Aaron Leggett is the president of the Native Village of Eklutna and the Senior Curator of Alaska History and Indigenous Culture at the Anchorage Museum. He grew up in Anchorage, so his memories of it involve all of the memorable and formative experiences that made him who he is today. The same is true for the other two people joining the conversation, Julia O’Malley and David Holhouse. They’re both longtime journalists from Alaska and from pretty much the beginning of their journalism careers, they were the voice of the people. Alaskans who reported on cultures and countercultures, crime, food and anything else newsworthy that happened in their close-knit community. 

At its core, this is a conversation about what a place means to its inhabitants. How it shapes and molds them. It’s about why David, Julia, Aaron and myself all continue to try and capture the Anchorage we grew up in, before Alaska was so connected to the rest of the world. For my part, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to capture the essence and the feeling of the Alaska snowboard and skateboard scene of the 90s and early 2000s. Holthouse talks about his memories of the Anchorage punk scene in the mid-90s, another lively and sometimes provocative group of people. Aaron remembers a heavy metal group of Alaska Native guys who wore leather jackets, had long hair and smoked cigarettes. They were metal and they were Native. When recalling these stories, there’s fondness, melancholy and nostalgia — a feeling Julia says is a cousin of grief. That if you become too nostalgic, you might lose track of how to listen to the present moment.