Gath & K'iyh: Listen to Heal with cellist Yo-Yo-Ma

Alaskan Healing and Arts Program Brings in Major Star-Power to Shed Light on Pressing Climate Issues

Local youth and Elders gathered with artists, including cellist Yo-Yo Ma, to acknowledge climate impacts to salmon and birch

On Labor Day, an intimate group of about 100 local climate activists, artists, and Indigenous leaders gathered at the UAF president’s house to witness the culminating presentation from this summer’s dynamic Gath & K’iyh: Listen to Heal workshop program in partnership with Yo-Yo Ma’s Our Common Nature, which explores how culture helps us connect to the natural world. This final event brought in some major players to draw attention to climate impacts to local ecosystems, including world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, drag queen and environmental advocate Pattie Gonia, and singer-songwriter Quinn Christopherson. The event included original music performed with Yo-Yo Ma and workshop participants, written collaboratively with composers Eli Wasserman and Mato Wayuhi (composer for the hit series Reservation Dogs), with an original poem read by Princess Daazhraii Johnson. Pattie Gonia and Christopherson premiered their new climate anthem “Won’t Give Up (Glacier)” with Yo-Yo Ma. 

This event was the final event in a series of workshops throughout the summer organized by Native Movement, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, Association of Interior Native Educators, and the UAF Climate Scholars program. It aimed to use “Listening to Heal” as a framework to understand the experiences of the Gath and K’iyh* due to climate impacts, address climate grief, and come to a place of hope and action. The group undertook these goals through diverse means, including multiple artistic mediums (such as birch bark and tanned salmon skin), traditional stories from Indigenous Elders, research from UAF climate scientists, experiential exercises, musical exploration, and personal reflections from participants. The group of participants consisted of mostly young people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, aged 18-35. 

Says Native Movement board member Princess Daazhraii Johnson, “At this time of great suffering for us and our Mother Earth due to the current climate crisis, these workshops allowed us to collectively express our grief, but also to actively nurture our relationship with the salmon and birch. In so doing, we have renewed and reinvigorated our commitment to protect them as relatives.” 

Throughout the final weekend, the participants and organizers collaborated with other Alaskan Indigenous leaders to formulate a “Declaration for Gath & K’iyh,” which documents the impacts these species are experiencing, and states the action needed. This declaration will be presented at New York Climate Week. 

“The climate crisis cannot be solved with technical fixes and policy solutions alone. The Declaration for Gath & K’iyh offers resolutions to heal our relationships with the Earth, because Indigenous values of kinship and sacredness can lead us toward a brighter future,” says Native Movement’s Climate Justice Director, Michaela Stith. 

More information about the project can be found here.

*Gath is King Salmon and K’iyh is Birch in Benhti Kokhut’ana Kenaga dialect

Media Contacts:

Michaela Stith, Native Movement, michaela@nativemovement.org
Aurora Bowers, Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition - aurora@fbxclimateaction.org
Eleanor Guthrie, Climate Scholars Program, emguthrie2@alaska.edu