Join Explorers Club fellow and founder of the History, Arts, & Science Action Network Justin Fornal for the return of Flag 136. Since 2020, the flag has accompanied Fornal and his team across some of the world’s most challenging environments, —from the remote reaches of the Nares Strait north of Etah, Greenland, to the dust-filled, conflict-scarred streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. Fornal will share highlights and insights from three extraordinarily diverse flag expeditions.
The Project Harmony Expedition recovered, catalogued, and relocated more than 150 African American tombstones discarded into the Potomac River after the Columbian Harmony Cemetery was sold in 1959. Co-led by Justin Fornal and supported by the Commonwealth of Virginia, this multi-year effort united genealogists, archaeologists, and descendants to reunite the stones with the deceased and restore their histories.
The Great Arctic Swim was both an EC Flag and Rolex Expedition that centered around Fornal’s attempt to complete the first continuous swim from Canada to Greenland. The expedition’s primary objective was to collaborate with satellite technologists and local Inughuit communities to document how global warming is rapidly reshaping the High Arctic. This complicated journey to the northern stretches of the Nares Strait began with the first completed flight of a Cirrus SR22 single engine plane from White Plains, New York to Qaanaaq, Greenland and was followed by a 120 mile Inuguit led oversea journey towards Cape Sabein. Justin will discuss the extensive planning and logistics required to reach one of the most remote regions on Earth, recount the perilous eight-hour swim that followed, share updates on the scientific findings, and unveil his plans to return to the Arctic.
The Yibir: Finding Somalia’s Lost People is an ongoing research and storytelling project spanning the Horn of Africa, including Somalia, Somaliland, and parts of Ethiopia. Through a series of EC Flag expeditions, Fornal and his team worked closely with Somalia’s historically marginalized “untouchable” clans—communities whose inherited professions include blacksmithing, leather tanning, and traditional medicine. By creating a platform for these communities to reclaim their own narratives and share generations of cultural knowledge, the project continues to document and preserve a rich but rapidly disappearing web of Somali indigenous traditions. As part of this presentation, the documentary Learning from the Yibir will be screened, offering an intimate look at a side of Somalia rarely seen by outsiders.
The evening will conclude with the official unveiling of Fornal’s most ambitious expedition to date: a solar-powered crossing of Africa’s Sahel region focused on cultural preservation.
This in-person event at the Explorers Club Headquarters will include an audience Q&A.
RESERVATIONS
This will be an in-person lecture at Explorers Club Headquarters.
Check-in will begin at 6:00 pm, with a beer and wine reception from 6:00 – 7:00 pm
Justin Fornal
Justin Fornal is an international explorer and 2025 SATW Gold Medal award-winning writer, whose work focuses on the preservation of vanishing cultural traditions in crisis zones. He has led research expeditions through Iraq. Liberia, Yemen, Haiti, Guyana and a host of other countries. His areas of expertise include textiles, traditional foodways, and the material of ritual. (Photo Credit: Felix Kunze, taken at ECAD 2025)
