We seem to share that understanding with Hawai’ians, both natal and Native. When I moved to Colorado for college, the Alaskan and Hawai’ian students banded together to help each other learn about the differences in culture between our states and the rest of the country. Conversations were full of Hawai’ians assuring the Alaskans that they weren’t actually Mainlanders, in the same way that Alaskans don’t call the United States that lies outside of Alaskan borders the “Lower 49.” To celebrate the ties that bind Alaskans and Hawai’ians, I have collected a list of books by Native Alaskan and Hawai’ian authors (with one exception, noted). One of the things I noticed while compiling this list is that Native Alaskan voices are surprisingly hard to find. While researching, I came to think of this as the “Jack London effect,” where white people who have explored and endured the Alaskan wilderness feel empowered to write about it as Alaskans. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that; it simply muddies the waters when trying to find authors who are Native Alaskan and whose books have been published. Alaska is a land of rich storytelling, but much of it remains an oral tradition, complicating things further. I cannot speak for Native Alaskans and Hawai’ians, being a white woman of South American heritage whose parents just happened to move to Alaska before I was born. Using my status as an Alaskan sourdough and not a cheechako, though, I feel confident expressing that Native Alaskan and Hawai’ian authors are underrepresented even among Indigenous American authors, who are already severely underrepresented due to the overwhelming whiteness of American publishing. Their voices deserve to be heard, held up, and respected.
