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Norma's Story is less than 6 minutes of animation, but it covers a lot of ground! It is the first in the First Hand Climate Stories series that brother and sister team, Alex and Karen Hawley have created. (Karen an Ecology Ottawa Alumnus)
Norma Kassi is a Gwitchin' elder from Old Crow, Yukon. She tells in her own words what growing up within her community in the 1950s was like. Even the children helped with hunting and gathering food from the land. Understanding the ebb and flow of the seasons made survival for the Gwithin' possible in the far norther community of Old Crow. But that knowledge doesn't hold, with climate change impacting seasons and weather patterns. Those, like the Gwitchin' – hit hardest by climate chaos – are least responsible for the causes of our change climate.
Bringing the issue of food security, cultural survival and climate change into the classroom is the impetus for the First Hand Climate Stories project. The NFB is selling the animated short with an accompanying educational package.
The film has also been selected for a variety of film festivals in North America, including the Montreal First Peoples Film Festival, this past August 30th, the 16th Annual Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival in Toronto this October 19-25, the Chicago International Social Change Film Festival this past September, and the 18th Annual United Nations Association Film Festival in San Francisco on October 15-25.
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