Welcome To Walking With Cody
Alaskan Native and Kotzebue Village Member
Samantha Harrison was raised in both Juneau and Fairbanks, Alaska. She is an enrolled member of the Native Village of Kotzebue and a NANA shareholder. She began her career working in the Intensive Care Unit as a Registered Nurse for Indian Health Services.
About Us
Samantha Harrison
Samantha Harrison was raised in both Juneau and Fairbanks, Alaska. She is an enrolled member of the Native Village of Kotzebue and a NANA shareholder. She began her career working in the Intensive Care Unit as a Registered Nurse for Indian Health Services. Samantha has interned with Native Movement, been an emerging leader for the Inuit Circumpolar Council, and is a producer for a social justice documentary in collaboration with Sundance. Recently, she became a new mother and named her son after her younger brother, Cody Eyre. Cody Eyre died from an officer-related shooting in Fairbanks, Alaska in 2017. He was shot at over 40 times. This loss was a transformational experience, and she is committed to using her grief to create change.
The purpose of this project
Lost to officer-related violence.
I am making photographic images for a visual photo essay on Indigenous lives lost to law enforcement. This project began by taking a photograph of my grandmother at the location where my little brother was killed by police in Fairbanks, Alaska. My grandmother holds a framed photo of my brother while carrying my 10-month-old son, who shares my brother's namesake. For this project, and for me, this is a first step: I am inviting other Indigenous families that have lost a loved one to officer-related brutality to share their stories. As they hold a picture of the lost family member, we will take photographs of the surviving family member at the location where the act of violence occurred.
As a new mother, I am deeply inspired to imagine a just future–a future where my son will live long enough to become an elder–without me ever needing to worry about him being killed by law enforcement. Native Americans are statistically more likely to be killed in police encounters than any other population. My project aims to share the faces and names behind the grim statistics. I want to play an active role in shaping the world my child will grow up in. Art can advance social justice in ways other mediums cannot. My hope is that this visual photo essay is an instrumental change agent in policing recruitment, training, and tactics.
