2024
Stories Grants Recipients
Organization: Out North
Title: How We Love: Untold Stories of Lesbian Friendship, Family, and Activism in Alaska
Project Description: The contributions of lesbians working to fight violence against women in Alaska have remained largely excluded from public discourse, and mainstream narratives often still portray lesbians as anti-family. How We Love, a project of Out North in collaboration with Cecilia Karoly-Lister and Arciniega Street Productions seeks to gather and share the untold stories and lived experiences of lesbian friendship, family, and activism in 1980s Alaska.
Organization: Black Awareness Association of Juneau / KTOO
Title: Culture Rich Conversations
Project Description: Grant funding supports the production of 16 episodes of Culture Rich Conversations, a radio program and podcast produced by Juneau’s Black Awareness Association in collaboration with KTOO Public Media. The show shares the lived experiences of being Black in Alaska with the aim of building cross-cultural understanding and healing.
Organization: Chugach Regional Resources Commission
Title: Stories of Subsistence
Project Description: The Stories of Subsistence project will elevate stories of subsistence resources and practices in the Chugach Region and preserve subsistence use knowledge through the creation of short video productions based on interviews with Tribal Members from the region. This project will focus on efforts to promote subsistence rights, food security, and Tribal sovereignty by uplifting Tribal perspectives and documenting Traditional Ecological Knowledge and will provide the necessary equipment and expertise to support future storytelling.
Organization: Ketchikan Wellness Coalition
Title: Reconnecting Through Rhythm
Project Description: Reconnecting Through Rhythm tells the story of Alma Manabat Parker, a Filipina in Ketchikan, Alaska, as she embarks on a journey to reconnect with her Filipino heritage through the power of traditional Filipino dance. By learning and teaching traditional dance, Alma hopes to bridge the gap between her Filipino roots and her Alaskan life.
Organization: Native Village of Shaktoolik
Title: Fighting For Our Lives: Stories from Shaktoolik
Project Description: The Native Village of Shaktoolik is among the most climate-vulnerable communities in Alaska. Through Fighting For Our Lives, Shaktoolik will undertake a collaborative filmmaking project to tell the story of their efforts to protect the village's future and the challenges they encounter along the way.
Organization: Data for Indigenous Justice
Title: How They Lived: Legacies of Love of MMIP in Alaska
Project Description: The DIJ team will curate 'How They Lived, A Legacy of Love" story series that uplifts the lives and loving memories of missing, murdered Indigenous peoples in Alaska. This important project ensures a healing-centered approach to understanding the crisis of MMIR by directly uplifting families' voices.
Organization: Keys to Life
Title: Alaska’s Hidden Roots: Uncovering New Stories
Project Description: Alaska’s Hidden Roots: Uncovering New Stories will open a
window to underrecognized stories of Anchorage’s newest immigrants through a short documentary film. Hidden Roots explores the personal histories, family, and cultural background of Sudanese and Afghanistan youth along with their families.
Organization: Kokhanok Village Council
Title: Kokhanok Elder Stories Podcast
Project Description: The Kokhanok Elder Stories Podcast is a project driven by the heartfelt desire of our tribal elders to share their stories. Through the podcast, we will delve into topics such as traditional practices, subsistence living, historical events, language preservation, and the challenges faced by our community – the podcast will ensure that future generations have access to this wealth of knowledge, promoting cultural pride and understanding.
2022
Community-Engaged Media Grants
See who was awarded a 2022 Community-Engaged Media Grant!
In October 2022, the Alaska Humanities Forum awarded $50,000 in grants to 5 media/community partnerships.
Since 2019, the Alaska Humanities Forum’s Community | Media | Possibility initiative has been hosting programming designed to reimagine the relationship between media-makers and communities in Alaska. Between fall 2020 and spring 2021, the Forum organized a range of programming focused on the question: what’s possible when community and media connect?
Inspired by recommendations and learnings from that programming, the Forum launched the Community-Engaged Media Grant, a grant program desiged to support projects that brought community stakeholders and journalists/media makers together to tell stories that reflect and serve lived experience across Alaska.
Áak'w K̲wáan Coalition Council: Haa Shagoon At.óowu Teen Anal’eix: Dance With Our Ancestors' Regalia
This project will photograph Indigenous artists in their element sharing their connection to their ancestors through their various mediums. How each artist dances with their ancestors' regalia when they share their histoires, stories, and perspectives through art.
Alaska Public Media (Annie Feidt & Tegan Hanlon)/Young Kim & Victoria Petersen
Anchorage journalists Victoria Petersen and Young Kim, in partnership with Alaska Public Media, will explore stories of labor, culture, community and more through the lens of food. The multimedia project will focus on the city’s food system, particularly in Anchorage’s underreported and underrepresented communities.
