Cannery Caretakers film crew with Brad Angasan at South Naknek Village, July 2019. Bob King, photographer. Courtesy of the NN Cannery History Project.
Join us online for a virtual Cook Inlet Historical Society lecture.
Free online via Cloudcast.
Advance registration is required to receive the link. Please register directly on the Anchorage Museum website by following this link: Register Here
Speaker: Katie Ringsmuth
In 2015 Bob King and Katie Ringsmuth embarked on a journey to Bristol Bay to preserve the history of the Diamond NN Cannery at South Naknek, Alaska, resulting in the seven-year public history endeavor called The NN Cannery History Project. Uncovered along the way was the story of the Cannery Caretakers, which looks at cannery work from the perspective of village residents. Today, the 40-minute film, The Cannery Caretakers, is part of the exhibition, Mug Up: The Language of Cannery Work, on display at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau through October 8, 2022. Filmed, directed, and edited by the Anchorage media company Jensen Hall Creative, Katie Ringsmuth indexed hundreds of hours of film footage, wrote the script, and curated the historical content. Bob King conducted several interviews and provided fisheries expertise. Tim Troll, the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust Director, and the Alaska Association for Historic Preservation managed project funds. LaRece Egli oversaw logistics on local shoots. Support for the film came from generous grants from the Rasmuson Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Alaska Humanities Forum. Please consider joining NN Cannery History Project Director Katherine Ringsmuth for a viewing of The Cannery Caretakers, followed by a discussion about how the NN Cannery History Project created a humanities community from a 130-year-old salmon cannery.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Like the Pacific salmon, Katie Ringsmuth journeyed to Bristol Bay each spring, where her dad, Gary Johnson, was the Diamond NN Cannery superintendent. As a cannery kid, she rode three-wheelers and ate too many doughnuts at Mug Up. In later years, Katie worked her way through school, packing salmon roe and sliming fish. The experience not only paid for college but inspired her pursuit of Alaska History. In 2015, when she learned that Trident Seafoods had closed the Diamond NN Cannery, Katie—along with Bob King, Carvel and Shirley Zimin, Tim Troll, LaRece Egli, and many others—launched the NN Cannery History Project to collect, preserve, and share the oft-forgotten stories of Alaska’s cannery people. Now, seven years later, the NN Cannery History Project and the Alaska State Museum have brought that vision to fruition with the opening of Mug Up: The Language of Cannery Work. Today, Katie teaches Alaska History at the University of Alaska Anchorage and serves as the Alaska State Historian and Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer at the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology. She lives in Eagle River, Alaska, with her husband Eric and two soccer-playing boys, Ben and Tom.