SHI TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON CRAFTING SOCIAL JUSTICE CHANGE THROUGH WRITING
Talk last of a series focused on educational inequities, injustices
Sept. 22, 2020
Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on crafting social justice change through writing as part of its September series meant to acquaint the public with culturally-responsive education in Southeast Alaska.
Through the lecture, Crafting Change, author and former Alaska Writer Laureate Ernestine Hayes will offer creative writing techniques that support a personal journey toward equity.
Drawing from years of experience teaching creative writing at the University of Alaska Southeast and University of Alaska Anchorage MFA program as well as conducting workshops at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Frye Art Museum, and elsewhere, Hayes will relate creative writing techniques to the art of living in today's challenging world.
“With examples from my personal journey and readings from my published work, I’ll show how those techniques can support our daily efforts toward equity," Hayes wrote in an abstract.
The lecture will run from noon-1 pm, Tuesday, Sept. 29, and will be streamed on SHI’s YouTube channel. People may submit questions via YouTube comments and staff will read them to speakers during the events. After the live streams, all lectures will be posted on a YouTube playlist for later viewing.
About the Lecturer
Ernestine Saankaláxt Hayes belongs to the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Tlingit nation (Lingít). Alaska Writer Laureate 2016-2018, Hayes is the author of American Book Award recipient Blonde Indian, an Alaska Native Memoir, which received an Honoring Alaska Indigenous Literature Award and was a PEN Nonfiction finalist. Her book, The Tao of Raven, places narratives in the context of the Box of Daylight and The Art of War. Grandmother of four, great-grandmother of three, this University of Alaska Southeast professor emerita makes her home in Juneau not far from the Juneau Indian Village where she was born and raised.
Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and cross-cultural understanding through public services and events. SHI also conducts scientific and public policy research that promotes Alaska Native arts, cultures, history and education statewide. The institute is governed by a Board of Trustees and guided by a Council of Traditional Scholars, a Native Artist Committee and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.
CONTACT: CONTACT: Amy Fletcher, SHI Media and Publications Director, 907.586.9116, amy.fletcher@sealaska.com
