Announcing the 2025 Snowlands Environmental Storytelling Award Winner:
LET MY PEOPLE GO SKIING
For the first time, Winter Wildlands Alliance and our founding grassroots partner, Snowlands Network, are proud to present the Snowlands Network Environmental Storytelling Award to honor a film in this season’s Backcountry Film Festival that most effectively combines compelling winter storytelling with a clear environmental message. This inaugural award recognizes storytelling that goes beyond adventure alone and shines a light on the vital connection between winter landscapes, ecological stewardship, and the recreational experiences they support.
This year’s winner challenges dominant narratives, elevates underrepresented voices, and invites audiences to think more deeply about how we move through winter landscapes.
2025 Snowlands Environmental Storytelling Award winner: Let My People Go Skiing
Directed by Kakéin Shee Ellen Bradley, Let My People Go Skiing is a deeply personal and political film that reframes skiing as a tool for cultural reclamation, relationship to land, and Indigenous leadership. Set in Lingít Aaní (Tlingit homelands in Southeast Alaska), the film invites viewers to question extractive outdoor recreation models and consider what it means to recreate in a good way.
This film stood out to the award jury for its clarity of voice, courage in critique, and grounding in lived experience. It embodies the heart of the Snowlands Environmental Storytelling Award by centering human-powered movement and environmental responsibility in one inseparable story.
Photos by Matthew Tufts
“What made this film unique among those selected for the festival is that it tells a story,” shared Jim Gibson of Snowlands Network. “It follows a young Indigenous woman who takes initiative — returning to her ancestral lands and helping others do the same. Most films show people having adventures for their own satisfaction. This one inspires others to help protect the winter environment.”
From the Filmmaker
What inspired you to tell your story, and how did this project first take shape?
When I first found my way into Outdoor Industry spaces, I had a really hard time feeling understood. Though I shared a love for the same activities, spending time outside, and protecting the places we loved, my interactions led me to feel like something was deeply missing from these spaces. When I would introduce myself to others, I would tell them who I was, where I came from, and what I did, and I felt like everyone had their own stories of my home. I am Tlingit, my family is from Angoon, Alaska, but I have lived near the Salish Sea my whole life. Skiing has always been my favorite tool for connecting with the lands I lived with, but I had never had the opportunity to ski on my traditional homelands, Lingit Aani, in southeast Alaska.
When others in the industry would tell me their favorite places to ski on my homelands, who they thought were the best heliskiing guides, the best time of year to go, it triggered a lot of the intergenerational traumas I carry as a child of the People of the Tides.
My family was displaced from our homelands, moving down to the Seattle area in the 60s. My Grandma was a boarding school survivor, who was a fierce advocate for our people and our homelands. I was fortunate enough to get to spend time at home in the summers growing up, spending time with the land, deepening my connection to who I was at my core, but never through the activity I most loved. These experiences inspired me to want to go home to ski, but do it in my way, in the Tlingit way, not the way the industry thought I was supposed to do “skiing in Alaska”. From there, Let My People Go Skiing was born.
What impact do you hope your film has on the Backcountry Film Festival audiences nationwide?
I am so hopeful that this film will start to shift the Backcountry Film Festival audiences’ perceptions of Alaska, of the way outdoor media portrays Alaska, and apply that to their own understanding of the places they live and the land they relate to through outdoor movements. I hope this film inspires audiences to stop supporting snow sports media that are exploitative of land, of people, of cultures. I hope audiences stop Heli-skiing in Alaska, that if they are a guest, they visit in a good way, being open to learning more about the history and about the contemporary conditions of a place. I hope audiences choose to learn more on how to engage in reciprocity, centered in a gifting framework rather than an exploitative or extractive one.
How do you see skiing as a tool for reclamation or reconnection with land and culture?
I see skiing as a tool for reclamation because in its recent state, skiing has become such an inaccessible sport. Skiing has become expensive, skiing is often exclusionary, in many BIPOC communities it is seen as something White People do. But skiing has not always been that way.
There is a lot of evidence suggesting that skiing was invented by Indigenous Peoples in so called China and Mongolia, with even some archeological pieces coming out of Alaska. Skiing was Indigenous Knowledge manifest into how you can travel through snowy landscapes. The original skis were made of trees, skins were made of horse skins or seal skins and worked in practically the same way our “high tech” gear works now.
The act of skiing wasn’t expensive, exclusionary, or something only White People did. The act of skiing was about movement, it was about survival, it was about relationship and connection. I think for many people that is still what skiing is, but it is the industry, it is the capitalizing of this tool that has made skiing extractive. Returning skiing to its original intentions, divorced of the narrative told to us by the industry, can be one of many incredible tools for reconnection with land and culture, everywhere it snows.
The Snowlands Network Environmental Storytelling Award celebrates films that connect environmental stewardship with human-powered winter recreation. How does this recognition align with the heart of your work?
