As Greenland’s glaciers melt and flow into the sea, Pacific island nations are on the receiving end of some of that water. It’s a familiar story about climate change: One nation crumbles into the ocean; others risk drowning under rising sea levels.
It’s also the backdrop for a unique artistic collaboration between two indigenous poets from opposite ends of the earth. Last summer, these women — who had met for the first time days earlier — stood side by side, one dressed in black, the other in white, reciting a poem they’d written together:
Rise: From One Island To Another
Two indigenous poets, one from the Marshall Islands and another from Greenland,
meet at the source of our rising seas to share a moment of solidarity.
meet at the source of our rising seas to share a moment of solidarity.
With dramatic orchestration and mournful cries sounding urgently in the film’s background, the poets tell of the lands of their respective ancestors, the sunken volcanoes and hidden icebergs. They speak of angry seas, evoking the legends of sisters turned to stone, and Sassuma Arnaa, Mother of the Sea.
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| Dan Lin / Rise |
Rise
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner | Aka Niviâna
Sister of ice and snow I’m coming to you from the land of my ancestors, from atolls, sunken volcanoes–undersea descent of sleeping giants Sister of ocean and sand, I welcome you to the land of my ancestors –to the land where they sacrificed their lives to make mine possible –to the land of survivors. I’m coming to you from the land my ancestors chose. Aelon Kein Ad, Marshall Islands, a country more sea than land. I welcome you to Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland, the biggest island on earth. Sister of ice and snow, I bring with me these shells that I picked from the shores of Bikini atoll and Runit Dome Sister of ocean and sand, I hold these stones picked from the shores of Nuuk, the foundation of the land I call my home. With these shells I bring a story of long ago two sisters frozen in time on the island of Ujae, one magically turned into stone the other who chose that life to be rooted by her sister’s side. To this day, the two sisters can be seen by the edge of the reef, a lesson in permanence. With these rocks I bring a story told countless times a story about Sassuma Arnaa, Mother of the Sea, who lives in a cave at the bottom of the ocean. This is a story about the guardian of the Sea. She sees the greed in our hearts, the disrespect in our eyes. Every whale, every stream, every iceberg are her children. When we disrespect them she gives us what we deserve, a lesson in respect. Do we deserve the melting ice? the hungry polar bears coming to our islands or the colossal icebergs hitting these waters with rage Do we deserve their mother, coming for our homes for our lives? From one island to another I ask for solutions. From one island to another I ask for your problems Let me show you the tide that comes for us faster than we’d like to admit. Let me show you airports underwater bulldozed reefs, blasted sands and plans to build new atolls forcing land from an ancient, rising sea, forcing us to imagine turning ourselves to stone. Sister of ocean and sand, Can you see our glaciers groaning with the weight of the world’s heat? I wait for you, here, on the land of my ancestors heart heavy with a thirst for solutions as I watch this land change while the World remains silent. Sister of ice and snow, I come to you now in grief mourning landscapes that are always forced to change first through wars inflicted on us then through nuclear waste dumped in our waters on our ice and now this. Sister of ocean and sand, I offer you these rocks, the foundation of my home. On our journey may the same unshakable foundation connect us, make us stronger, than the colonizing monsters that to this day devour our lives for their pleasure. The very same beasts that now decide, who should live who should die. Sister of ice and snow, I offer you this shell and the story of the two sisters as testament as declaration that despite everything we will not leave. Instead we will choose stone. We will choose to be rooted in this reef forever. From these islands we ask for solutions. From these islands we ask we demand that the world see beyond SUV’s, ac’s, their pre-packaged convenience their oil-slicked dreams, beyond the belief that tomorrow will never happen, that this is merely an inconvenient truth. Let me bring my home to yours. Let’s watch as Miami, New York, Shanghai, Amsterdam, London, Rio de Janeiro, and Osaka try to breathe underwater. You think you have decades before your homes fall beneath tides? We have years. We have months before you sacrifice us again before you watch from your tv and computer screens waiting to see if we will still be breathing while you do nothing. My sister, From one island to another I give to you these rocks as a reminder that our lives matter more than their power that life in all forms demands the same respect we all give to money that these issues affect each and everyone of us None of us is immune And that each and everyone of us has to decide if we will rise |
Filming on top of a melting glacier wasn’t physically easy, Jetnil-Kijiner said. And yet, when she found herself face-to-face with a physical body that threatens to submerge her ancestral homeland, she felt reverence, not anger.
“It just felt like I was meeting an elder,” she recalled. “I was just in awe of the ice, of how large it was, how expansive, how beautiful.”
Niviâna, who is from Greenland’s far north, was also visiting the southern ice sheet for the first time. She was struck by the change in landscape. She described the shock of seeing a boulder fall near their campsite after it was dislodged by melting ice.
“It was a huge rock,” Niviâna said. “It was really overwhelming to see how rapidly the ice was melting.”
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| Dan Lin / Rise |
For Dan Lin, the director of the film Rise, the underlying science behind the story is important. But at its core, he says it’s a project about climate change as viewed through the eyes of two indigenous female poets. Together, they weave a story of beautiful yet fragile landscapes and of resilient peoples in the face of injustice.
Lin hopes the collaboration will build an awareness of the connections between seemingly disparate communities.
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| Dan Lin / Rise |
McKibben put Jetnil-Kijiner in touch with glaciologist Jason Box who introduced her to Niviâna. Despite the distances that separated them, the poets began an online correspondence which led to their creative partnership.
It wasn’t until the poets finally met in person, by which time the poem was mostly finished, that they really got know each other.
This unlikely sisterhood, conceived of in water and ice, evolved on paper and by email. More poetically, Jetnil-Kijiner reflected, “It felt like we wrote our relationship into being.”
*Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner is a poet of Marshallese ancestry. She received international acclaim through her performance at the opening of the United Nations Climate Summit in New York in 2014. Her writing and performances have been featured by CNN, Democracy Now, Huffington Post, and more. In February 2017, the University of Arizona Press published her first collection of poetry, Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter. Her work has recently evolved and begun to inhabit gallery and performance art spaces – her work has been curated by the Honolulu Biennial in Hawai’i in February 2017, then the Smithsonian art lab ‘Ae Kai in July of 2017, and most recently the upcoming Asia Pacific Triennial in Australia in November 2018. Kathy also co-founded the non-profit Jo-Jikum, dedicated to empowering Marshallese youth to seek solutions to climate change and other environmental impacts threatening their home island. She has been selected as one of 13 Climate Warriors by Vogue in 2015 and the Impact Hero of the Year by Earth Company in 2016. She received her Master’s in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
*Aka Niviâna is a Inuk writer and this is her on-screen debut. Aka started doing poetry with a wish to create nuanced conversations about not only climate change, but also colonialism and indigenous peoples rights. She believes in the importance of representation and the inclusion of black, brown and indigenous peoples.
Links
- Rise: From One Island to Another
- Climate Change Is No Joking Matter. Except, This Week, It Was.
- Is Sarah Silverman Comedy’s New Climate Champion?
- A Photographic Exploration Of The Cryosphere
- 8 Artists Taking On The Big Global Challenge: Climate Change
- Opera House Goes Carbon Neutral Five Years Ahead Of Schedule
- 'Art Can Play A Valuable Role': Climate Change Installations Appear In New York
- Could Cli-Fi Help Inspire Real Climate Change Action?
- Rising Seas: 'Florida Is About To Be Wiped Off The Map'
- 6 Must-See Movies About Climate Change
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