Animating the Awkwesasne
Creation Teaching
Narrative Stewardship:
How US corporations poisoned this Indigenous community
For a Vox documentary investigating the systemic pollution of the St. Lawrence River, I was commissioned to animate the Akwesasne Mohawk creation teaching and illustrate the community's foundational relationship with water. The film explores how decades of corporate PCB dumping devastated local ecosystems and disrupted generations of Indigenous tradition.
My role was to provide a visual anchor for the documentary’s emotional core: the oral history of Sky Woman, the giant turtle, and the deep, reciprocal bond between the Mohawk people and the natural world.
Adapting a living history for a journalistic platform requires exactness and respect. The animation needed to honor the original context of the Akwesasne community's teachings without imposing a heavy, outside editorial footprint. Organic, hand-crafted textures and deliberate pacing were chosen to reflect the intimacy of the oral traditions being shared by the interview subjects.
The animation centers the voices of the community and serves not just as an accompaniment to factual reporting, but as a crucial storytelling tool.
