Filmmaker turns lens on her Alaska village to document the Arctic’s disappearing past

In the coastal Alaska village of Quinhagak, the past is emerging from melting ice.

As climate change rapidly erodes the shoreline along the Bering Sea, artifacts preserved for centuries in the frozen ground are coming to the surface.

Ancient tools, woven grass baskets, hunting implements, and various cultural artifacts forged by their ancestors are now being discovered by descendants of the land.

The warming climate, however, continues to alter the very ground that preserved those histories.

Beneath Alaskan villages and across the Arctic, the land is changing; thawing permafrost is damaging infrastructure, sea ice arrives later and disappears earlier, and storms hit harder against coastlines no longer protected by winter ice.

For communities like Quinhagak, the crisis is measured not only in disappearing land, but also in the risk of losing stories, language, and traditions tied to its people.

For communities like Quinhagak, the crisis is not just causing land to disappear; it is also increasing the risk that they will lose stories, language and traditions tied to its people.

For Yup’ik filmmaker Jacqueline Cleveland, these changes are not abstract warnings about the Arctic’s future. They are deeply personal.

Cleveland, Yup’ik name Nalikutaar, is bringing her community’s story to audiences through the documentary Ellavut Cimirtuq (Our World Is Changing). The film follows Quinhagak’s race to preserve both its cultural history and its future as climate impacts intensify across Southwest Alaska.

Produced with TrimTab Media, the documentary is part of an ongoing effort to document the realities facing Quinhagak while supporting community-led storytelling.

“Ellavut cimirtuq,” Yu’pik for “our world is changing,” captures both the physical transformation of the landscape and the emotional reality facing Alaska Native communities.

Coastal villages across Alaska are facing increasing threats from thawing permafrost, erosion, and rising seas. In Quinhagak, the retreat of Arctic sea ice has left the shoreline exposed to stronger storms and wave action, accelerating the loss of land.

The changes have also yielded one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in the region, as artifacts frozen beneath the tundra for generations emerge from the thawing ground.

Archaeologists and community members are now working together to recover thousands of items before they are swept into the Bering Sea, lost forever to erosion.

For many in Quinhagak, the discoveries represent a reconnection with language, art, storytelling, and traditional ways of life.

Cleveland, who co-directed the documentary with Mischa Hedges and Sonia Luokkala, says the project is rooted in community and cultural survival.

A subsistence hunter, fisherwoman, and gatherer from Quinhagak, Cleveland is a citizen of the Native Village of Kwinhagak Tribal Government.

For Cleveland, strengthening community ties and cultural knowledge can help villages adapt to the environmental changes threatening their way of life.

Through her lens, she follows Quinhagak as it develops a new model of community archaeology, one that places locals and Indigenous knowledge at the center of preserving the village’s history. Rather than treating the artifacts as new items for a museum catalog, the film shows how they continue to shape daily life and identity in the present.

The film highlights the growing conversation around climate justice in Alaska, where Indigenous communities often face some of the earliest and most severe consequences of a warming Arctic, despite contributing little to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Watch the Ellavut Cimirtuq trailer below and click here to watch the full documentary: https://trimtab.media/ourworldischanging