In a way, Annie is Ennis. She is the better side, the soul, the hope, the fighting spirit. She brings life into the world, and she is a bringer of life. In the middle of all this darkness.

It just can feel so lonely. It feels like you're, like, bearing the weight of so much history and the stakes are so high when it comes to our culture and comes to our communities. While I'm grateful for that purpose now, as a young person, it can feel suffocating.

Uvanga Khanik. I'm Alice Kanniklen, an inuber writer, podcaster, and activist from Utkervik, Alaska. And this is the true Detective night Country podcast. What makes the series compelling to watch is when it addresses real world issues with honesty. The creators of Night country knew that the characters lives would need to intersect in sometimes messy and vulnerable ways for the series to talk about the realities of the world. As a reminder, if you haven't watched part three of the series, I recommend doing so before listening to this podcast, as we will be discussing some spoilers in this episode, we'll speak with showrunner Issa Lopez, actors Isabella star LeBlanc, Jodie Foster, and Kaylee Reese, as well as gain Alaska native perspective on the real life issues that communities like mine are facing. This week, we dive back into the world of Ennis with a flashback. Navarro approaching a building where a woman is screaming. Annie Kotok answers the door covered in blood. The location is revealed to be a local birthing center.

Is this a clinic? It's a birthing center. The last one in the region.

We begin to more deeply understand the conflict that Navarro has as an indigenous woman who sympathizes with what Annie K. Stood for. Later, Leah is brought to a local warehouse where members of the community are gathering. She's confronted with the truth that the mine is creating harmful pollution, which is killing wildlife, poisoning the water supply, and causing stillbirths. It's a harsh reality that she internalizes, which then inevitably spills over into her relationship with Liz Danvers.

Have you been hanging out with those people that are vandalizing my. No. Are you insane? Do you know what happens to those people? I'm not insane. I just fucking care about this place, all right? I don't know what you want from me. I want you to fucking care.

As the story unfolds, the place for Alaska native culture and customs is called into question. It leaves us wondering, what is the real source of tension between Leah and Danvers? Is there any deeper connection between Annie Kay's death and the mine? And what could these storylines reflect about the real life issues in our own world.

Well, episode three is a deeper dive into the world of Ennis, understanding a little bit more of the makeup of the town, seeing the characters that live in the villages.

I'm speaking again with Issa Lopez, showrunner of Night country. Issa shares how the indigenous community in Ennis is facing the erasure of their culture and customs. And in the midst of this, Annie Kay rises as a symbol of light.

In a way, Annie is Ennis. She is the better side, the soul, the hope, the fighting spirit. She brings life into the world. The world can be incredibly unforgiving of people who remind it of what it could be.

Annie Kotok was murdered. Her unsolved case haunts both our lead detectives. We know it's somehow tied to the men at the salal station as her severed tongue was found on location. So the more our detectives learn about Annie Kay, the closer they get to solving the crimes. During Navarro's flashback, we learn that Annie.

Kay was a midwife, a practice that.

Is causing tension within the community.

In Alaska, there's been a very hard push to eradicate native birthing centers and having all the birds happening in the hospitals with. And, you know, the community has been fighting to keep it. So Annie is standing for the right of native women to have babies in a traditional way, which is safe, but is still in connection with the values and the systems that have been there for thousands of years from generations. So she stands for that. And she is a bringer of light, and she is a bringer of life in the middle of all this darkness.

The narrative around Annie Kay and the birthing center is powerful. When speaking with Kaylee Reese, she reflects on shooting this scene and the impact it had on her character, Evangeline Navarro.

I love that scene. And I think Navarro learns so much about who Annie Kay is and important she is in the community and what she does for the community. And actually, she gets to witness only part of why Annie Kay fights so hard for this community, because she's a midwife. And for the first time, that's when Navarro feels like she's a part of the community. She gets to be one of those women that help bring this life into this world. And she also realized at the same time that it's such a miracle that this baby is alive. It's not like, oh, it's another birth that they were anticipating this baby not being.