Receiving the Snowlands Network Environmental Storytelling Award is an absolute honor. An underlying story thread of our film is a strong critique of the heli-skiing operations that exist within Alaska. Heli-skiing is simply not a sustainable way to go skiing or snowboarding. It is unsustainable through its excessive carbon dioxide emissions associated with every helicopter ride, the noise pollution helicopters spread across the land, the excessive cost of heliskiing, causing it to be a sport meant only for the wealthy or well connected.
When one goes heliskiing, they skip the physical approach to the mountains, missing out on the real ability to be in relationship with the lands. This sets people up to not even be capable of being environmental stewards, skipping over the land ignorantly, while also drastically increasing their chances of safety risks in the mountains. Without a relationship to the land, without moving with the lands you intend to ski or snowboard on, how are you ever to hear when the land tells you “No. today is not the day”.
The promotion of this activity in ski media is not sustainable for our planet, for our communities, for the lands we intend to recreate with, and is not sustainable for skiers and snowboarders. When the industry tries to sell this activity to all winter sports recreationalists as the pinnacle of snow sports, it creates a simply unachievable standard for most, and the planet. We must all turn away from this narrative, and that is what we aimed to show through Let My People Go Skiing.
What did you learn through the process of making this film — either about storytelling, collaboration, or your own relationship to wild winter landscapes?
The lessons learned through the process of making this film were endless. What was meant to be a feature length film where we could dive into the depths of the history of Alaska, the Alaska Natives Settlement Claims Act, and the history of extractive industries in Alaska, turned into a short 18 minute piece.
We originally sought out to make this feature length film with the support of a major brand in the industry, only to have them drop out a year and a half into the process with no warning. Unfortunately at that time, finding no further funding source while in the depths of the film process, we had to pivot to what we could complete while self funding the project. Through the many experiences we had working on this film, I learned a lot about patience, and about the importance of giving in to a creative process, but never giving up.
The ups and downs of the film did not stop after we had our funding taken out from underneath us, and it ultimately took 3.5 years to make the film, from our first pitch to premiering the film at the No Man’s Land Film Festival. In those 3.5 years, my relationship to my homelands changed and transformed, and for that I am endlessly grateful.
What’s next for you or your team? Are there future projects continuing this thread of Indigenous leadership and environmental storytelling?
What comes next is a question I have put off answering for a large portion of this filmmaking process. Through all of the trials and tribulations we faced, I had many temptations to take the exit ramp off of the project, and had to take that thought or possibility off of the table to keep myself focused on seeing the project through. The exit ramps I had originally dreamed of included what came next for me in my science career, future research projects, or positions that would fulfill my curious and passionate science driven brain. But, I found that dreaming up those possibilities always brought me closer to the potential of quitting on this film, so I eventually stopped allowing myself to plan for what comes next.
It has been so beautiful to be at the part of the process where we are sharing the film with audiences and really getting to see if our goals and efforts were worth all of the time and effort. This has been my most favorite part of the process, and only recently have I started to allow that question of what comes next to creep back into my mind.
What I know comes next is a couple of features in two new episodes for The New Radical series by Connor Ryan. One feature is in an episode about our community in Winter Park, Colorado, and the importance of turning towards community in these dark times. The other feature is about our Mountain Access Program through Ikon Pass and Native Youth Outdoors. I am so excited to have these episodes shared with the world soon, and am very ready to see what the world has next for me.
Selection Criteria & Award Committee
The Snowlands Network Environmental Storytelling Award is judged by a set of clearly defined criteria. Films eligible for the award must already be selected for the Backcountry Film Festival lineup and are evaluated based on the following:
- Environmental Integration: The film seamlessly weaves a clear, compelling environmental message into its narrative — whether through personal storytelling, advocacy, or ecosystem exploration.
- Relevance to Winter: The story is rooted in winter — focusing on snowpack, wildlife, snowy public lands, climate impacts, or human-powered winter recreation.
- Storytelling Excellence: The film uses powerful visuals, narrative, and structure to engage the viewer and spark emotional or intellectual connection.
- Call to Action: The film fosters awareness and inspires audiences to care, engage, or take meaningful steps toward conservation or advocacy.
- Youth Engagement (bonus consideration): Films that inspire young people to connect with and defend the winter environment will be given particular consideration.
Behind the scenes, the award is part of the broader Backcountry Film Festival selection process, where a dedicated Festival Film Committee reviews hundreds of submissions from around the globe to curate this year’s lineup. This committee brings diverse backgrounds — from outdoor educators and storytellers to filmmakers, guides, and conservation advocates — ensuring a wide range of perspectives help shape what stories are celebrated on tour.
Experience the Film
Let My People Go Skiing is screening as part of the Backcountry Film Festival, touring to communities across the country and available through virtual screenings. We invite you to experience this award-winning film, reflect on its call for reciprocity and responsibility, and join us in keeping winter wild.
Find a screening near you or stream the festival online.
