wow, that felt so good. Yeah, absolutely. what's next for you? What do you, what do you envision for your future, Ellen?
[00:32:09] I.
[00:32:09] Ellen Bradley: I honestly do not know. There were so many moments throughout this process that I had visions of what comes next. and I had to make a really hard decision in those moments to turn that part of my brain off because I think I was using this what comes next as an escape mechanism of experiencing what was happening now with this process.
[00:32:32] the ideas of what could come next for me so many times were what, maybe almost had me quitting on this project or giving up on all the work that we had put into it. And so, um, as we're working on this, I actually quit my job while I was working for the Woodwell Climate Research Center, doing Arctic climate science with the expectation that we were finishing the film much sooner, and that I would be going back to my job once this film was over, and now it's been over two years since I quit my job.
[00:33:00] So I don't know what comes next. But I do wanna find my way back in some capacity in an official role as a scientist, as a researcher, doing field research. But I don't know what that looks like yet, because as much as I know what I used to like about different disciplines two years ago, I'm not the same person I was two years ago 'cause of everything I went through through this phone project.
[00:33:23] So at this point in my life, I think I'm leaving myself really open to what could come next. Um, and I'm trying to not prescribe for myself what that looks like and just kind of, sharing an interest of I'd like to find my way back into official research work, while also not denying to myself that I still am a scientist who is doing research daily in my skiing, in my backcountry skiing.
[00:33:46] so yeah, I don't know, but it feels really good at this moment to have the weight lifted off my shoulders of this film being done and having a moment to breathe because it has only been a month since the film. Dropped at a festival and it still isn't out online and won't be for a while to just have a moment to be in this moment of, okay, we finally got to the almost end of this.
[00:34:12] and whatever comes next will come next.
[00:34:15] Emy Digrappa: even though you're not saying it, it's
[00:34:19] ' cause no one, no one knows the future. We live in the present, which is really, and just being grateful for where you are right now is a really good attitude to have. And, and then just looking forward to what's next. I think one of the things you said is how Alaska is this place? And it's, and it's so unknown.
[00:34:41] I don't even know what the population is, but Wyoming has the smallest population I think in. The US how, what's the population of Alaska? I do not know off the top of my head. Okay. that's on my bucket list. I've never been to Alaska, but I know it's this very vast, wild, unknown place.
[00:35:03] Ellen Bradley: See, and I think those, those are the narratives I'm trying to fight because I, yes, it is vast. I think this term wild needs to be, defined and unlearned in our vocabulary as, uh, people living in the United States, um, or beyond because I don't think it means what we think it does. And it is not unknown.
[00:35:25] I don't think there's a single inch of Alaska that is unknown. I think it is all known by the indigenous people who have lived in these places since time in Memorial. I don't know the exact population of Alaska, but I do know that of. The 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States, there's over 250 that are in Alaska, so almost 40 to 50% of federally recognized tribes are in Alaska.
[00:35:51] So there's a vast diversity of tribal identities, values, cultures. There are regions that have very shared values and cultures, but there are five, there's 200 plus federally recognized tribes just in the state of Alaska. And so for me, I think that those are some of those narratives that I'm trying to help shift as a part of both this film process and the work I do in the industry is a reminder that yes, Alaska feels.
[00:36:19] Othered and separate and so magnificent to us who do not live there. And yet it isn't that, that's the, that's the media that's been depicted to us and that's why people believe that. And it's no fault at all to the people who believe that it's a need for us to create new media that tells you that that was false and that was always false.
[00:36:40] And that is still false and that Alaska is incredible, but it isn't all these things that we think it is.
[00:36:49] Emy Digrappa: That's so interesting. It is such a great perspective for me, of what you've realized about other people's perspectives on Alaska. And because that's, that's where your tribe is from. That's a homeland for you.
[00:37:05] And you have a different understanding of Alaska than people who, you know, have never traveled there. And, I guess, I don't think the word wild is a bad word because I use it for Wyoming all the time because we are, we are wind, we are wild. only less than 600,000 people live in this vast, huge state.
[00:37:29] And I love the wild because we have the largest migration of, um, elk and buffalo in the lower 48 outside of Alaska. And that's, that is something to be proud of. Like that, like experiencing wildlife all the time is one of, one of my favorite reasons for living in Wyoming versus. California or New York or wherever Totally.
[00:38:00] That you get to experience, um, wildlife in wild places and, and the mountains and the outdoors and the, you know, we don't have the, night pollution that other places have. We actually do get to see the stars and all the constellations. So I don't think wild is a bad word, but I get where you're going with that because on one hand it's describing a place that has been in inhabited by people for thousands of years, and they have a home and a tradition and a culture and a language and, and maybe people don't necessarily think about it like that.
[00:38:44] Absolutely.
[00:38:45] Ellen Bradley: Yeah. And that's, that's the, uh, intention I set behind questioning the definition we set around the world. The word wild and our extensive use of it to describe places is, I think there is this connotation of when we describe places as wild, is that it means that there aren't humans there.
