Preserving Our Place: Knowledge is Power
8:00 am – 4:00 pm MDT
The NCAR Mesa Lab Visitor Center is excited to host Preserving Our Place: Knowledge is Power, a first-of-its-kind exhibition, featuring the importance of culture and lifeways and the consequences of the climate crisis. It celebrates the work of two Indigenous photographers: Chantel Comardelle, Tribal Executive Secretary of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, Louisiana and Dennis Davis, community artist of the Native Inupiat Village, Shishmaref, Alaska. Additional photography was taken by and/or is provided courtesy of Pete Mueller, Nathan Jessee, and Thomson Reuters.
The exhibition runs June 1 through Sunday, August 20, 2023 and will be on display in the NCAR Mesa Lab Café and the Art Science Gallery on the second floor. The NCAR Mesa Lab Visitor Center is open 363 days a year, Monday - Friday 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. MT, Saturday, Sunday, and holidays 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. MT. All exhibits are FREE and open to the public of all ages. To learn more about visiting the NCAR Mesa Lab Visitor Center, please visit our Plan Your Trip page.
The exhibit will be held in conjunction with the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences’ annual workshop, which brings together a multi-generational network of Indigenous, tribal and community leaders, atmospheric, social, biological, and ecological scientists, students, educators, and experts from around the world, organizing through an intercultural approach to address and understand extreme weather events and climate change.
The collaborative exhibition illustrates the devastating effects of climate change on their native, coastal homes.
Nathan Jessee
Chantel Comardelle
Chantel Dolphin Lady Comardelle has a deep passion for her community and culture. She is a wife, mother, archival and historical researcher, grant writer, photographer, and Tribal Secretary of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, off the coast of Louisiana, which has been nearly completely evacuated due to the impacts of climate change and sea level rise. Her current areas of focus include Federal Recognition, Tribal Resettlement and the Preserving
Our Place Movement, including the co-curation and creation of the “Preserving Our Place” exhibit. As a lifelong bayou resident, Chantel seeks to positively impact her community for future environmental, economic, and cultural sustainability.
Education has always been important to Chantel’s Tribal community, something which for many years her people were denied. Chantel is a first generation college graduate with a Bachelor of General Studies from Nicholls State University. In 2016, she started the Certificate of Museum Studies Program from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) to learn new archival and conservation skills to help the Tribe preserve their culture in light of their current environmental crisis.
Chantel is now in her second year as a Master Student at IAIA in Cultural Administration. It is her hope that the knowledge she gains will help thrust the Tribe through the Federal Recognition process and finally reach their collective goal of acceptance.
Dennis Davis
Dennis Davis is a self-taught Inupiat photographer that has been taking pictures and videos of the western coastline of Alaska for over 20 years. He uses an Inupiat vision of the connections between land, animals, and people to create new forms of photography and video, that offer a glimpse into the subsistence lifestyle. Dennis’s goal is to show others what his culture is all about; to highlight the risks that Arctic peoples face with the coming of climate change; and to give a voice to his people.
The Preserving Our Place exhibit at the NCAR Mesa Lab is co-presented thanks to a collaboration of six partnering programs and organizations: Rising Voices, the UCAR Center for Science Education, the National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (NCAR/UCAR), EcoArts Connections, Open Studios, and the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN). It is made possible in part thanks to funding and/or in-kind support from these partners, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation (NSF) award #1921045.
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