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Yellowknife photographer Pat Kane is one of seven recipients of a series of grants awarded to visual storytellers internationally.
Vital Impacts, a non-profit founded by National Geographic photographer Ami Vitale, gives away seven grants each year named for environmentalists Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Ian Lemaiyan, Chico Mendes, Madonna Thunder Hawk and EO Wilson.
Kane, a member of Timiskaming First Nation in Quebec, is part Irish-Canadian and Algonquin Anishinaabe.
Last year, he released his first book – Here is Where We Shall Stay – examining the relationship between Dene people and the Catholic Church. Kane’s photography was also featured in an all-Indigenous issue of National Geographic this year.
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Kane told Cabin Radio he is “pretty honoured” to accept the Dr Jane Goodall Environmental Photography grant worth $20,000.
“In the photography and photojournalism world, this means a lot because so many esteemed photographers from around the world applied,” he said.
“I hope to use the grant to tell the story of caribou declines in the NWT but also what it means culturally to people here, and what Indigenous communities are doing to study and protect the herds.”
Kane said he will be working with the Caribou Guardians Coalition and Tłı̨chǫ Boots on the Ground “to help amplify their research and stories to a wider, international audience that don’t know this topic as well as we do here.”
“It’s a great opportunity,” he said, “to highlight Indigenous-led stewardship in the North and how important caribou is to people through audio interviews, portraiture and documentary photography that I hope to turn into an online multimedia resource, as well as it be published in major magazines and newspapers around the world.”
Other 2024-25 grant recipients include Sirachai Arunrugstichai of Thailand, Rehab Eldalil of Egypt, Sofía López Mañán of Argentina, Mélanie Wenger of France, Peru-based Italian photographer Alessandro Cinque and Chinky Shukla of India.