[00:39:06] Mm-hmm. Or that there's a human interaction or involvement there. Mm-hmm. And I think you'd be really hard passed to find any place in all of Turtle Island, all of North America, that there is no human interaction in a place. Right, and I absolutely hear you on the, there's obviously huge differences between like a California, like your LA's and Wyoming, and I think that's where I hope to challenge people to think about the vocabulary we're using and maybe find better ways in the English language to describe what it is we're seeking when we are looking to a place and saying, it's so wild.
[00:39:46] I love it. Maybe it isn't this, well, there aren't humans there. Maybe it's okay. It's, it hasn't been bastardized by capitalism is maybe more the word we are looking for. We're not looking at an LA of like this ever expanding endless suburbia that barely has enough access to water because of the way we've situated the United States.
[00:40:11] Whereas of course, Wyoming right has less of that. And so for me, that's where I challenge it when it gets described about Alaska. Is like, are we, what we are really describing is, I like Alaska because it isn't this vast, expansive suburbia and there are still places where forests are more intact. They haven't been as extensively deforested or are we using the word wild because you really think that there aren't humans who have interacted with the place.
[00:40:40] And I think historically, if you look at it, we have been using the word wild to describe places that we don't think humans have interacted with. And what I'm suggesting is that historically that that's a false description of so many places. And it does ignore the indigenous people who've lived in places, who have interacted with places and have, uh, sculpted and developed the world that the.
[00:41:04] Settler Colonist found when they came to the United States, when they came to all of Turtle Island and beyond that it wasn't this untouched by man world. It wasn't wild in that context, but that it wasn't treated and interacted with in the same way that the European mind could comprehend.
[00:41:23] Emy Digrappa: excellent way of putting it.
[00:41:25] Yes. And I, I love, I love your, your desire to want to find that new definition and want to replace, because I, I agree with you completely. When you say the word wild, then you're thinking out in the middle of nowhere and no one's around and not another human being in sight. ' cause that's why people like to go camping or, you know, hiking, biking, whatever.
[00:41:53] Is that has been the term for wild. And so I agree with you when you describe it that way. So that's a great journey to be on. And I think you should write a book about it. I think you should. I just gave you a new job. But, just that people really break that mindset. Just break it and think about what, what does wild mean to you, you know, and make people think outside of the box.
[00:42:24] Ellen Bradley: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, that's why I say like. People are the people who use the word and use it in different ways. They're not the ones at fault for this 'cause it's the English language that is so extensively militarized, and genocidal in its definitions. Like it, that's how the English language was developed.
[00:42:44] So those of us who speak English today, we're so limited in our ability to express ourselves and the way that we feel about the world. And I think similar to your reaction of me describing why I have, um, hesitations around the world wild and me being like, yeah, I totally get your reaction to it. This is why, or this is what I meant by it.
[00:43:04] And it wasn't that. Maybe that means inventing new words in the English language, or maybe that means just like using more words than just one word to describe things. Um, that's why I try to bring to this industry is this reflection because I think we get so caught up in our day-to-day, in the way we talk about things that we forget that words do really matter and that whether or not you intended what somebody perceived you to intend when you said a thing, that person still perceived it that way.
[00:43:36] And you may still be, perpetuating this culture in outdoor recreation of a very extractive nature unintentionally. I try to reflect that a lot to the other professional athletes in these spaces, to the brands, to the people who are making and showing and creating the narratives about what the culture is.
[00:43:57] Because we are the people who tell other people how to talk about the activities that we're doing. We're the people who set the culture of what's cool, what's, what are we all trying to achieve in the next year? Like what is possible? And for me it feels so much more important for us to be studying a culture of how about we just relate to each other and the world and we talk about the activities we do out of a place of love instead of extraction.
[00:44:24] Because I think that will create a better culture even outside of recreation for all of us who are living in these spaces. Mm-hmm.
[00:44:32] Emy Digrappa: Absolutely. Well, I have loved talking to you. It's been so enjoyable. I have an assignment for you. One is I want you to send me all the links, you know, uh, to how people can find you, how people can learn about your film, how people can donate if they want to.
[00:44:56] And my second assignment is 'cause I live in a ski culture area, that I liked what you said about words matter. And I think a lot of times in a ski culture there is a lot of slang and I don't know, coolness. And there's also a lot of wealth surrounding the ski culture. That's an interesting dilemma because asking the question, is skiing open up to everyone? Well, it's not, it, it is very prohibitive for people of color. So just think about that. That can be another, another project, another film. But I was just thinking about that. I was like, well, yeah, I mean, being a skier and living in a ski community kind of comes along with a lot of exclusivity.
[00:46:00] Ellen Bradley: A hundred
[00:46:00] Emy Digrappa: percent. Yeah. Yeah. And you probably see that and feel that. Yeah. Oh yeah. And talk about it a lot. Okay, we'll have another conversation, Ellen. So anyway, um, it's been great talking to you. Thank you so much.
[00:46:16] Ellen Bradley: Yeah. Thank you so much, Emy. This was great.
[00:46:19] Emy Digrappa: Yeah, take care.
[00:46:20] Ellen Bradley: Yeah, you too.
[00:46:21] Emy Digrappa: Bye.