UAF Celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day

Story and photos by Colin A. Warren

HAPPY CUSTOMER – Logan Hertzler awaits hungry & smiling as Adi Michael dishes up a frybread taco

The celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day at UAF kicked off at 9:30 a.m. in the Wood Center Ballroom. Round tables were still being filled up as Teisha Simmons, Interim Dean of the College of Indigenous Studies, officially welcomed everyone. 

“I just want to really take a moment to acknowledge this day for what it is and how much gratitude I have for today. You know, it’s not by easy means that we’re here today. I am remembering my ancestors that have been here for 10,000 years and survived in one of the harshest places in the world,” Simmons said.

With that she ushered two community members, Sunny and Neil, to the stage and asked everyone to join their music with dancing to warm up the day.

After everyone felt the rhythm and shared traditional dance movements over the course of three songs, Simmons welcomed her “grandma”, Anna Frank, whom in Simmons' words is an “advocate and wisdom keeper and culture bearer.” 

Frank spoke of growing up subsistence and the hardships of living through the boarding school era, in which many of her peers were taken from their parents by the government or its affiliates. She explained the need to process trauma by understanding it. She repeatedly underscored the importance of school, encouraging the crowd to “go as far as you can with your education.” She also emphasized the importance of elders and recounted times of tribulations and success while working for UAF.

Next up was the featured speaker of the day, Dr. Lee Francis IV, aka Dr. IndigiNerd. From the day’s brochure: “An award winning author, entrepreneur, and educator, Dr. Lee Francis IV aka Dr. IndigiNerd is taking the Indigenous arts scene by storm with a mission to reframe Indigenous representation in pop culture and empower young creatives. From co-producing shows on Indigenous Science with PBS, founding the world’s first Indigenous comic-book shop (A Tribe Called Geek), to founding the nation’s first Indigenous Comic Con, his body of work is as impressive as it is extensive.”

CULTURE CRUSHING – Dr. IndigiNerd explains the negative effects of popular culture on Natives

Wearing a beautiful white vest with Native patterns, Dr. IndigiNerd took the stage in front of a screen set up for his slideshow to accompany his talk about Native Americans in popular culture. He introduced himself in his Native Pueblo language and explained his people came from about 45 miles west of Albuquerque. He ran through many ways in which Native American culture has been framed in Western culture. 

“There is a perception of Native people that comes from Western popular culture. We’re people that have existed in somebody else's consciousness for 400 plus years. And that’s really why this idea of representation is so important, because we didn’t control the media that were the stories that were being told about us, right?”

And then he made a shout out to his fellow nerds, which by his definition is “loving something, having a deep knowledge of a field or something and being unironic about it.”

He then used his slides to go through prominent examples of negative portrayals that Western culture projected about Natives, including the conceit of the “noble savage”, Twain’s character Injun Joe from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, the hyper-masculization of Native men, and several ways in which Natives were framed as having a “magical mysticism” in their relation to nature, resulting in an undue primitive take on his peoples. He eventually segued into the commercialization of the Native image and their often portrayal as survivors. 

“This is the commercialization of Native images. These commercializations of that then continue to replicate and feed into the same periods of time that we see over and over again. And so you see this now becoming how all Native Alaskans look, and if you don’t look like this, then who am I? Who are you? How can you exist? You’re not Native Alaskan, you’re something else. And so [popular culture] is dismissive of our own identities,” Dr. IndigiNerd said.

Dr. IndigiNerd ended positively, noting the burgeoning quality Native representation happening in recent years, including comic books, language usage, and games. 

After his talk the crowd in the ballroom dispersed to the other activities set for the day. This included an array of Native arts for sale by vendors in the Wood Center mall, a wellness lounge hosted by Denaakk’e, Inupiaq, and Yup’ik Language clubs, and a fry bread fundraiser in the Brooks building put on by the Festival of Native Arts club. But that wasn’t all: there was also a necklace workshop put on by Brianna Grey, a Native games demonstration and Dr. IndigiNerd put on a “world building” workshop in the afternoon which local middle school and high school students attended. And of course no Indigenous Peoples Day could be complete without traditional dance groups backed by sternum shaking drums, who performed in the late-afternoon in the Wood Center multi-level pit area. 

FEEL THE BEAT – Iñu-Yupiaq dance group performs to an engaged audience at the Wood Center