University of Alaska

 

In a dystopian future, Western civilization has crumbled and indigenous people are in control. That’s the premise of Jack Dalton’s play “Assimilation,” now touring Alaska. It flips the history of boarding schools with whites violently assimilated into Native culture.

A tyrannical character know as Elder pinches a student by the ear and leads him to his desk.

“With each time that you choose to speak your dirty language, your punishment will increase,” she tells him. 

In the course of the play, the boys are beaten, verbally abused and stripped of their identity.

Whites are forced to assimilate into Yup’ik culture. It’s horrific treatment but it also really happened, which playwright Jack Dalton says is the point.

“Being Yu’pik myself, I have had a lot of conversations with people who ask ‘Why are Native people still having problems?’” Dalton said. “And my answer is usually well, when you look at all the traumas that’s happened over several generations, you can imagine it’s really hard to heal from those traumas.”

Assimilation premiered in Anchorage in 2010 with 12 sold-out performances. And this past spring, it was selected for a staged readings at Emory University.

Dalton said he didn’t do any historical research on Alaska Native boarding schools. He drew inspiration from the stories his family told him about their own experiences.

“So I was actually worried that maybe I was too close to the subject and I might be making it harsher than it really was but my dramaturge, Michael Evenden from Emory University, went and did the research and said you only cover about 25 percent of what happened. There’s so much more,” Dalton said.

In the play, a boys screams out in pain as Elder strikes him with a stick.

“I do not care how good your Yup’ik is!” she lectures.

Louise Leonard, the actress who plays Elder, attended one of the boarding schools when she was kid and remembers being punished for speaking her Native language of Cup’ik.

“I am so glad that this is going to be on because we never really talked about those days,” Leonard said.

Dalton cast Leonard after meeting her at a state fair.

He says, traditionally, not talking about the “bad things” was a survival mechanism.

But it’s one that can be dangerous. Each performance of Assimilation is followed by a community discussion.

However, Dalton said he has wondered if some of the material could be offensive–particularly the racial slurs targeted toward whites.

“Every single person I talked to said, ‘How could I possibly be offended by what’s in the play when you realize that every one of those things and every one of those slurs is something that’s happened to Native people and other minorities?’”

By flipping the roles, Dalton says he hopes Natives won’t feel triggered by the violence. And non-Natives can empathize with what happened.

Assimilation’s Kickstarter recently raised over $15,000 to pay the actors and cover touring costs. The play premieres in Juneau on Friday at The University of Alaska Southeast’s Egan Library. The performance is free and starts at 7 p.m.

Editor’s note: the location of the premiere performance has been corrected. 

Students at the University of Alaska Southeast will recognize Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Oct. 12, a day otherwise known as Columbus Day. The student government recently passed a resolution to do this on the second Monday of every October.

David Russell-Jensen is a third-year student at the UAS. He’s a member of the student government and cosponsored the resolution.

“I had an essay assigned to me in high school about whether or not we should even celebrate Columbus Day and so I think that’s where some of my thoughts came about why we shouldn’t celebrate it,” Russell-Jensen said.

Growing up in Juneau, he said Columbus Day has never been a big deal. But he knows it’s still recognized in other parts of the country.

“They do Columbus Day sales, I guess. That’s kind of weird, but does that just mean you just walk into a store and just steal whatever you want?” he said.

For Russell-Jensen, Christopher Columbus represents the beginning of colonization and the genocide of indigenous people, not the discovery of America.

He got the idea to bring the resolution forward from Seattle. Its city council unanimously voted to rename Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples’ Day last year. Minneapolis did it beforehand. Berkeley, California has been recognizing it since the 1990s.

The State of Alaska and the university system do not recognize Columbus Day as an official holiday. But Russell-Jensen said we’re all a result of colonization.

“We’re all results of genocide and language loss. I mean, I’m speaking English. That’s kind of weird. A hundred years ago, I’d probably be speaking three different languages if I lived here,” Russell-Jensen said.

He hopes the resolution continues the dialogue UAS is already having. Russell-Jensen is a Tlingit language student and says the college is playing an important role in revitalizing Alaska Native languages.

“UAS is doing some really amazing things about the importance of indigenous languages and culture, so I know that this isn’t going to be one day on the calendar, where, ‘Oh, we’re done.’ It’s not going to be like that,” he said.

But Russell-Jensen still thinks UAS can do better. He wants to see more Alaska Native teachers. Of the 102 full-time faculty members at UAS, only 3 are Alaska Native.

Chancellor Rick Caulfield said that’s something the college is focusing on through a new diversity action committee. He says UAS is continually looking at ways to expand educational opportunities around Alaska Native culture.

“It is something that I believe is important for all Alaskans and I think, to the extent that UAS is located in the homeland of the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples … we have an obligation to provide education to include the languages and cultures of the peoples in this ancestral homeland,” Caulfield said.

UAS currently offers Alaska Native Languages and Studies as a minor or as an emphasis for a liberal arts degree. Caulfield says university faculty are discussing the possibility of turning it into its own degree program.

Students and mariners will soon be able to get formal marine transportation education without leaving the state. The University of Alaska Board of Regents last week approved a new marine transportation degree program at the University of Alaska Southeast.

For decades, UAS has offered classes and training to ferry workers, the Coast Guard, shipyard workers, sea pilots, the tug and barge industry, fishing and charter boat captains and other maritime employees.

