The video presents a vivid recollection of childhood memories in nature, encouraging viewers to reconnect with the landscapes that shaped them and reflect on their preservation for future generations. The narrator shares their personal connection to the Alaskan landscape and describes how those formative experiences influenced their career in conservation photography.

The narrative explores the diversity and transformation happening in the Arctic due to climate change, emphasizing how storytelling and photography can raise awareness about these environmental changes. The speaker highlights their journey through the Arctic, while discussing the impacts of climate change on animal habitats and traditional lifestyles in these regions.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. inhospitable [ˌɪnhɑːˈspɪtəbl] - (adjective) - Not welcoming or suitable for living; harsh and unfriendly. - Synonyms: (unwelcoming, hostile, uninviting)

He said that the north was a wasteland, that it was inhospitable to human life.

2. reverberate [rɪˈvɜːrbəreɪt] - (verb) - To have a continuous effect or impact over time and distance. - Synonyms: (resonate, echo, affect)

...decisions made about what happens there to its ecosystems and to its people, will reverberate for generations.

3. ecosystem [ˈiːkoʊsɪstəm] - (noun) - A community of living organisms and their physical environment interacting as a system. - Synonyms: (environment, biosphere, habitat)

What would you do to return to that place, to that state of being, and to take care of it for the next generations? I often wonder to what degree the ecosystems that we love shape the people that we become

4. conservation [ˌkɑːnsərˈveɪʃn] - (noun) - The preservation and protection of natural resources to prevent harm, destruction, or neglect. - Synonyms: (preservation, protection, upkeep)

And that was how my 10 year journey into conservation photography began.

5. indigenous [ɪnˈdɪdʒənəs] - (adjective) - Originating naturally in a particular region; native. - Synonyms: (native, original, aboriginal)

Meeting Inuit who are working to integrate indigenous knowledge with science and conservation and policy.

6. colonization [ˌkɑːlənəˈzeɪʃn] - (noun) - The act of establishing control over indigenous people and their lands by a foreign power. - Synonyms: (settlement, occupation, subjugation)

...young people are growing up in the wake of colonization.

7. shifting baseline syndrome [ˈʃɪftɪŋ ˈbeɪslaɪn ˈsɪndroʊm] - (noun) - The tendency for individuals to forget or ignore the past conditions of an environment, accepting and normalizing its degradation over generations. - Synonyms: (generational amnesia, baseline drift, reference point change)

One of the biggest challenges in conservation is something called shifting baseline syndrome.

8. keystone species [ˈkiːstoʊn ˈspiːʃiːz] - (noun) - A species on which other species in an ecosystem largely depend; its removal can drastically alter the environment. - Synonyms: (focal species, essential species, cornerstone species)

The researchers told us that walruses are a keystone species, shaping the entire biotic community that they live in.

9. algae blooms [ˈældʒi bluːmz] - (noun) - A rapid increase or accumulation in the population of algae in a water system, often leading to negative environmental effects. - Synonyms: (algal overgrowth, phytoplankton bloom, water bloom)

The loss of ice contributes to toxic algae blooms, to zoonotic diseases that can spread across the world.

10. subspecies [ˈsʌbˌspiːʃiːz] - (noun) - A taxonomic category that ranks below species, usually a fairly permanent isolated race. - Synonyms: (variety, breed, type)

It's difficult to say what impact one small photo story could have had, but since the article about the Walrus Islands published, the visitor numbers have increased.

The Arctic through a photographer's lens - Acacia Johnson - TEDxRISD

Close your eyes and think back to your childhood. You're in the outdoors, where you grew up. Think back to a moment that filled you with a sense of wonder or mystery or peace. Remember the way that the air smelled, Maybe the sweetness of summer grass, sun on desert rock, or the clean metallic scent of snow. Listen to the birds singing, the wind in the trees, the soft crush of ice floes moving in the tide. Or perhaps just silence. Look around. Watch the light moving across the landscape, and notice in your body how being there makes you feel.