Okay.

So there's a real problem here that goes way beyond any kind of quote, unquote. It's just bad water, because it's bad water. And the mind somewhat does stuff to the water. And she also realizes that as a law enforcement officer, at being an upiac in that community, is that that's something that she has to do. It's not something that she necessarily wants or even chooses to do. And that she sees the real injustice is not Annie Kay going and making noise at a mine or defacing property or destroying some property. It's not Annie Kay is not the criminal. There's a lot that she notices in that entire scene.

Navarro hasn't been able to embrace her identity as part of the community. She hasn't been able to completely understand what's going on. But she feels for Annie, and she believes in what Annie believed. And she's angry at the system sustained by the mind and all that universe that destroyed her. So she's highly suspicious of the mind because of the impact of what they do, and because of methods that she suspect they have to silence whomever stands up to them.

We want clear skies. We want our animals healthy. We want the mind to grow.

In the midpoint of the episode, members of the community gather to spotlight the mine's problems and voice their concerns.

You see how the community is organizing in a protest against what is happening with the mind pollution. So you get a better sense of the town. And the episode itself starts with a birthing scene, which is, in a way, the mirror image of the funeral scene that you will have later. So it's all about understanding that other side of Ennis, the indigenous side of Ennis, and the real needing of the community. We've been going through Salal and the police station, the white side of Ennes, and now we're going through the experience of the native side of Ennes.

Leah wanders into this assembly. She's aware of Liz Danvers'stance that the mine is a lifeline for jobs and fuels the economy. Yet it's in the heart of this assembly that Leah's internal struggle catches fire. What side will she choose?

Leah had a mother that disappeared from her life. And when Leah was very little, that's when her father and Danvers got together. And then the father died. So Leah and Danvers end up together. And they do love each other, but Danvers is unable to express how she feels about her. But she cares deeply, so it's a complicated relationship. And Leah, she's just looking for a connection. She does love Danvers and believes in her and in a truly mature way. She's waiting for the moment when finally Danvers can show up for her.

When writing the characters of Leah and Danvers, Issa knew that there would be a complexity in their relationship. Leah is indigenous, Danvers is not. Leah wants to deepen her native roots, but Danvers is becoming fearful of what that really means. Leah is young and exploring her place in the world while Danvers is settled in her ways. You may remember from part two of the series that as Leah begins to carve out her own identity, she experiments with wearing traditional face tatoos, a decision that sparks friction with Danvers. When we spoke, Jodie offered some know.

She'S raised by a white lady and who isn't very interested or keen on the heritage stuff, who's maybe even trying to suppress it a little bit because there are memories of her husband and her son. And Aliyah is just at that age where she needs to separate from her mom, and she needs to discover herself and discover her heritage. One day, the elder has her take a look at the facial tattoos. And so as Danvers comes to pick her up, she turns around and she sees that she has these tattoo lines drawn on her face, and she just sees red. She just has a like, you know, wipe that off, get that off of yourself. And she yells at the elder, which is, of course, something you should never do. She's trying to control her daughter because she sees her embracing her heritage as her putting herself in danger. She has implicit bias, and there's a part of her that's racist, that can't help it, and think, know, if you embrace your heritage, then next thing you know, maybe you'll be stuck in a small town in northern Alaska, and maybe you'll be working at a laundromat.

Maybe you won't quote unquote succeed. So as a person who has read and who has learned a lot about our history, about native history, of course I feel very offended by this. I feel offended by Danvers, but I also really understand her. I feel like even as a mother, I've just reacted by not understanding the impulses of my kids and wanting to keep them safe and somehow associating them, embracing their culture in some ways as.

A danger to discerning viewers. It's evident that Danver's apprehensions about Leah point to something much more complex than embracing her native heritage. She's beginning to realize that Leah is finding her voice as a protector within her community.

