About the site:
Nunat is an Alaska Village environmental information exchange site provided by the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council (AITC). Some people term Nunat as a climate change observations site and others a contaminant or resource development information site. To us, it is a subsistence site.The purpose of Nunat is to provide a platform for Alaska Villages to share and document problems and solutions related to how external environmental factors might impact subsistence and Village life. If we group these external factors, they are climate change for all villages. For some a portion of villages the factors also include resource development issues. Contaminants, meaning anything that should not be there, and that might affect the health of our lands, are a factor related both to climate change and to resource development. All of these affect each other and they all have the potential to subsistence.
Zender Environmental Health and Research Group, a non-profit organization (www.zendergroup.org), is the developer of Nunat's content and layout.
About the name:
Literal translation of our Native languages is not exact because it comes without the context of our cultures. Nunat is translated as lands in the Central Yup'ik language, and can also mean 'villages or communities' in some dialects. It is derived from the word Nuna, meaning land for Yupiit, and the Inuit in Alaska and across the Polar regions.About the artist:
Ossie (short for his Yup'ik Name "Aassanaq") Kairaiuak designed the artwork on this website. Ossie is a Yup'ik Artist who hails from Chefornak, Alaska. He was interested in the Arts at an early age and enjoyed Yup'ik Dancing and watching his father carve and make model Qayaqs. He taught himself how to draw in his middle and high school years, and was inspired by Michelangelo to study Art at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He then joined Pamyua, a popular and world-traveled musical group. He is experienced in just about all the arts he has set his mind to, including: writing, choreography, directing a play, composing traditional songs and dances, and making masks, drums, etc. His motto is, "Dream Big and Compromise No More!" You can contact him thru e-smoke signals at ossmon@yahoo.com.Funding & Program Support:
| Nunat is funded by the EPA's Environmental Information Exchange Network Program.
You can go to EPA's site www.epa.gov/neengprg to learn more about the program,
or check out www.exchangenetwork.net for more information and documentation about how the Network works. |
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