On Thin Ice
In 2009, Luke Cole, a pioneering theorist and practitioner of environmental justice law, died in Uganda at the age of 46. During his too-brief life, the San Francisco lawyer battled mining companies, mega-dairies, and toxic waste dumps on behalf of poor and minority communities. Through his non-profit, Center for Race, Poverty, and the Environment, he filed landmark cases, including one against big oil detailing the staggering impact global warning has had upon a 4,000-year-old Inupiat Eskimo village in Kivalina, Alaska.
Arctic Requiem: The Story of Luke Cole and Kivalina is an elegy and exploration of Cole’s relationship with the Inupiat — which actually began with a six-year legal battle with the world’s largest zinc mine. Relying heavily on music and tribal memory, Arctic Requiem weaves together facts and folklore from the Inupiat’s steadily dissolving island, where playwright Sharmon J. Hilfinger and composer Joan McMillen spent time to gather firsthand accounts. Onstage, characters from Inupiat myth lead Cole through the kaleidoscope of events with enough veracity to earn the approval and support of Cole’s wife but enough heart to feel like an oral history.
— Silke Tudor
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