Now open your eyes. What would you do to return to that place, to that state of being, and to take care of it for the next generations? I often wonder to what degree the ecosystems that we love shape the people that we become. And I believe that the way that we tell stories about them can play a part in shaping their future. For me, my childhood landscape was in Alaska. My home city of Anchorage borders the vast Chugach Mountains, where glaciers flow towards an ever changing sea. It's a place where the dramatic changes in seasons and daylight constantly transform our world, where the rivers are full of salmon and animals like moose and bears walk through our yards. And it's impossible to ignore that nature is part of our lives.

And it's a place where the glaciers of my childhood retreat a little further back into the mountains every year, where the tundra I loved as a little girl is disappearing, growing over with shrubs as the climate warms. Every year, some new development project threatens one significant ecosystem after another. And Alaska is not alone. My whole life, I wanted to be an artist. I could never imagine myself as anything like a journalist. But when I left Alaska to study photography, I began to understand just how deeply growing up there had shaped me. I began to realize that some of the most impactful decisions made about what happens in the north are so often made by people in cities thousands of miles away who may never have even been there and may not understand the context. I realized that it's difficult for people to care about things that they haven't seen. And photographs can be a first step towards compassion and towards understanding.

And then I had this conversation, a conversation that has repeated itself to my bewilderment over and over again in my life. And the first time was in a classroom here at risd, where a fellow student argued that what happened in the north shouldn't matter. He said that the north was a wasteland, that it was inhospitable to human life. And now that the whole world was connected by technology and people everywhere theoretically knew that they could just move somewhere warmer. That people shouldn't live up in the north at all. I was shocked. In his book Arctic Dreams, author Barry Lopez wrote that the land gets inside of us and we must decide for ourselves one way or another, what this means and what we will do about it. At that moment in the classroom, I knew what I had to do, because I knew why the north mattered. At least I knew why it mattered to me. But that was enough for me to get started.

And that was how my 10 year journey into conservation photography began. When I speak about conservation, I'm speaking broadly about caring about the natural world, but also caring about people and caring about a relationship between the two. But at first, as a young art student, it took me a few years to understand that that's really what was driving me at first. The connection that I felt to my home environment just filled me with curiosity about what life was like in the rest of the global North. And that curiosity led me to the Arctic. The Arctic is often spoken about generally, but it is diverse. It's a frozen ocean surrounded by continents, by eight countries and home to 4 million people. Its languages, cultures, histories and ecosystems are ancient and distinct. People have lived in the Arctic for thousands of years, relying on Arctic animals for food. For seven years, I worked on ships traveling the coast of Svalbard, Greenland and Arctic Canada. And just like in Alaska, the changes taking place there were impossible to ignore.

I took this photograph from a ship sailing the open water on the coast of Svalbard in March, when only 10 years prior, the entire coastline would be frozen in by solid sea ice until May. Every year, the Arctic is warming at four times the rate of the rest of the world. The thick multi year sea ice that forms the foundation of the marine food web has decreased by 90% in the past 30 years. Animals are losing their habitat. Migration patterns are changing. And for people who live in the Arctic, it's becoming harder to secure traditional foods. And what happens in the Arctic doesn't necessarily stay there. The loss of ice contributes to toxic algae blooms, to zoonotic diseases that can spread across the world. Now that the melting ice is opening more of the Arctic to international ship traffic and development, decisions made about what happens there to its ecosystems and to its people, will reverberate for generations.

Do you feel your body tightening up a little bit when we talk about this kind of stuff, and especially when we see these types of pictures? I so often see photographs published about the Arctic that feel like elegies. Polar bears stranded on dry land, melting glaciers, trails left by ships in the open sea ice. And I took these pictures, too. And while those things are really happening and they're really important, it can often feel so distant from the lives of the people who actually live there. It makes it feel as if there is no hope, when in reality, people have always adapted to change in the Arctic, and adaptation is the only way forward.

