Caribou Heard

Jeneen Frei Njootli is making noise with antlers and amplifiers

- Erica Ngao

In the northeastern corner of Alaska, along the Yukon border, is Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit —“the sacred place where life begins” in Gwich’in, the language of one of Canada’s northernmost First Nations. Each summer, up to 40,000 caribou calves are born on this 607,000- hectare coastal plain. But the United States government has started opening up the region for oil-and-gas development, which would threaten the caribou’s breeding ground. “Our elders say that if there are no caribou, we’ll all cease to exist,” says Gwich’in interdisciplinary artist Jeneen Frei&nbs