Well, she's terrified because she's starting to see Annie in her, but she can't say know. I don't know, even if she knows it completely, and she can verbalize it. So she reacts under the idea of, you cannot tattoo your face. That's not okay because you're a child and you're going to be sorry later, which is a very, very backwards way of thinking instead of just voicing. I'm worried that you're becoming a woman that was killed for her beliefs, and I'm scared for you because I've lost everyone else, and I love you.

I sat down with Isabella star Leblanc, who portrays Leah in the series. I was curious how Danver's rough around the edges personality influenced Leah as she explored her native roots.

My name is Isabella star Leblanc. I'm a sistituan wa petuan d'Chura, actor from Minneapolis, Minnesota. There's a lot going on here in this young person. I was just really struck by how rich they made her inner world and how much they made space for her to grow and to learn and to really find herself. The tattoos, the cockinate, it was such a big part of Leah's story that I felt like I got to learn so much through her and through these folks that I was hanging out with who have the traditional tattoos. And I think I learned about myself as an indigenous woman and my own relationship to womanhood through these practices. I really think that Leah's journey with her traditional tattoos are so beautiful, and that I think at the beginning, she's called to them because it's like a way to reconnect with community, and it's a way to feel closer to her heritage. I just feel like it's such a beautiful reclamation of culture, but it's also, like, traditionally a way to signify what matters to you, where you hold your power, where you come from. And I think that it was so special to get to go on that journey with Leah.

She's finding herself, and she's finding her voice, and she's finding the will to stand up to what's happening in town. And she's having a journey of discovery of herself and of the world she's in and of the link between her and that world and understanding that she belongs.

From the moment she read this script, Isabella connected with Leah and identified with her struggles as an indigenous woman. She reflected on the feelings that this role evoked in her personally.

I felt like she was so human in a beautiful way, and I was just really struck by the depth that Leah has. You can tell that she's young and she's figuring things out, but she's, like, really a river that runs deep I remember it just sometimes can feel so lonely. It feels like you're, like, bearing the weight of so much history, and the stakes are so high when it comes to our culture and comes to our communities. And I remember just feeling all of that pressure. And while I'm grateful for that purpose now, as a young person, it can feel suffocating, and it can feel terrifying. And you want to be taken care of. You want to be a kid, but you also feel like you have to be a grown up. You have to fend for yourself, you have to take care of your community, all while you're just trying to figure out how to grow up and find yourself.

There is a lot of complexity in Leah's character and around the internal struggle she's going through. I was curious what steps Isabella took in preparation of portraying a character like Leah.

I've always felt like, as an indigenous actor, there's so much that we have in common, but I never want to take that for granted, and I never want to represent in a way that I don't know how to represent. I mainly just tried to really listen and ask questions to the folks that I was on set with, our producers. They were so wonderful and so supportive of me, and I felt so honored that they were trusting me in this way. And so I really spent the time trying to be a listener and to be a relative to them.

We know that the relationship between the mine and Ennis are tightly intertwined. In part two, we saw a fight break out at Kavik's bar between the townspeople and miners as tensions start to mount.

Hey, don't. Fuck. You. Mining people are poisoning your own kids. Take them.

Some of the townspeople want the mine gone because of the dire effects it's having on the town's water. But the mine provides jobs and economic funding for this small, remote town. It points to the real natural resource exploitation that Alaska has faced for years. Alaska is warming at twice the rate.

Of the global average.

And Alaska native communities who rely on freezing temperatures to travel, hunt, and maintain traditional lifestyles are directly affected by these changes. The economy in the Arctic is based on local resource development, which is unsustainable in the long run. But there isn't one solution to fix it all. Inypek people have no interest in moving backwards in time. We just want to be able to sustain our connections and hunting practices in a modern world. It's complicated and nuanced, and so are the solutions for how to move forward.

My name is Jenna Kunz. I spent some time working as a reporter in Alaska. I ended up in this small town working for a two person newspaper, and found a grant to do climate change reporting through the Pulitzer center. And it was like calling for journalists that lived in.