My perspectives on environmental storytelling changed when I spent two seasons on the north of Baffin island in the Canadian High Arctic. This is a region where the Inuit have lived for about 5,000 years, but only settled in towns as recently as the 1960s. Coming into a community as an outsider, I quickly had to learn to let go of any preexisting ideas I had about what I was there to photograph or what the story was, and instead learned to slow down, listen, and learn from people about what was important to the people who lived there. This is a region where elders may have grown up in a traditional lifestyle out on the land, and young people are growing up in the wake of colonization. With the Canadian school system. In the age of social media and satellite Internet, 60% of the population is under the age of 30. And it's a region where sea ice is prevalent for eight months a year, forming a literal highway for travel between communities and on which to harvest traditional foods like seals, whales and fish.

And harvesting traditional foods is not only a way for people to feed their families, but to remain connected to each other, to their culture, and to generations of knowledge about the landscape. I learned to see Arctic sea ice no longer as this abstract symbol of climate change, or even just as an ecosystem, but as something that was intertwined in very real ways with community life and identity, with family and tradition and joy. And I learned that the values of subsistence and conservation often can go hand in hand. When it is evident to us that a landscape sustains us in our community, we want to take care of it, too. When we can connect to a landscape through the stories of the people who actually live there, our entire perspective changes.

Just a few days ago, I was back on the north of Baffin island, meeting Inuit who are working to integrate indigenous knowledge with science and conservation and policy. And it makes me excited for a future where the decisions made about what happens in the Arctic and in remote places all over the world are made by the people who actually live there. Generational connections to places, our stories and our memories matter more than we might think. One of the biggest challenges in conservation is something called shifting baseline syndrome. It's what happens when a generation accepts the condition of their environment. As normal, losing sight of how it might have been different or healthier in the past. This is why long term consistent research is important. It's why indigenous knowledge and other traditional ecological knowledge is important, and it's why storytelling is important. Across time together, our stories create a record, a way of knowing when things are out of balance, and a way to recognize an ecosystem when it thrives.

As my photographs started reaching more and more people, I began thinking more strategically about what impact they could have. Addressing these huge issues like climate change all at once can just feel totally insurmountable. Often it can be easier to have a tangible impact by starting on one smaller story at a time.

And we can start closer to home. Every time I came back to Alaska, I heard stories about this remote island in Alaska's Bering Sea where thousands of Pacific walruses hauled out on the shores each summer. The island had been established as a sanctuary for the walruses in 1960, when the population had been nearly decimated after decades of commercial hunting. When the sanctuary was established, it was the last place in North America where Pacific walruses came ashore. And now, after decades of protection and a ban on commercial hunting, the walrus population had recovered.

Only now they're threatened by climate change. Walruses are particularly vulnerable to sea ice loss, but they're not yet classified as an endangered species, largely because they don't get a ton of attention. The Walrus Island State Game Sanctuary is co managed by Alaska Native communities who have relied on walruses for thousands of years. The research conducted there every summer is some of the most consistent in the entire surrounding ecosystem. But so few people visit this island that its funding has been imperiled as a result.

So together with my brother, a wildlife biologist, we went to photograph it for National Geographic. On the Walrus Islands, the walruses sang out from the sea in a wider range of vocalizations than any other marine mammal. When they surfaced from the dark water, changing colors as they came ashore, they appeared otherworldly, like creatures from the moon. The researchers told us that walruses are a keystone species, shaping the entire biotic community that they live in. Everything about the experience filled me with a sense of wonder. It's difficult to say what impact one small photo story could have had, but since the article about the Walrus Islands published, the visitor numbers have increased. Film teams have begun visiting the island. Transport options for how to get there have improved, and I believe that encouraging a sense of wonder one story at a time together, can make a tangible impact.

When I think back to my childhood. Now I can see how the connection that I felt to the places that I grew up became a connection point to a web of stories so much larger than myself. My story may have begun in a dramatic landscape at the forefront of climate change, but the entire world's ecosystems are interconnected by water, by weather, and by human and animal movement.

Everywhere. Absolutely everywhere. The connections that we feel to the places we love can grow into stories, or into careers, or into initiatives that can echo out for generations to come. So think back to whatever it is that you love. Think about the stories you could tell, the pictures you could take, the legacy that you could leave behind. Remember your connection to the land and how it makes you feel, and let your story start there.

Innovation, Science, Global, Conservation Photography, Climate Change, Alaska, Tedx Talks