Friday Focus: Troth Yeddha’ Forever
Feb. 23, 2024
— By LaVerne Xilegg Demientieff, professor and UAF Social Work Department chair
As the sun shines ever more brightly, I am finding renewed energy and deep gratitude as we move toward transitioning from winter to spring. I’m excited about all the possibilities this time of year holds at UAF. The 50th Annual Festival of Native Arts is a student-led celebratory event this week. The theme is “Troth Yeddha’ Forever: Our Ways of Life”. Everyone is welcome to attend and take part in exciting traditional Alaska Native activities including, Native dancing, language learning, beading, wellness practices, making fish ice cream – called akutaq or vanhgiq (ah-gu-duk or von-guk), and so much more. It is a great time for reflection about where we have come from and where we are headed, as well as the impact these types of activities have on our sense of community, connectedness, and belonging.
I humbly share a few personal reflections as examples of the impact Troth Yeddha’ campus, activities, and people have had in my life. The word Xilegg (huh-leg) in Deg Xinag (hun-nog) means springtime, it is also the name given to me by my language mentor, the late Jim Dementi from Shageluk. Interestingly, UAF was where I first started learning my language in 2002. The Alaska Native language course on conversational Deg Xinag was taught by Jim’s daughter Beth Leonard, linguist Alice Taff, and several esteemed Elders who have since passed on. I brought this classroom language experience home to my mother, the late Alice Frank Demientieff, who grew up in the mission in Holy Cross and was not able to learn and pass on the language to her children. What a joy this was for both of us to learn and remember together. The Elders and instructors in this course sparked a fire within me, helping me feel connected to the land, the language, and my identity as a Deg Xit’an woman, which started me on my healing and wellness journey. I have so much love for our Elders and ancestors.
During this time, I was also completing my degrees in Early Childhood Education and Social Work at UAF as a first-generation student. In my first year I was advised, or more like “looked out for,” by a caring and genuine advisor in Rural Student Services, Sue McHenry. Sue had many connections throughout Alaska, including my family, and together they made sure I stayed on track by creating a web of support around me. I have so much gratitude for the commitment to students that goes beyond academia. I also had two Alaska Native teachers as an undergrad at UAF, Oscar Kawagley and Phyllis Fast, who modeled for me how to be human (who we are), in a good way in academia, and sparked a seed of awareness and recognition in me that helped me to realize that showing up as my whole self in this space and all spaces will change the system and the world for the better.
During my undergrad in Social Work, I served as president of the Alaska Native Social Workers Association student club. My late sister, Darlene Demientieff-Hertlein, helped to co-found ANSWA in the mid-1980s with a group of Alaska Native students looking to build awareness in academia about Alaska Native strengths and challenges and to create spaces to feel whole, connected, and to support each other. As a professor at UAF, I have been faculty advisor of ANSWA for the past 18 years, worked closely with RSS, co-taught with Elders from across Alaska, and have seen numerous inspiring, intelligent, and creative students come and go through their own leadership experiences and are now professionals in the field and doing awesome work. I am so grateful for these impactful relationships that highlight how intertwined UAF is with community and culture. These examples help us recognize the multilayered web of impacts we have as an institution and hopefully inspire us to be thoughtful about moving in a good way on that web.
Bringing us back to the present day … we are amid one of my favorite times of the year when we engage in innovative and inspirational work that will bring us into the future. On Feb. 16 we honored civil rights leader Elizabeth Peratrovich for her efforts in passing anti-discrimination legislation in Alaska. We are presently celebrating and sharing Indigenous culture and ways of life at the Festival of Native Arts. And UAF is making progress on the Troth Yeddha’ Initiative, which seeks to build an Indigenous studies center that honors Alaska’s first people and creates space to teach and engage in research grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing and being. It’s an exciting time to be at UAF, to uplift all cultures and experiences and ways of being with respect and dignity, and model for others the radical possibilities of being in good relationship. As we are all able to be our whole selves, engaging in communities of care, and learning and growing together, we ensure that those who come after us benefit by knowing who they are and that they belong and are valued here at UAF. I will end with this directive my language mentors taught me that we can all practice and will serve us well, “xiyo neg a go deg” (have good thoughts around here). Xisrigidisddinh (I am grateful).
Friday Focus is a column written by a different member of UAF's leadership team every week. On occasion, a guest writer is invited to contribute a column.