I first met Jenna in January 2020, just as the sun was returning after the polar night. We traveled to Utkervik to document environmental changes in the Arctic and interview local residents about how Inuberc life has changed. A project called Alaska Natives. On the front line, Jenna reflects on what we learned.

I was expecting more people to be openly afraid of climate change or openly cognizant that they're vulnerable people, and that is not what we found. Nobody had that perspective. Journalists don't have a good rep in the Arctic for valid reasons of just, like, representing this community as on the brink of extinction. These words of loss and damage and just empowering language that represented the community as unwitting bystanders in their circumstance, that had no control over their own future and that were destined for disaster. There was a reporter, and the basis of her reporting was analyzing all of the words that media outlets used to describe arctic communities. She found that when they are talking about humans, they're talking from a position of disempowerment, like words like loss and death and extinction are used. Reading that report while I was there and seeing that the narrative I was getting was different than the one I was reading was really mind blowing for me. And I feel like there was a huge disconnect between what was being written and what was being lived.

Scientists, meteorologists, and conservationists from around the world studied changes in wildlife, weather patterns, and terrain, but largely failed to factor in the people that these changes would directly affect. First, with this in mind, Jenna and I aimed to cover the under reported story of what real people like myself were thinking and experiencing in their own words, in their arctic homeland.

Two of the questions that we asked everyone were, what has remained the same in your life and in your environment? And what has changed? The common thread that we heard from everyone, almost verbatim, was that despite the climate changing and despite the challenges that come with that, our people have been adapting, and we will continue to adapt. We are not intimidated by climate change. The reason that was challenging was because that flew directly in the face with every other reported story from this part of the world. It's hard to hold those things true at once. These people have been adapting forever, and all of them benefit from resource extraction. Many of them directly support it. How do I reconcile that narrative with the fact that the world is warming? And a great part of that is because of human contribution to that.

Jenna's observations reminded me of something that Issa shared during our conversation together.

When I went to Alaska and I was talking to people there, one thing that was said very quickly to me and stayed with me is Alaska is a place where people come to take stuff away and never return anything. So it was gold, and then it was whales, and now it's ore and it's metals and it's gas, and it's just constantly plundered and just gives and gives and gives, and nothing comes. Know this has happened for centuries in the US, taking the land away from the native communities because it has resources.

I come from a family of strong inuberch identity. I was taught that my ancestors come from not only Utkarovic, but all over the north slope and northwest region of Alaska. My sisters and I grew up knowing that traditional knowledge is science, and it sparked our collective love and yearning for science and higher education.

My name is Roberta Turuk. Glenn Barade. I'm Inupe. I'm from Utkervik, and I work at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Roberta, my younger sister, works at AOK at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

And what's really unique and cool about AoK is we work with this network of InupeCh observers to document changes, but also to elevate perspectives of people who are living with changes in the Arctic every day in arctic research or in the media. Climate change in Alaska is framed by people who aren't familiar with Alaska native communities. And so that story is getting told by people who are not familiar with the environment, with the people, or with the many cultures in Alaska. And we really make an effort to center and elevate the observers'voices because they are the foundation of our work. They really know what's happening, and they have lots of knowledge to share. The observers are hunters, they're whalers. They're leaders in their communities. They recognize that their observations can be used for decision making or to further arctic research. And so we work to connect their observations with federal agencies, Alaska native organizations, wildlife co management organizations. And so that's what our efforts are focusing on right now, is to continue to make observations to support the next generation of indigenous scholars and leaders.

Observers are documenting numerous impacts to the region. Unpredictability in the wind and ice creates dangerous conditions for hunters and fishermen. Adaptations in wildlife migration means changes to our hunting. Melting permafrost urges communities to consider relocation. The list goes on.

