These Indigenous Ski Films are Changing the Narrative

Let My People Go Skiing

Ellen Bradley’s Let My People Go Skiing lit up the screen at this year’s Mountain Film in Telluride and on the Girl Winter Film Tour. As a kid, Bradley says she never saw anyone in ski films who looked like her. So, the Tlingit skier set out to create it herself

Few ski films do much to acknowledge the land or the local people of the places where they shoot their lines. In Let My People Go Skiing, instead of seeking out far-flung places with lines to conquer, Bradley returns to her ancestral lands in Lingít Aaní (Southeast Alaska) to commune with the land while she skis. Upon her arrival, Bradley ponders the fact that so much ski footage from Alaska is of non-local and non-Native skiers. “As I look around the winter mountains in Lingít Aaní, I think to myself: There are only a few of us on the slopes, in a sea of white,” Bradley says in the film.

Through skiing, Bradley is able to reconnect with her homeland. In a scene that highlights her backcountry skiing, Bradley notes how critical that connection is to the land—for both her soul and her safety. But this endeavor also allows her to advocate for her community and help lower the barrier to entry for Alaska Native youth, so they, too, can connect with the land and soak in the pure joy of skiing. “Indigenous people having access to skiing is good for everyone,” Bradley says near the end of the film.

Watch: Let My People Go Skiing Trailer

How to Watch Let My People Go Skiing

Let My People Go Skiing will announce new screenings in the near future. Follow filmmaker Ellen Bradley for announcements.

Shaped By Land

Another film that premiered this fall, in October at the Banff Film Festival, also shuns the classic ski film narrative and instead highlights Indigenous stories.

Shaped By Land follows Adam Kjeldsen, a Greenlandic skier and local guide. Emily Sullivan, the film’s director, says she noticed “Greenland’s growing popularity as a ski destination and was simultaneously struck by a lack of Greenlandic representation in ski media.” After Sullivan spent time with Kjeldsen and his community in West Greenland, skiing with and learning from locals, the idea for the film came to life.

Extractive adventure tourism is a problem across the globe, but it’s especially apparent in Greenland, where tourism is rapidly increasing, and local outfits are often bypassed or ignored. Kjeldsen, an Indigenous Greenlandic ski guide, hopes to shift that in a way that allows the tourism dollars to benefit the Greenlandic people without harming the land.

After Sullivan spent time skiing with Kjeldsen and watching him guide, she was struck by his unique approach. “He was very committed to connecting his clients to his culture through food, story, and experiences. I realized that folks who come to Greenland and ski with European or US guides would miss this important part of the culture and experience,” Sullivan says.

Kjeldsen’s in-depth knowledge of the land allows him to share it with visitors in a unique and profound way while still preserving it. “When I’m guiding, I think it’s important to show more than what they came for,” Kjeldsen says in the film. Shape By Land shows what this looks like: Scenes of Kjeldsen preparing local food for clients flash across the screen alongside stunning ski cinematography in Greenland’s mountains. 

Shaped By Land centers Greenlandic folks not just as the main characters, but behind the scenes with a Greenlandic camera operator, photographer, and story advisor. “From the start, it was essential that this project center Greenlandic voices and perspectives,” Sullivan says. It’s a film that ultimately puts people and culture before skiing, but it’s that very act that makes the skiing itself richer and more meaningful.

Watch: Shaped By Land Trailer

How to Watch Shaped By Land

Shaped By Land will continue to premiere at film festivals throughout the winter. Check here for shows near you.