These classes have never been part of a formal degree program.

“In the 14 years I’ve been with the university, every year students come to us and ask us if we do have a degree program in marine transportation, so there is a demand from the students without us even advertising,” said Dale Miller, a recently retired marine transportation instructor.

A formal degree program will allow more students, like military personnel and veterans, to access funding for course tuition.

“In the early days, they could receive funding by taking our non-degree classes, but in the last several years, it’s changed a lot and they’re a lot more strict with the regulations. They’re being denied funding now because we do not have a degree program,” Miller said.

The program approved by the regents is a two-year associate of applied science degree. Miller said this can go far in helping someone transition to an on-shore career.

“Hopefully when people go through that program, they’re halfway to a bachelor’s and they would think seriously about continuing their education. All the different fleet managers – the tourism, the tug boat, the Marine Highway System headquarters in Ketchikan – they all need managers and shore-side support people,” Miller said.

The degree program will also keep students in the state, Miller said, instead of going elsewhere for a degree in marine transportation.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for young people in Alaska to be able to get a degree at a lot less cost than leaving the state, paying for room and board and going to outside institutions, and coming back to the state to work,” Miller said.

More than 430 students took marine transportation classes last year. That number is expected to increase with changing regulations requiring more mariners to take refresher and navigational courses.

The associate degree program was originally proposed in 2006 and has been a priority for the Ketchikan campus ever since. The degree program starts this spring.

During its meeting in Juneau last week, The University of Alaska Board of Regents discussed how the university should move forward in a progressively bleaker fiscal climate. The body also discussed a plan of attack for their legislative budget requests.

As state funding continues to decrease, the University of Alaska has typically relied on formulaic, across-the-board cuts, applied on a campus-by-campus basis. This year, however, Regent Gloria O’Neill said the board is adopting a different approach.

“So, instead of looking at specific campuses, really looking at the entire system and saying what’s important to us? What are our strategic goals?” O’Neill said. “And then what are the costs around that and how well are we doing?”

The Board of Regents plans to bring in higher education experts from around the country who have recently dealt with the same types of issues, as a way to guide the university’s evaluation and budgetary process.

University President Jim Johnsen says the state Office of Management and Budget is planning for a 4.8 percent – or $15 million – reduction for the university in the next fiscal year.

Taking the looming drop in state funding into account, Johnsen says the capital budget request in front of the Board of Regents takes a modest, focused approach in outlining university priorities.

“The preliminary word from OMB is there will be no deferred maintenance this year,” Johnsen said. “Completion of the UAF engineering building is of paramount importance for us. We’ve included no funding here for planning and design of new facilities.”

Johnsen says OMB also indicated it’s unlikely there will be funding available for the UAF engineering building, which is partially built, awaiting funding for its final phase of construction.

The proposed capital budget asks for $134.8 million in state funding – over $37 million more than last year’s request.

Johnsen also outlined the priorities of the proposed operating budget, rounding out at nearly $377.8 million.

“We’ve placed a very high priority on faculty and staff compensation in this request. And other fixed cost increases; new building operating costs, journal subscriptions, for example, unfunded compliance mandates,” Johnsen said. “We take these extremely seriously.”

The proposed request is just shy of $4 million more than last year’s request to the legislature and about $27 million more than was actually appropriated for the current operating budget.

The Board of Regents plans to finalize its budget requests to the legislature at its November meeting.

Former University of Alaska Southeast chancellor John Pugh was honored Thursday during a naming ceremony of the freshman residence hall.

The dormitory opened in the fall of 2014 and was dedicated this past May. The UA Board of Regents approved naming it the John R. Pugh Residence Hall at its June meeting.

Pugh started working at UAS in 1987. He served as dean of Arts and Sciences before becoming chancellor in 1999. He retired last May.

The Board of Regents is in Juneau for a regular meeting. The body is taking public testimony at the UAS Recreation Center Friday at 10 a.m.

The process of downsizing the University of Alaska continues. Decreased state tax revenue because of low crude oil prices has resulted in less money for the university and there’s no sign of that changing. The focus of the university’s reorganization is shifting.

The last two years have seen program and job reductions at individual University of Alaska campuses, and new UA President Jim Johnsen says the next round of cuts will have a more statewide focus.

“We’re going to look real hard at academic and administrative programs across the entire university system. So far, a lot of those reviews have taken place at the universities, and they have organized the reviews, and the analysis and the reductions. We’re going to step that up a bit and we’re going to look across the entire university system. We’re going to look at enrollments, we’re going to look at cost-effectiveness, we’re going to look at quality, we’re going to look at access. So there will be reorganization across the university system.”

Johnsen says the goal is to deliver top notch programs while cutting costs, and that will likely mean consolidation of some programs.

“I believe we’ll always have ‘Program X’ in Alaska, it just may not be at three campuses, it may not be at five campuses, however. So we have to do a hard look at those kinds of things across the state.”

Johnsen says that unfortunately will also mean more job losses.

“But my commitment to the people of the university of Alaska is that we will have transparent processes for making these decisions. We will be inclusive. We’re not hiding anything. We’re going to let people know. We’re going to be up front with what we’re doing.”

Johnsen would not put a timeline on the next round of cuts, but says the downsizing analysis is already underway. He adds that cutting isn’t the only focus, and also highlights a new fundraising effort to reach beyond corporate donors to individual citizens, including alumni,  for support.