Once he moved back to the United States, he grew up in a few places, including Texas and Queens, New York. Yuyan was born in Maryland but lived in Taiwan with his grandmother, who was Indigenous Nanai/Hèzhé, in childhood. That’s how you know that meant something to the people.” This photo of model and activist Quannah Rose Chasinghorse was part of a shoot by Yuyan that eventually became the July 2022 cover of “National Geographic.” (Photo: Kiliii Yuyan) And it was just a white Hanes T-shirt with a bootleg print of the National Geographic cover. “It was a T-shirt being sold at a powwow. “About a week after that ran, I got sent a picture one of my Alaska Native friends,” Yuyan said. Another favorite story of Yuyan’s was on Native sovereignty and was the July 2022 National Geographic cover. His whaling story remains one of Yuyan’s favorite and most formative projects and led him to continued work with National Geographic. But under Inuit management, the population of the whales has actually tripled.įor Yuyan, this led to his first multiyear documentary photography project which was later published in National Geographic in 2018. People from Western cultures often have difficulty grasping how you could love something and yet might hunt it. Inuit 100% believe that, and they obey all the traditions to respect that whale for its life,” Yuyan said. “So many people worldwide who are part of this modern, globalized world can’t fathom the idea, which is deeply part of Inuit culture, that when they hunt a whale, all of them say, ‘The whale gives itself to us.’ It’s not a metaphor for them. He has been able to use kayak building both as a way to express his own heritage, and as a way to have many adventures. Before he was a photographer, Yuyan endeavored to learn from master kayak builders. And then as I integrated into the community and learned more I just started to see the similarities to my own cultures, not only the Nanai, but also the Chinese side too,” Yuyan said. I was not only fascinated, but I was just so moved by it. “I went up there, and then I found out that were whaling still, and I was shocked and surprised. It was kayak building that brought Yuyan to North Alaska to learn how to sew kayaks with real seal skins from Inuit, and through that to photography. As can often be the case as Indigenous peoples have forcibly been estranged from their own practices, Yuyan was reunited with kayak building independently. Yuyan himself was led to photojournalism by his work building handcrafted kayaks, a practice that he initially did not realize was invented in his ancestral home in Manchuria. Yuyan’s ancestry is Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) and Chinese, and his own Indigeneity and multiculturalism have informed his photography practice and vice versa. There is no question that Yuyan has learned not only how to live close to the land, but how to capture the natural intimacy and the communities that he lives alongside through photography. There are these deeply beautiful spiritual moments that are pivotal moments in people’s lives.” “It’s a fantastic life, there’s no getting around that,” Yuyan said in an interview with the South Seattle Emerald. The CID resident’s work has required diving in coral reefs, riding on dogsleds around Greenland, sailing thousands of miles around Vancouver Island living out of a kayak he built, and spending quiet moments standing on the tundra, covered with snow, the northern lights above. ![]() ![]() This year he received National Geographic’s Eliza Scidmore Award for outstanding storytelling. Not many people live to have the experiences of Kiliii Yuyan, a documentary photojournalist who has photographed for National Geographic Magazine, Time, and more. The wheel doesn’t need to be reinvented, it’s all around us if we’re willing to pay attention.” ![]() There are wrong ways to live, but there are many, many, many right ways to live, and you can’t find those insights by looking inward - just looking within your own culture for insights.
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