ALASKA NATIVES COMMISSION
JOINT FEDERAL-STATE COMMISSION
ON
POLICIES AND PROGRAMS AFFECTING
ALASKA NATIVES
4000 Old Seward Highway, Suite 100
Anchorage,
Alaska 99503
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Witness List | PDF
Version
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK:
Debbie? I'm sorry, Susan.
COMMISSIONER MASEK: (Laughing.) Going backwards.
MS. HAWK: My name is Susan Hawk, and I'm Inupiat, My mother's
from White Mountain. I've never been there. I lived with my grandfather when
I was very young, Mark Abliglok (ph.) in Nome, Alaska. When he died, I was moved
to Sitka, where I was adopted by a Tlingit family; and from there, I also went
to McGrath, where I graduated from high school. And I was hoping Mike Irwin would
be in. this room, because he spoke at my high school graduation. I graduated
from the University of Washington last year -- this past spring in international
economics and math. I'm a graduate student now at the university
of Alaska Anchorage. I'm going to transfer to Fairbanks, because they teach Inupiaq,
because I don't think they'll teach it at UAA before I'm an old woman.
(Laughter.)
It was really hard for me to trans -- to graduate from McGrath and go to school at the University of Oregon and then the University of Washington. They have Native Student Services there, and I was really homesick, so they're the only ones that helped me get through.
I served as President my senior year last year as the President of the Native American Student Council there. In 1989, the University of Washington closed their American Indian Office -- their American Indian Services Office, and they combined it into the Office of Minority Affairs. This was a real problem for the -- because the admission rates and the graduation rates declined within one year's time. They had the statistics available to them. They saw what happened at the University of Colorado when they did that; and the university of Colorado did that earlier, in 1986; so here it's like a wave -- just like when Columbus came; and this is maybe the five hundredth wave. (Laughter.) And it's happening right here; and our students have voiced their opinion; and the press and the administration both have this issue confused.
And it's a positive thing that we have at Native Students Services. Our numbers are growing, and so should our office space, and so should our services. And what the Chancellor and the Vice-Chancellor stated to the press was that we are gaining from this merger; and that is a lie. It's a bold-face lie; and they're doing it not to test us to see how strong we are; they're doing it to make us, not necessarily intentionally weaker, but they're doing it to save money. And as a student of economics, I know a lot of the effects, and I've seen it at the University of Washington. And a lot of economics does deal with people -- labor economics; and as far as students are -- we're the chief labor force for our Native communities; and our -- we won't be employable as our graduation rates go down, So, it all stands to reason that the UW -- you know, the UAA just cannot do this. And this is the only place I really applaud the chance to say this, because we tried at the UAA.
We're going to be labeled as a minority,
and all the places I've lived, McGrath and Sitka, we've --
Alaska Natives, even if they're -- because Sitka's kind of
a Alaska Native melting pot. There’s lots of people there --
Native people; and we're Alaska Natives as a modern culture.
We don't every day dress up in our kuspeks (ph.) or our blankets.
You know, we -- we're a modern culture;
and we're the majority here in Alaska; and we cannot be labeled
a minority. We wouldn’t do that to the Germans or Italians
in this -- in Alaska. And at the University of Washington,
there's -- I mean, the University of Alaska, they're supposed
to value multi-culturalism and not a melting pot.
And the way the administration has dealt with this is that we need the public apology. It's -- it -- we have to demand that, because they've confused the issue; they've lied; they haven't told about the report that they hired a consultant for the course of a year. They are going against the hired consultant's report. And we challenged -- all of the students challenged the administration to hear what we had to stay, and they're out of town, and their remarks are irrelevant to what we need to have done.
COMMISSIONER TOWARAK: Thank you, Susan. That concludes the testimony from the UAA students, although we may hear about it again at further testimony. I would like to take about a ten-minute -- five-minute break, and then right off we'll have Michael Jennings, Charles Hubbard, Florie Leckenoff, George Guthridge.
(Off record for break.)
(Tape changed to Tape #5.)
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every attempt to keep the online document the same as the original,
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