UAA education student: 'To branch out, you have to know who you are'

 

 

When I tell you that I am Alaska Native

I mean that my dreams lie in the tiny hands of the little girls that call me Auntie, even if they aren't my relation.

I mean that my hopes rest in the minds of the little boys that can never seem to keep the dust off their smile and are outside as long as the sun will allow, preparing to be hard workers, before they even realize.

I mean that my ears have tuned themselves to the frequency that my elders speak at, and my voice to the station that they recognize.

- Written by Lacayah Engebretson, July 2015

Close your eyes. Imagine you're a child, on a midsummer day at fish camp.

"You can feel the sun on your back and the wind kind of breeze in your hair. The river's flowing from one bank literally through your heart and back to the bank."

Lacayah Engebretson, a UAA elementary education student who is Ahtna Athabaskan, Yup'ik and Tlingit, spoke those words while delivering the keynote address at last fall's Elders and Youth Conference.

The conference theme was "Not in My Smokehouse," so Engebretson delivered a message about the power, support and solace of her community-she said Alaska Native peoples must refuse entrance to disrespect, unkindness, addiction, violence and negativity, and embrace hard work and love.

"Love is Native," Engebretson said. "I will always run to that."

Cultivating a world within

Engebretson grew up in what she calls a "Native-style family" in the Copper River Valley-Chistochina and Tazlina-though her roots extend as far away as Kake.

"We use the fish wheel, for subsistence," she said. "We go to fish camp on Memorial Day. It has a lot of history. There's a wall tent there, a stove, so many yards of grass and dirt, a fire pit with a grate over it. It's where my grandparents sat, where my cousin is buried-he passed away in an alcohol-related accident 10 years ago. It's where I learned to cut fish. There's heritage attached to it."

Engebretson flourished in the warm fold of her Ahtna culture, hearing and speaking its language, dancing its dances and singing its songs. Her mother, Liana Charley, executive director of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation, sought to provide her daughter with a culturally infused education.

Engebretson moved to Valdez for a while, attending a school she said did not offer instruction about Alaska Native culture. "Which is why I wasn't super-happy living there." Returning to the Copper River area to attend school in Glennallen raised her spirits. Law intrigued her, and for a while Engebretson considered the possibility of becoming a lawyer.

But lawyers usually work to right wrongs, fix things that have broken. Engebretson decided her life would have more impact if she prevented those wrongs, kept those breaks from happening, by helping little children connect with the worlds around and inside them.

A teacher who looks like them, learns like them and lives the way they do can become a role model-a supportive mentor who can better help them navigate toward personal and academic fulfillment.

"When you're able to learn more about yourself, you're more comfortable with learning," she said. "It makes you stronger in your own identity."

Engebretson wants to provide children-especially those who are Alaska Native-with that fundamental self-assurance.

"I want them to see they don't have to do one thing or another," she said. "They can do what they want. I watched a TED talk on a Lakota immersion daycare that shows kids they are able to be fluent in Lakota and be an astronaut, fluent and be a doctor. To branch out, you have to know who you are, face people who tell you you're not good enough."

'I am not a quiet person'

Engebretson attended a school her mother established, which melded culture with education. This experience shaped Engebretson's thoughts about what she wanted to do in her own life.

"I liked that," she said. "The whole of who I am was being taught."

While in high school, she took advanced placement classes, earned some college credit and, in 2014, traveled to Washington, D.C. to take part in the Inspire Pre-College Program, a fast-paced crash course for Native American youths-an offshoot of George Washington University's Native American Political Leadership Program. She also participated in a New Mexico conference about Native Americans involved in criminal justice and the judicial system.

"I made friends who are now doing cool things at their own colleges," she said. "We keep in close contact."

Engebretson graduated from Glennallen High School last spring. She was chosen to serve as Miss Ahtna 2015, and, in July, traveled to Fairbanks to compete in the Miss World Eskimo-Indian Olympics (WEIO) event.

Now, she is attending classes at UAA, as well as working as a nanny and cultural interpreter. One reason Engebretson chose to attend UAA is because she has family in Anchorage and the drive back to see family in the Copper River area is, for her, a "comfortable" one.

"I can come home for potlatches," she said. "I don't have to save money, save money, save money to go home. I miss my mom, dad, brothers, grandpa; the scenery; the slow-moving pace of life. If I ever get that homesick, I can just run home."

Engebretson says she still feels passionate about the law, activism and speaking out about Alaska Native civil rights.

"There are two things all Native American and Alaska Native cultures value: our land and our children," she said. "Enough people focus on land; I'm going to focus on our children."

Knowing and actually living her culture, every day, provides strength, Engebretson says. As a result, she doesn't allow believers of biases and stereotypes to define her or the Alaska Native cultures she emerged from.

"I don't really hang onto those things," Engebretson said of stereotypes and those who believe them. "They're ignorant, so there's no need to keep those memories stored. I've always been very assertive in who I am. I come from a family of loud women. We say a lot. I am not a quiet person when it comes to my culture. I'm tolerant of others' opinions-not submissive in my own."

Written by Tracy Kalytiak, UAA Office of University Advancement

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