Artist Judith Underwood is American Indian and grew up learning Native beading and jewelry making. She was selling her work at the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Celebration at Alaska Pacific University on Monday, and said the event was a chance to honor ancestors.
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“I think it’s important to remember that everything about our culture, everything about the arts and crafts, was forged generations and generations and generations ago, when times were a whole lot harder,” Underwood said.
She and other vendors lined the floor of Moseley Sports Center in Anchorage. They sold handcrafted items from jewelry and lotions to headbands.
Iñupiaq artist Jessica Macaraeg has attended the event in the past but it was her first year as a vendor. She said the holiday is a chance to share with the community.
“I think of it as a remembrance and a possibility to share knowledge and traditions with the community, not only other Natives but other members of our community that are also very important,” Macaraeg said. “So to bring awareness to that, we’re still here and we still belong and have a lot to share.”
The celebration drew a crowd eager to buy artwork, watch performances and try traditional foods including salmon head and moose soup.
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Margaret Tarrant, who is Mandan and Hidatsa, was with the Get Out the Native Vote outreach team. She said she wants to see more Native people at the polls, and it’s important for their voices to be recognized.
“I feel like my peers are not voting and it is showing up in like the way our services are being cut and the funding for those being cut and so I feel like if we start electing leaders that are more aligned with our values then we can start becoming more self-sufficient and not have to rely on those programs,” Tarrant said.
“We’ve come a long way, and we still have a long way to go,” she said.
There are more than 200 federally recognized tribes in Alaska.
Alaska Pacific University President Janelle Vanasse said that the university is pushing to put Native culture at the forefront.
“Universities have traditionally been kind of Western culture centered, and then invited Indigenous people in. And we’re like, what if we flip that switch, and we just tried to center more of the Indigenous culture and contemporary issues of Indigenous people,” Vanasse said. “And it just turns out to be a very enriching experience for all of our students.”
The school is working to transition toward becoming a Tribal University.
In 2017, Alaska officially designated the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The day is still federally recognized as Columbus Day, although presidents have issued annual proclamations recognizing Indigenous Peoples’ Day since 2021.
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