Watson’s Corner in Bethel is the city’s closest thing to a town square. Which means the three-way intersection is the place to be heard.
A cluster of ANSEP students gathered at Watson's Corner on Friday, cheering, chanting, and gaining honks of support from passersby. The teens waved painted cardboard signs, some standing tall on a February snow berm. The signs read “It’s not just a name,” “Our sciences, our education, our rights,” “Don’t erase, don’t replace, keep Alaska Native in its place.”
The Bethel students in what was formerly called the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program were protesting the removal of “Alaska Native” from the program’s name. They said that they coordinated a Friday walkout with students at ANSEP’s other branches in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, Kotzebue, and Anchorage.
Isabella January, 17, is a senior at ANSEP and one of the walkout’s organizers. January adjusted her cardboard sign, reading what she’d prepared from her phone.
“This program was initially created to bring more Alaska Native people to (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) career fields. By taking away the mentioning of Alaska Native, it is potentially erasing the history of this program,” January said.
The name change for the accelerated high school program was one of a series made by the University of Alaska Board of Regents to remove the terms "diversity," “equity,” and “inclusion” (DEI) or any similar words from its website and programs. The language change was made to comply with an executive order from the Trump administration aimed at erasing DEI initiatives.
But as January puts it, those very principles are central to the program’s founding. ANSEP was created in 1995 to foster Alaska Native talent and interest in the science and engineering fields. Previously, with minimal access in areas off the road system, there were few opportunities for someone from a rural community to develop the skills to become an engineer. Now, according to January, the name change feels like a blow to the people it was created to support.
“I am Yup’ik and Iñupiat, and just seeing the Alaska Native name just being removed, it was, it was kind of shocking at first,” January recalled.
January said that Bethel students and faculty were stunned by the name change, but they quickly began thinking about what they could do.
Ellie LaValle is 16 and a junior in the ANSEP program. She helped organize a petition on change.org that aims to show the Trump administration “the importance of our program and prevent the potential erasing of our program's history.” It has over 300 signatures already.
“We didn't think it would blow up as much as it did,” LaValle said. “We posted it on all of our Instagram stories and our Facebook stories, and we were hoping that a lot of people would sign it. We didn't know how other people felt about it yet, that was just us. And then it turned out everybody else was just as fired up as we were.”
LaValle held a sign which said, in painted yellow letters, “If we bend now, when do we snap?”
“Because if we had to take out the mention of Alaska Native on the website, then what else are we gonna have to take out?” LaValle said. “Because there's so many, there's like, Alaska Native arts and things like that embedded in our program. Are we gonna have to change a lot of those things too?"
The Bethel organizers hope the message gets across that the program’s history, rooted in Indigenous education, is integral to its future.
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