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- By Native News Online Staff
Alyssa London joined Native News Online on this week’s Native Bidaské (Spotlight). London is a previous Miss Alaska USA in 2017, and also was a Top 10 finalist in the Miss USA Pageant that same year. She is a NBC News contributor and is also the founder and chief storyteller at Culture Story. London also wrote a children's book titled “The Journey of the Freckled Indian.”
During the interview with Editor Levi Rickert, London talked about her projects and the importance of engaging Native youth in culture. She is a Stanford University graduate, though while she was there, she found herself having to reaffirm her identity.
“Even from elementary school and all the way through Stanford, I would need to qualify myself. I am Tlingit, I am Native, but I am also Czech and Norwegian. I am proud of that as well, but I have also struggled with feeling accepted for my identity, and it seems that other people struggle with that as well,” she explains.
“Whether you're Native or not, I think everyone wants to be able to feel proud of who they are. So I thought If I just started with Native youth and allowed them to feel more confident with their identity from a young age I thought that confidence would translate into them feeling validated to engage with their culture for their entire life.”
Watch the whole livestream here or click below.
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