Newtok

Newtok, Alaska was one of the first towns in the United States that relocated due to the climate catastrophe. The town of approximately of 325 Yupik people was established along the shores of the Ninglick River, close to where it joins the Bering Sea, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1959. Prior to Newtok's establishment, the Yupik people had lived a migratory lifestyle along the Bering Sea for thousands of years. As global temperatures rose, the village was decimated by melting permafrost, intensifying storms and rising seas, causing the village to sink into the earth. The village first studied the issue in 1983, voted to relocate in 1996 and successfully petitioned the federal government for relocation funds in 2017. The village finished their relocation to a newly built town in 2025. This body of work explores the lives of the people on the front lines of climate change in one of the world’s most developed nations.

ANDREW BURTON

(b. 1987 / USA / He, Him) is a Pulitzer Prize finalist documentary filmmaker and photojournalist focused on the intersection of environmentalism and exploration. He is a Sundance grantee who has worked on Peabody-winning and Emmy-nominated films. Burton and his wife have two daughters and a dog named Bosco.

andrew@andrewburton.com

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American Oil

Oil: America’s most divisive commodity. Few resources effect more corners of our lives - the economy, politics, jobs, the environment, transportation and foreign affairs. This dichotomous body of work explores two aspects of America’s relationship to the oil industry: the North Dakota oil boom and opposition to the Keystone pipeline.

From 2008 to 2015 western North Dakota saw enormous oil production as the Bakken shale formation was exploited to it’s fullest potential. It led to rapid employment, a skyrocketing cost of living and a sharp drop in the price of oil throughout the country. During the same period of time a small number of people rose up in fierce resistance to construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The group stood in resistance to a multinational project that would have used eminent domain to build a pipeline across private property, nature preserves and fragile ecosystems, creating a new gateway for oil to flow uninterrupted from the U.S.-Canadian border to Nebraska.

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