This August, a city-wide Potlatch in downtown Anchorage kicked off a series of Indigenous food sovereignty events hosted in part by Alaska Pacific University. The events were largely coordinated by Steven Holley, a leader of the Ida’ina K’eljeshna dancers. For Holley, Indigenous food sovereignty is both a personal and professional focus. His dance and culture…
Downtown Potlatch kicks off series on Indigenous food sovereignty
Photos: Expedition Alaska 2022
This year’s Expedition Alaska crew took off from Anchorage at the end of August, driving 10 hours to Eagle, Alaska to start their trip. First-year students enrolled in Natural History of Alaska and Introduction to Wilderness Skills paddled 158 miles of the Yukon River alongside their professors, using a range of roadhouses, research sites, and…
Crystal Worl: The artist behind the G Street mural
By Laura Ditto Part 3 in a series on APU’s involvement Indigenizing the G Street mural. A new public art installation painted by the Seattle Mural Art company was just finished in Downtown Anchorage. The mural, located on 645 G Street, was designed to highlight the vibrant diversity of the community, replacing Bob Patterson’s “Anchorage…
LEO Network: Tracking environmental anomalies worldwide
This July was full of environmental anomalies. An Arctic shark turned up in Belize while a lost walrus flopped ashore in Finland. Lightning lit up the sky over Nunavut and winds whipped Golovin, Alaska so aggressively that residents had to remove boats from the water. Individually, these observations are outliers. Collectively, they paint a picture…
Alumni connection revamps Grant Hall gardens
Grant Hall’s front yard is getting a facelift thanks to an APU alum and a team of student landscapers. 2018 APU graduate Kelly Ballantyne is the farm and food industries instructor at King Tech High School, the Anchorage School District’s vocational training center. As a first-year teacher, Kelly designed a year of hands-on projects for…
Creating connection and vitality in Anchorage through art
By Laura Ditto Part 2 in a series on APU’s involvement Indigenizing the G Street mural. With the new mural coming to 645 G Street, I reached out to one of the project coordinators, Michael Fredericks, to hear her thoughts on the art piece. Over a phone call, she talked about how murals can shape…
New public art project sparks discussion of history, land, and community
By Laura Ditto Part 1 in a series on APU’s involvement Indigenizing the G Street mural. In late February, a new mural project was introduced to the public in an online meeting over Zoom. There were seventeen people present at the meeting, including the artists and coordinators who were looking for feedback to advise artistic…
“The value of this connection is unexplainable:” EPH students visit Napaskiak
In March, four environmental public health students from Alaska Pacific University (APU) traveled to the Native Village of Napaskiak in southwest Alaska, a traditional Yup’ik community just up the Kuskokwim River from Bethel. Cultural practices and language are important to Napaskiak. Residents enjoy a subsistence way of life, hunting, fishing, and gathering with the seasons….
APU grads present Arctic research at the Explorers Club
The Explorers Club is an international hub for adventurers, based just a block from New York’s Central Park. The club’s headquarters features a spiral staircase and rooms lined with maps, globes, and narwhal tusks. Everyone from astronauts to deep-sea divers has presented their research here. Now, two APU grads have as well. Russell Wong ’20…
Photobook: Spring 2022 Commencement
After enduring a major earthquake and a multi-year pandemic as students, the Class of 2022 made it to graduation. 67 students earned diplomas on April 30, 2022, including APU’s first class of graduates from the associate degree in nursing program. The Spring 2022 Commencement was the university’s first in-person graduation in two years.