The permafrost thaw is really big, and it's affecting communities, not just on the coast, but even inland. And the thawing permafrost is also contributing to faster rates of erosion and land loss. All of the houses are built on stilts because of the permafrost that underlays the tundra beneath. And when you have thawing permafrost that is impacting the foundation of buildings, the foundation on which homes are built, on, which roads and other water and sewer infrastructure are built on, and all of the things that have been remained frozen for years and years are now starting to move around. And it's not something that communities had.

Planned for as we know it. Life in the Arctic has always been challenging. So the inuber story is one defined by adaptation. Despite the significant changes to our environment, we know there is a way forward. The answers to all challenges lie in awareness, understanding and collaboration.

We have different cultures, we have different local histories, we have different ways of thinking. And so I hope that people look at the work that we do with AoK and they make an effort to pay attention to local voices in their own work. If you are working with communities and all you focus on is all of the bad things that are happening, that doesn't help anyone to frame climate change as this doom and gloom villain that is going to take our people and our culture and our land away. It's not the way Aok communities are feeling. It's not that simple.

The way forward lies in remembering that hope is real.

I think for all of this work that has an undertone of negativity, the message of hope is an important one to suss out.

We're strong people, we're still able to go out hunting, we're still able to catch animals. Yes, there are challenges, but we're still here. We're still in the Arctic, and we have hope. We're strong people with strong ideas. And when we come together, we can accomplish great things.

There's a push and pull that happens with issues like these. It's an internal struggle that many people feel. ESA linked this tension back to how Danvers and Leah ultimately see the dynamic around the mine.

Danvers at some point goes like, what do you want me to do? I hate the mine because they're killing this town. I hate the protesters because if they stop the mine, then there is nothing, the community is over. So I hate everyone, and I'm sick of everyone and I don't know what to do. Which I think reflects a lot of the attitudes that we feel around us in this moment. And Leah, obviously, as happens with everyone in the world, I feel that is the young generation, the one standing up and saying enough is enough. And she absolutely represents that. I am convinced that if we have any hope is in their hands.

As an Inubec person, I often find myself feeling pressured to pick the right side in this climate debate. One of the biggest misconceptions about climate change in the Arctic is that conversations have to be pro this or anti that. But it's more complicated than that. The way Inuberc people see it, caring about the land and wildlife should also mean caring about the indigenous people who inhabit the land. In the show, the tension between Annie K. And the mine reflects an inner conflict some Inubek people face.

It's a choice between protecting the environment and investing in the economy, the same clash we're seeing in Ennis. But inypek people use money to buy gas to hunt caribou and use smartphones and gps to navigate trails and monitor changing weather patterns. Are investing in the economy and protecting the environment mutually exclusive? Some Inypek people believe so, and some do not.

In some ways, Annie Kay is mother Earth and the mine is the violent, destructive systems destroying her. Alaska native people are not a monolith, and climate adaptations look different from region to region, village to village, even person to person. Inube people don't ask for special treatment, protection, or judgment on sustaining basic modern lives. We just ask for respect, to make decisions for ourselves, and to be given the same opportunities as all other Americans in the lower 48. While the community of Ennis is still unearthing the truth behind the mine and the impact it is having as part three of the series closes, Danvers and Navarro get a major break in Annie Kay's case. They've cracked her phone and discover the horrifying video that captures her final moments.

What's up? Annie's phone cracked it.

My name is Annie Kotok.

If anything happens.

As the questions about her death remain, we dig deeper into these mysteries and explore the themes of darkness, loss, and spirituality. Next time on the official True Detective night country podcast.

Episode four is the dark nights of the soul, and it will tilt a little bit more heavily towards the spiritual and the horror side of the series, and it's necessary in the journey of a hero to go through absolute hope.

The true Detective Nightcountry podcast is produced by Tenderfoot Labs for HBO. You can follow our show wherever you get your podcasts and stream true Detective night country exclusively on Max. We'd love it if you could take a second to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and leave a comment to share your thoughts on the show.