DREW MICHAEL

"I went to a bible college in Portland. And when I was there, I had a tarp on the floor, and I was carving. I realized being gay, Native, and an artist wasn’t something the church would really support. I couldn’t deny any big part of myself. So I came back up to Alaska, and I allowed my art to be the gateway into learning about myself. And now I use my art to teach people about their own history.

Every time I go out to a village, I almost cry. It’s not that I don’t feel like I don’t have a place on my own land; it’s that Indigenous people were blinded by a Christian faith that pushes people away and leaves people out. And if you look back in our history, everybody had a place and everyone had value. Then missionaries and Western society came in and brought faith. It’s not bad, but what’s bad is when people are pushed out of their own community. A lot of the issues happening in the villages right now are because of the historical trauma, and there is a lot of confusion on how to support people. My dream is for everyone in these villages to feel supported. When I go out to villages, I talk about what it’s like to be gay. I almost cry when I am speaking to youth because I tell them stories about what it’s like to be in love with somebody, and how the world will tell you how all these things that you do are wrong. When really, everybody has a place. I don’t want people to feel the way I felt growing up. Nobody should be hiding, and elders should be supportive, otherwise they are hurting themselves and others.

My grandmother, right before she passed, talked to my adoptive parents and said to them, ‘I will let you adopt these two boys. If you raise them right, they can come back to their people and be leaders.’ That’s a huge intention. So when she did that, I feel like that kind of wrote the story of what my life was going to be, and now I am living it." -- Drew Michael is both Inupiaq and Yup'ik and lives in Anchorage, Alaska.