I am the daughter of a first-generation Estonian immigrant. My mother left her birth country in 2000. While I don't speak the language or travel back frequently, I have always maintained a great interest in my cultural heritage and elder knowledge within the Estonian community. Starting last fall, after becoming connected with the Smithsonian, I began attending events with The Estonian Society of Central Florida. There, I met an incredible group of people with unbelievable stories to tell. I quickly recognized an opportunity to sit down with some of the community's oldest members in recorded oral histories. While I do not personally have family members who fled the country in response to Soviet oppression, I have taken a great interest in this period of history and have so far collected four interviews. Two are from individuals who left the country with their parents as very small children, and two are from nonagenarians who relocated to German displaced persons camps in their teens. 

The short film I will produce for Folklife Magazine is currently set to explore a single, binding event (Estonian Independence Day, celebrated with the Society in Clearwater, FL in February) as the ultimate climax of intergenerational, cultural experience. The short essay would explore my work to not only connect to my own heritage through mediamaking, but to bridge the gap between emigrated elders and their American-born descendants through recordings and storytelling.

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While I am currently in the process of assembling both components, I have already gained a great deal of historical and cultural consciousness. Uniting with my heritage community has been healing in and of itself, but being given the opportunity and support to pursue the work I love within that space has been an incredible gift — for myself, the community I am working within, and hopefully, the outside world.