Piece Description

The Return of the Alutiiq Masks is a one-hour NPR-news-friendly radio documentary that interweaves oral history interviews, Alutiiq music and soundscapes. Produced by Dmae Roberts and Koahnic Broadcast Corporation.

The documentary takes us to Kodiak, Alaska where Alutiiq peoples work to save their language, cultural traditions and heritage by unlocking the secrets of the masks collected by French explorer Alphonse Pinnart in 1872.  When he died in 1911, he bequeathed the masks to the Chateau Musee, a small museum off the coast of Northern France. There the collection survived two World Wars and were “rediscovered” by Alutiiq artists who began making pilgrimages to France in 2000 to see the artifacts of their culture. This led to an unprecedented sharing of history between two cultures, two different countries a world apart.

The complex, sound-rich production features triptych storytelling, compelling interviews and music from Kodiak Island where Alutiiq/Sugpiaq peoples are undergoing a cultural renaissance.

Dmae Roberts (www.dmaeroberts.com) is a two-time Peabody award-winning radio producer living in Portland, OR. She won the USA fellowship and the Asian American Journalists Association's award for civil rights and social justice. She won her second Peabody for her eight-hour Asian American history series, Crossing East.

Host Shyanne Beatty is Hangwichin Athabascan who grew up in a subsistence lifestyle in Eagle, Alaska where the Yukon River meets the Alaska/Canadian border. She began her career in 1999 as a Production Assistant fellow for Koahnic Broadcast Corporation. She is now Koahnic?s traveling media instructor and weekly host of Earthsongs.