Written and directed by Allan Code
Produced by Shirley Vercruysse
One month – and 36,000 years old, NunChoGa was entombed in the frozen earth of the Yukon. The hydraulic claw of an excavator, slicing through a permafrost hillside for gold-laden gravel, inadvertently tore NunChoGa’s small, pink, solidly frozen body in half. The young miner, startled by the sight, acted quickly to keep her from thawing. This extraordinary discovery occurred on June 21, 2022, Aboriginal Day, in the Traditional Territory of the Trondëk Hwech’in First Nation. What does NunChoGa’s miraculous preservation signify? Is she a messenger from a distant time, from a world shared by all our ancestors? Does she carry a warning, a blessing, or perhaps both? Her arrival prompts profound questions about the intersection of Science and Traditional ways of knowing. The spiritual and ancestral connection of the Trondëk Hwech’in people to NunChoGa represents a continuity of tradition and belief, an ancient connection to the land and its inhabitants, human and otherwise. The modern, science-based system of Paleontology also seeks to explore the world in which NunChoGa lived and died. How do these groups work together in a transformative way, to bring about a better understanding of worlds in constant flux and change.