Alaskan Films/Alaska Children's Trust: Sharing Alaskans' Experiences with Child Abuse and Neglect
In partnership with an advisory group of those with lived experience of child abuse and neglect, our project will work to provide a safe way to break the silence on child abuse and neglect in Alaska. Child abuse and neglect is a taboo subject, and the silence surrounding it can prevent individuals, families, and communities from healing. Storytelling provides a pathway for us to process past events while simulatenously shining a light on our lived experience for others. The benefits of storytelling are twofold, a potential for healing and building community for those who have experienced child abuse and neglect, and a chance to reduce stigma and increase awareness to lead to prevention for Alaska's children. Learn more about the project or get involved: https://www.alaskachildrenstrust.org/lived-experience
See Stories/Sound Artist Kaitlin Armstrong: Unsettling Alaska
Unsettling Alaska is a documentary podcast series about the myths that shape how Alaskans view our history and ourselves. Afro-Indigenous activist Amber Starks says that “behind every settler project is a settler myth.” This eight-episode sound-rich documentary series will revisit key moments of Alaska’s history - such as the gold rush, Russian colonization, the development of the commercial fishing industry, Alaska’s civil rights movement, and the oil boom - examining how these periods are popularly remembered and misremembered, and upturning the ways in which Alaska’s history is often told in the shape of settler myths. Each episode will feature interviews with experts and everyday Alaskans of diverse backgrounds, exploring the intersections of Alaskan identity and Alaska’s history. See Stories will collaborate with educators to create a curriculum that adapts the podcast and the themes it raises for use in social studies and Alaska Studies classrooms.
SouthWest Alaska Arts Group/Katie Basile Photography
This project will explore how culture and identity are expressed through artistic creation. We are excited to learn about traditional art forms that have been passed on through intergenerational knowledge, as well as how art practices may (or may not) have transformed with influences from: individual perspective, modern adaptations/tools, or blending of contemporary ideas with ways-of-being from old.
2021
SHARP Operational & Project Grants
See who was awarded a SHARP Grant!
As Alaska’s state humanities council, the Alaska Humanities Forum was honored to distribute and administer funds allocated to the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as a means of Supporting the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP).
Funding was made available in an effort to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from COVID-19. The Forum managed Alaska’s share of the funds directed to the 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils to assist affected cultural nonprofit institutions and organizations across our state. Applicants were required to clearly demonstrate that their initiative was undertaken to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the coronavirus.
In September 2021, the Alaska Humanities Forum awarded $482,500 in grants to Alaska organizations through the Supporting the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan (SHARP) program.
Affinityfilms, Inc.
Alaska Aviation Museum
Alaska Historical Society
Alaska Jewish Campus
Alaska Jewish Museum
Alaska Native Heritage Center
Alaska Veterans Museum
Alaska World Affairs Council
Alutiiq Museum & Archaeological Repository
Anchorage International Film Festival (AIFF)
Anchorage Museum
Artchange, Inc.
Athabascan Fiddlers Association
Best Beginnings
Bethel Council on the Arts
Bristol Bay Historical Society
Bunnell Street Arts Center
Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies
Clausen Memorial Museum
Denali Arts Council
Denali Education Center
Fairbanks Children's Museum
First Alaskans Institute
The Folk School
Fraternal Order of Alaska State Troopers
Homer Council on the Arts
Identity, Inc.
Juneau Arts and Humanities Council
Juneau Community Foundation
Juneau-Douglas City Museum
Koahnic Broadcast Corporation
Kodiak Historical Society
Kodiak Maritime Museum
KTOO Public Media
KUAC Friends Group
Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center
Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry
Museum of the Aleutians Association Inc.
NATIVE Program Inc.
Outer Coast
Pioneer Air Museum
Pratt Museum
Qizhjeh Heritage Institute
Sealaska Heritage Institute
See Stories
Sheldon Museum and Cultural Center, Inc
Sitka Historical Society & Museum
Spirit of Youth
Story Works Alaska
Talkeetna Historical Society
University of Alaska Museum of the North
Valdez Museum & Historical Archive Association, Inc.
Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association
Annual Humanities Grants
Artchange, Inc.: Stories Untold: Sitka Tells Tales Expands
KTOO Public Media: Echoes of Funter Bay: Legacies of Internment
Alaska Community Foundation: Black in Alaska
The Language Conservancy: Dinjii Zhuh K’yaa Dictionary Project, Phase 1
Bethel Broadcasting, Inc.: KYUK Waves of Wisdom Interactive Library
Kawerak, Inc.: Preserving and Sharing Cultural Knowledge: Bering Strait Stories and Experiences (aka The Supernatural Project)
