“Native Concerns: A Conversation with dg nanouk okpik” (Windham Campbell Prizes)

Kyle VanHatten is Gwichyaa Zhee Gwitch’in, and was born and raised in Fairbanks, Alaska. Kyle is a junior at Yale and is double majoring in Economics and Statistics & Data Science. His work has focused on Alaska Native Corporations, urban Indigenous populations, and the intersection between statistical and economic analysis.

 

Nyché “Skavaq Sivulliuqti” Andrew is Yup’ik and Inupiaq whose ancestral roots are from Bethel and Shishmaref, and was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. She is currently studying Political Science and Education Studies. She focuses on Indigenous education, culturally relevant education, historical trauma, and tribal sovereignty.

 

Lex is a Tsalagi senior at Yale University majoring in Earth and Planetary Sciences. Their friends know them as a lover of rock cubed: rocks, rock music, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Along with being house staff at the Native American Cultural Center, they were formerly co-chair of the Native and Indigenous Student Association at Yale. Lex is involved in a host of creative endeavors at school such as being a member of WORD at Yale, a board member of WYBC, and a staff writer for Broad Recognition. Outside of academia, they enjoy hiking, writing space poetry, roller skating, and taking the Metro-North.

 

Sunni Parisien is Anishinaabe from the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and is proud to call Mikinaak Wajiw Ishkoniganing, the Turtle Mountain Reservation, in Belcourt, North Dakota home. She is a junior at Yale University studying Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. Currently, she is a poet and the Creative Director for WORD at Yale and a Peer Liaison for the Native American Cultural Center. Sunni’s work is interested in Indigenous storytelling that centers hope and Indigenous futurity.