About the radio programmes

The four-part radio series, produced by students in Huslia, is called 'Witnessing Climate Change in Huslia, Alaska'.

The radio series has been broadcast across the state of Alaska on KUAC and Alaska Public Radio news-hour programmes, and nationwide on National Public Radio’s programme Independent Native News.

You can listen to these programmes on this website.

The students have also made additional recordings of community members talking about climate change, which has been incorporated into the soundtrack of an audio slide show. The audio slide show consists of archival and present-day images depicting the effects of climate change.

Background

Huslia students Kenny Sam, Sheila Esmailka, Ryan Olin and LeAnn Bifelt (left to right, top to bottom), audio engineer Ed Smith and radio producer Kathy Turco working in studio in April 2005.

The project took place during the 2004-2005 school year. Both the radio programmes and the audio slide show were part of the students’ Journalism class at the Jimmy Huntington School. As producers of the four radio programmes, the students wrote the interview questions, selected interviewees (total of 12), recorded interviews, transcribed all recordings, selected and loaded audio excerpts into the computer, edited the audio files, wrote the narrators’ scripts, voiced the scripts, and lastly made recommendations on the natural sound to be placed behind the interviewees. The students then travelled to Fairbanks, where they assisted in the fine-editing and multi-track mixing of the programs at a professional studio.

On this trip, the students also visited the University of Alaska public radio station, KUAC, to meet radio and TV producers, and Student Rural Services to meet University students from rural areas. Finally, they met with climate scientists from the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The students’ work on this project is ongoing, as the objective of the audio slide show is to illustrate climate change from a local perspective using images and recordings obtained from all four seasons.

The project’s Principal Investigator is Huslia-born resident Orville Huntington; Kathy Turco of Alaska’s Spirit Speaks: Sound and Science is serving as media consultant to the village.