[Music]
what you're experiencing today is really
the future of sustainability for remote
River communities
and it's happening right here in the
Yaak ik Alaska so I hope all of you are
proud as we are of that fact
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[Applause]
Breanna dialogic Indian Arman the a
geography mute the residents of in
yogging are known for their cultural
environmental and valued centered way of
life since time immemorial
our people survived by inventing or
adapting to new technologies then
refining them to the highest efficiency
we perpetuate this way of life
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our River has supplied all of our salmon
and food for centuries
it's our only drinking water and it has
a lot of power we're just a water people
around the world there's over 700
million people who live on grids that
are powered by diesel fuel their retail
cost of powers easily ten times what it
would be in most grids in the US we've
always come together to plan our future
and the question has always been what
kind of a place does the geography to be
for our children to want to remain new
that we want to draw power from the
river but we absolutely cannot impact
our fish because that is a first and
foremost mode of survival
starting it out with a conversation at
the High School gymnasium from like I
say the oldest elders to the youngest
leaders to kids they needed to
understand who we were and what we had
to offer and we need to understand the
same thing as I returned their attitude
coming in here there's very much this is
your home we're going to respect this
and work here to help they work with our
engineers they work with our barge
captains energy developers experts in
deploying all of this in rural Alaska
and I attribute that to their success
[Music]
proof of concept proof this works in
remote community the culmination of this
Webjet project is this demonstration of
this commercial device operating for a
year through the summer and winter
validating that we could generate
meaningful amount of electricity and
integrate it into the grid it's 24/7 365
and it doesn't fluctuate
it goes riff Jen to an underwater cable
and comes up to here tie down to the
communities grid and I cannot think of a
better example of a community like Katie
Hagen where the pride is palpable and
they have a lot of things to be proud of
this is just one of those things a lot
of people have labeled us as a
progressive community but we operate
from indigenous values and we serve our
people there's definitely an ownership
it's you we owned this community so
there's two very powerful things
happening here when you when you're so
invested you can't live elsewhere and
then and you can change you can be the
agent of change