- Details
- 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.
More Stories Like This
Navajo Nation Mourns Loss of Former President Ben ShellyNative American Church Chapter Sues Bank for Racial and Religious Discrimination
Legislature Moves to Name Highway after Blackfeet Chief
UP CLOSE: With Chuck Sams, First Native American to Lead the National Park Service
Native News Weekly (March 19, 2023): D.C. Briefs
12 years of Native News
This month, we celebrate our 12th year of delivering Native News to readers throughout Indian Country and beyond. For the past dozen years, we’ve covered the most important news stories that are usually overlooked by other media. From the protests at Standing Rock and the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM), to the ongoing epidemic of Murdered and Missing Indigenous People (MMIP) and the past-due reckoning related to assimilation, cultural genocide and Indian Boarding Schools.
Our news is free for everyone to read, but it is not free to produce. That’s why we’re asking you to make a donation this month to help support our efforts. Any contribution — big or small — helps. If you’re in a position to do so, we ask you to consider making a recurring donation of $12 per month to help us remain a force for change in Indian Country and to tell the stories that are so often ignored, erased or overlooked.
Donate to Native News Online today and support independent Indigenous journalism. Thank you.
