The culture of consumerism has never been more apparent to me than when visiting indigenous villages in remote Alaska. Superimposing western consumerism over what was a subsistence way of life has caused a clash of cultures. This is most apparent in the cast off trash and junk of contemporary western technology. Do to the practice of assimilation and and forced boarding school there is a sharp and devastating break in traditional knowledge and custom among Native Alaskans. Although traditional customs and subsistence lifestyle is being taught to the youth of the villages, the use-it-and-toss-it mentality of western culture has become ingrained.
Garbage dumps are the same the world over, but the one significant difference in rural Alaska is its remoteness. What comes into the village stays in the village when it comes to consumer goods. Because of its remoteness recycling is almost unheard of. When a majority of day-to-day goods are flown in by plane it's just too expensive to ship them back out. Add to that the lack of access to repair parts and repair equipment and things start to pile up fast.
This body of work is the start of a project to try and document and chronicle this clash of cultures and give new light on how we see our own consumer culture. All of these images were made in Shishmaref, Alaska off the coast of the Seward Peninsula in northwest Alaska. Because of the static nature of remote Alaska's trash and junk issues their garbage dumps are a microcosms set in fast motion of the same issues facing the world. This is most apparent to a westerner like me when it is juxtaposed on an indigenous culture whom we are "helping" by bringing all the "best" of western technology to the "primitive" world.
