Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) and a major shoe company have joined forces to open opportunities for Indigenous students.
This summer, two students were chosen to intern for the company in an unprecedented collaboration between the college and Nike.
Hannah Bissett (Dena’ina woman) from our flagship station KNBA has more.
The tribal college in Santa Fe, N.M. is helping bring Indigenous people into the global conversations with a large international brands.
IAIA has partnered with the well-known footwear and apparel maker to have internships within its departments for Indigenous students.
Felipe Colón (Laguna Pueblo) has worked for IAIA for around 12 years.
He has worked to bring commercial opportunities to the college for students to bring their Indigenous perspective into more global conversations in large companies and vice versa.
“We oftentimes represent a perspective that is becoming increasingly relevant to contemporary existence. We bring our values; we bring our understandings of the world into an industry who can really grow from that.”
IAIA is one of 36 tribal colleges nationwide.
Over the past 60 years of the establishment of the college, one of the main focuses has been to give students more opportunities in their desired fields.
“For Indigenous people to really grow their careers, to become very much self-sustainable often times for their families for their communities and to do that again not to negate their Indigen-ality but instead really considers that very much an asset.”
The eventual goal with the partnership is to have various options for the length of an internship, some being a few months to a year at Nike’s corporate location in Oregon.
“The students are really excited to embrace, to be the forefront, to be the leaders and go out there and show the world what Indigenous people can do, and how Indigenous people can shape our future.”
This summer two interns were chosen to work under Nike and will have a student showcase in August to show their work.
Matt Gilbert (Gwich’in) is from Arctic Village and grew up living with his grandparents.
Gilbert was always very driven, even at a younger age attending schools in the Native Village of Fort Nelson. But one thing that really stuck with him, and that he realized early on is that he wanted to be a writer.
“Since I was seven years old I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I think I got it from my great grandmother Maggie, she was the last Gwich’n story teller
Gilbert would graduate in 2005 from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks majoring in English Literature.
It was at that time his first opportunity struck when the University of Arizona came out with an ad for Native Authors.
“I responded, and I wrote out the elder stories.”
Those stories would be testimonies from the elders in his community talking about climate change.
He named his memoir The Gwich’in Climate Report and says there were things he learned from his elders that he hadn’t learned in all years he attended college.
“They gave such brilliant interesting knowledge about meteorology, ecology, all the subtle changes the climate is doing to the earth. Stuff you don’t hear in the climate change movement.”
After he published his non-fiction book, Gilbert said it got him excited about returning back to a sci-fi trilogy Chandera he created in high school.
“It’s basically Lord of the Rings with a brown Native man in the lead. He’s Gwich’in. They’re coming back from a mining planet, interstellar age where the milky age is colonized by humans and lived on. It’s like the expanse. They get attacked and they get warped somewhere into another galaxy.”
Gilbert is spending a majority of his time these days working on the sci-fi trilogy.
Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our newsletter today.
