This film is in collaboration with filmmaker and photographer Leslie Satterfield.

Shot in 2016 at the frontline of the slaughter of the Tongass National Forest, When Old Growth Ends is For The Wild’s first film. Assuming the ambitious role of a first-time film director, producer and editor, Ayana led an all-woman crew to Southeast Alaska to bear witness to a slowing biological heart.

When Old Growth Ends is a provocation, a poetic experiment, an existential quandary and a call to action. We invite you to immerse yourself in the Tongass as we saw it and listen to the questions that arise.

To learn more about the efforts to protect the Tongass visit Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (SEACC), Sitka Conservation Society (SCS, and Earthjustice.

When Old Growth Ends premiered in March 2018.

Following black feminist scholar Tiffany King’s text, The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, CAN I GET A WITNESS “traces two queer Black Latinx femmes, brontë velez and Stephanie Hewett, dancing before and being danced by the ecology, memory, and stories of the Tongass National Forests and Glacier Bay in southeast Alaska–unceded Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit territories, scored by field recordings and music, interviews with Tiffany King, Wanda Kashudoha, and Kasyyahgei, with a Groundtruthing Oracle by jazmín calderón torres @soulsoilsol

Scored by field recordings and music by cellist/acoustic ecologist Jiordi Rosales and interviews from the For The Wild podcast with Tiffany Lethabo King (interviewed by brontë velez), Wanda Kashudoha Culp and Kasyyahgei (matriarchal Tlingit elders and lifelong forest defenders of the Tongass & Glacier Bay interviewed by Ayana Young), the film and constellated media utilizes "dance as a grammar" (Tiffany King) to hold the complexity of it's narrative: tracing connections between melting ice in Alaska and the disappearing Caribbean, the separation of black and indigenous relations, and the critical suture that: black and indigenous femme survival requires the earth's health and "the land's refusal to be separated from flesh" (L.H. Stallings).

Produced by Lead to Life and For The Wild. Creative Direction by brontë velez. Executive Produced by Ayana Young. Videography by Molly Leebove & Jade Begay. Edited by Molly Leebove. Groundtruthing Oracle (Opening Segment) by jazmín calderón torres. Research by jazmín calderón torres. Music by Jiordi Rosales. Graphic Design by Erica Ekrem.