What Happens When a Vegetarian Moves to Alaska and Marries a Commercial Fisherman and Deer Hunter?

In Ellen Frankenstein's thought-provoking and funny film, Eating Alaska, she shows how non-natives and natives try to balance try to balance buying industrial processed foods with growing their own food and living off the land in the 21st Century.

CommitmentNow:  You are a vegetarian who lives in Alaska.  Eating Alaska is a thoughtful, funny and beautifully filmed documentary film you made to question the ethical and sustainable way to live when it comes to food.  By the end of the film you state that you have a new understanding of how we relate to where we live and what we put in our stomachs.  What is this understanding? 

Ellen Frankenstein:  Maybe it is a combination of understanding and acceptance of this:
Eating is not simple. When you stop to think about it a lot of the daily choices we make are clouded in complexities and challenges. There aren’t simple answers to what is the best or right thing to eat, for our bodies or the planet. In the end, my hope is that we can make choices that make sense for where we live and that we all can   have access to healthy and safe, nutritious food.

CommitmentNow:   What inspired you to make this film?

Ellen:  It is a combination of interests colliding with personal experience. I’ve thought about the politics of food for many years. I decided as a teenager meat eating didn’t make sense because of all the grain and feed that goes to cattle. I figured that while some people ate steaks, other starved. At the same time, I began to work in different cultures and was intensely uncomfortable saying “no” to food that people offered me. When I moved to Alaska and found myself surrounded by hunters and fishers, I changed what was on my plate. When I discovered some women I knew hunted, I thought it would be a great subject for a film and way to explore issues of how we relate to where we live and what we eat as well as play with our expectation of gender roles.

CommitmentNow:   Your husband Spencer is a self-defined “hunter gatherer” and a hippy environmentalist.  How does he balance these seemingly contradictory roles?

Ellen:  Spencer says it is impossible not to be both a hunter-gather and environmentalist. He cares deeply about where he lives, surrounded by forests, mountains and the ocean and works to help protect this place for future generations. He also feels eating from where he lives connects him to this place. The history of conservation is linked to hunters, who want to care take of habitat. This was something I learned after I moved to Alaska and is certainly not something I knew growing up as a food shopper and tourist to beautiful places.

CommitmentNow:    In the film you speak with a group of vegetarians in Alaska.  Do you think it is better to heat tofu, a purely vegetarian food imported from Asia, or venison hunted locally?

Ellen:  Again, I think it is complex. By not eating meat, we are not being cruel to animals. There is no blood on our hands and we are not eating flesh. However, when fields are cleared to grow soybeans something live dies. By paving parking lots and putting up malls there is more loss. We can’t escape having an impact. I don’t eat much store bought meat,  don’t like it and if I lived in a city, I might just be a vegetarian who tries to eat as locally as possible. In this case, where I live now, yes, it seems to make more sense to eat the local venison.

CommitmentNow:    What is “toxic trespass” and how does it affect our food?

Ellen:  Toxic Trespass happens when hazardous materials become airborne, and drift. The Arctic is susceptible to chemicals from all over the globe. Someone using pesticides in your neighborhood impacts you too. In Alaska, people might think they are gathering and fishing healthy foods, but if the water and soil are polluted it travels up the food chain and impacts our health. The production and proliferation of toxic and radioactive contaminants threaten environmental and human health.

CommitmentNow:  In your film you state that eating local means being patient.  What does that mean?

Ellen:  Whether you are a farmer or a fisher for work or to put food directly on your own table, those activities depend on the weather, the soil and lots of elements that can be out of your control. It is a heck of a lot easier to go to the supermarket and buy whatever is on the shelf, from wherever it comes from than go out hunting or to try to depend on a garden in a temperate rainforest (where we live). I mean being directly involved with what you eat in this statement, but even if you go to the farmer’s market all foods aren’t available 24-7. Processed foods, however can be found, night or day…

CommitmentNow:   How does what we eat and how we eat make a difference, no matter where we live?

Ellen:  I’ve had times in my life where taking the time to cook a decent meal and  sit down to eat with others is far off my radar. The whole “slow food” movement (www.slowfood.com) is about counteracting the fast food, fast life.

It can matter for a lot of reasons: when we slow down we can think about impact, make more careful choices and enjoy what we eat and who we eat with. One thing I’ve learned working in small Alaskan communities, is that getting food and eating is often about sharing and doing things together. There is another element that is important to acknowledge and celebrate: regional food traditions, which can get swept a bit aside by corporate food production and restaurants.

CommitmentNow:    Where can we learn more about ethical and sustainable eating?

Ellen:  There are so many great books and websites on ethical and sutainable eating now. Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Gary Nabhan have produced awesome books and articles.  Here are some websites. We also created a user’s guide with resources you can download for free at www.eatingalaska.com or if or the Eating Alaska page at www.newday.com.
•The Community Food Security Coalition
www.foodsecurity.org/
Dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times.
•Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Locator
www.localharvest.org/
Find wholesome, sustainable food from community supported agriculture, farms, stores and restaurants in the US and Canada, in your neighborhood and when you travel. If you live in a rural or isolated community go to these sites and see if anything comes up!
• FoodRoutes
www.foodroutes.org/
The FoodRoutes Network is dedicated to reintroducing Americans to their food, the seeds it grows from, the farmers who produce it, and the routes that carry it from the fields to their tables.
• Growing Power
www.growingpower.org
Will Allen, the Chief Executive Officer believes, "If people can grow safe, healthy, affordable food, if they have access to land and clean water, this is transformative on every level in a community.” Growing Power provides education, assistance, demonstrates easy to replicate growing methods through on-site workshops and hands-on demonstrations and distributes produce, grass-based meats, and value-added
•Organic Consumers Association
www.organicconsumers.org
Campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability
•Renewing America's Food Traditions (RAFT)
www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/details/raft/
Dedicated to rescuing America's diverse foods and food traditions.
•Slow Food
www.slowfoodusa.org
Slow Food is an international organization of "eco-gastronomes" whose mission is "to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life.

CommitmentNow:  Eating Alaska was both informative and enjoyable!  How can our viewers see this wonderful documentary film?

Ellen:  Schools, community groups and universities can order copies from New Day Films, www.newday.com
Individuals can order copies from www.eatingalaska.com
By early spring viewers can stream the film on-line at http://newday.iriseducation.org/

CommitmentNow:   Are you working on any new projects?  How can we learn more about your films?

Ellen:  You can learn about other documentary and short films at www.efclicks.net or at www.eatingalaska.com. I also do community art projects with kids and have a new non-profit called www.artchangeinc.org. I’m working on a two new projects, “Baskets and Branches.” about a passionate 80 year old Haida weaver and artist, named Delores Churchill. The other is a documentary in development on rural and urban kids, technology and their relationship to the natural  world.

Ellen Frankenstein is a former and sometimes vegetarian with a strong passion for social and food justice. She prefers to eat local and eat what she knows. That now includes fish, venison and the vegetables she tries to grow in the Alaskan rainforest. She is an independent director, producer, and media educator based in Sitka, Alaska. Frankenstein also created the award-winning documentaries Miles from the Border, A Matter of Respect, Carved from the Heart, and No Loitering. Ellen's work has been supported by awards including a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship and grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Independent Television Service, the Alaska Humanities Forum, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation.