FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 28, 1999

Fairbanks, Alaska- A best-selling Alaska Native anthology by rural University of Alaska Fairbanks students recently captured one of the nation's most prestigious awards for the preserving and interpreting of local, state and regional history.

"Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers" garnered a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History during its annual awards banquet in Baltimore, Md. earlier this month. The book weaves individual stories of ordinary Native life into the history of Native communities, according to UAF professor John Creed, who co-edited the book with colleague Susan B. Andrews.

Both Creed and Andrews are long-time English and journalism professors who teach at UAF's Chukchi Campus in Kotzebue, an Inupiat settlement located on the windswept, treeless coast of Alaska's northwest arctic region. Thirty-eight Chukchi students contributed articles to the anthology, including former student Georgianna Lincoln, Alaska's first Native female state senator.

Many of the contributors developed pieces for the book as UAF students taking audioconference classes from remote sites where airplane, watercraft, snowmobile or dog team offered the only access to the outside world. The book contains maps, line drawings, and dozens of historical and contemporary photographs depicting the ordinary world of rural Alaska, including subsistence activities, education, social problems and survival.

Most of the anthology's writers still subsistence fish, hunt and gather wild foods- much like their families have done for at least 10,000 years. But they are also taking college-level classes, combining traditional and western-world activities.

The stories in the book, which is already in its third printing, represent a unique set of circumstances turned into ground-breaking work that has brought the understanding of Alaska's history to a new level, according to Joan Antonson, state historian with the Office of History and Archaeology and this year's AASLH state award's chair.

"This is the first compilation of its type done in Alaska," Antonson said. "In that sense, 'Authentic Alaska' has made a significant contribution to the way we are looking at our state."

Creed and Andrews spent the past decade researching, writing, and editing information for the book, tapping media skills the two learned as full-time journalists. Creed said a journalism background helped to create a contemporary forum for rural and Native writing in a state where Native residents make up nearly 17 percent of the population, but less than one percent of its journalists and authors.

"The book's contributors mostly are not the traditional college age of 18 to 22 years old," Creed said. "Some are in their 20s, 30s and 40s, although others were high school students when they wrote their pieces."

These multi-generation voices and perspectives are what make the book so powerful, particularly since the writers describe their own lives uninterpreted by others, according to the University of Nebraska Press. The UN Press, which is North America's largest publisher of Native American titles, ranked "Authentic Alaska" as its best seller during 1998.

"Historians in recent years have become more sensitive to the writing of community histories from the Native American point of view," said UN Press acquisitions manager Gary Dunham. "'Authentic Alaska' captures the lives of Native Americans as they experience community, and communities are most important to Native Americans."

Contributors to the book, many of them UAF distance education students, include:

Linda Akeya, Shona Greist Nasruluk Andrews, Dolly Arnold, Rena Boolowon Booshu, Benjamin Uvigaq Brantley, John Cleveland, Blanche Jones, B.J. Criss, Lucy Nuqarrluk Daniels, Jimmie Evak, Charlene Agnatchiaq Ferguson, Rebecca Gallen, James Gooden, Sheila Gregg, Calvin Sonny Ikkitchiiq Harris, Carol Harris, Dollie Ahyuahlooktook Hawley, Helena Hildreth, Tina Maria Jones, Anthony Lincoln, Georgianna Lincoln, Hannah Paniyavluk Loon, Eva Menadelook, Genevieve Norris, Spencer Reardon, Geri Reich, Karla Rodgers, Sandra Russell, Wilfred Boyuck Ryan, Ruthie Sampson, Mildred Aviiksaq Savok, Verne Seum, Kathleen Uhl Sherman, Rachel Sherman, John Stalker, Julia Jones Anausuk Stalker, Mark Tucker, Luci Washington and Berda Willson.

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