(Florentine Films, 2002, 110 minutes, Airs June 11 on PBS, 8 – 10 p.m., Check listings for local times.)

Railroad magnate E.W. Harriman’s Alaska expedition in 1899 had more impact than he might have imagined.

Harriman underwrote a two-month, 9,000-mile exploration of the Alaska coast and interior passage, taking 25 distinguished botanists, biologists, conservationists and artists along to document the expedition. The group included Sierra Club founder John Muir and nature writer John Burroughs.

Carried by the George W. Elder, the ship they chartered in Seattle, expedition participants discovered fjords and passages, documented plant and animal life, photographed and painted, recorded Tlingits conversing in their language (using an Edison invention), survived a 30-foot wave caused by a chunk of glacier collapsing into the ocean, chronicled life on the Siberian coast, and made the first extensive charts and maps of the great frontier.

Harriman led the exploration of a Tlingit village in Cape Fox, Alaska. He believed the village was abandoned and took totem poles and other artifacts that would be given to six museums. Muir protested; it was his face missing among those photographed in Cape Fox with the totems. It would be 100 years before the poles were returned.

What the expedition gave science and nature was a benchmark from which to measure cultural and environmental changes 100 years later. Those changes are documented in a strikingly beautiful documentary, “The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced,” which airs June 11 on PBS.

The 1899 expedition compelled George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream, to editorialize for preservation of the Alaska frontier. It influenced a young photographer, Edward S. Curtis, to devote his life to photographing American Indian people. It made Louis Agassiz Fuertes the dominant ornithological illustrator in North America.

One hundred years later, an expedition organized by Smith College’s Clark Science Center retraced the original Harriman route. Like the original expedition, this too was a voyage of discovery: participants found changes in Alaska’s environment, economy and society. They witnessed the impacts of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, saw changes in how wildlife and fisheries are managed, studied the state of natural resources, and were introduced to the impacts of tourism on this pristine edge of the world.

One of the most touching events in the film was the return of totem poles and other artifacts to the Tlingit people of Cape Fox, Alaska.

“The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced” is an investigative report, a historical documentary and a nature film with all the stunning images Alaska has to offer. It’s a must-see for those who desire to be good stewards of the world in our care.

If the film is about discovery and change, it is also about the relationship between people and the environment that sustains them.

“History may not remember you well for what you’ve done for industry,” said anthropologist Richard Nelson, a “Harriman Retraced” expedition member. “But history has always treated well the one who said, ‘Protect this wild place.’ “

Anthropologist and expedition member William Cronin added, “What is so powerful about Alaska is that it is not just about nature, but about people.”

This writer highly recommends “Harriman Retraced” for school, community and home film libraries.

Richard Walker reports from San Juan Island, Wash. Contact him at irishmex2000@yahoo.com.