Cohort 2

The 2019 cohort (Cohort 2) created the following definition of youth cultural heritage (YCH): YCH is the deep awareness and transmission of shared familial, community, and societal experiences through exploring and absorbing truthful stories, sacred items, environments, and histories to nourish and empower self and community to reach their best potential.

See Stories/Story Works Alaska – Kinship: (Hi)stories’ From Anchorage’s International Youth

The Kinship: (Hi)stories’ project was a collaboration between Story Works Alaska and See Stories to engage English Language Learner students in oral and digital storytelling workshops. This after-school project supported these international youth in exploring and articulating their cultural identity while they made connections with their families through interviews and learned more about their own cultural heritage and family narrative.

Sankofa Dance Theatre Alaska – Teach O.N.E. Cultural Arts Community Outreach

Sankofa Dance Theatre Alaska helps to build community by fostering an appreciation for the arts, introducing youth to artistic and cultural activities and professional artists, and creating links between exposure to the arts and audience development to preserve and pass on African culture. The goal of the Teach O.N.E. (Our Nubian Experience) project was to reach as many youths as possible through artistic outlets to educate them about the culture of the African diaspora and how it affects modern day society and everyday life.

Chickaloon Village Traditional Council – Kec’otl’ Moccasin Project

The Chickaloon Village Traditional Council holds culture camp every summer for tribal youth and Ya Ne Dah Ah School students to learn traditional cultural knowledge. The Kec’otl’ Moccasin project allowed youth and their families to make kec’otl’, or work moccasins, and learn the Ahtna language as well as for Chickaloon Village Traditional Council to develop language curriculum in a task-oriented framework. The project goal was that the entire family works and learns together and the family tradition of making Athabaskan moccasins and boots would continue to the next generation, passing on the knowledge and skills of Clan Grandmother Katherine Wade – the founder of the Yah Ne Dah Ah School.