Cultural Divers explore the depths of Anchorage’s immigrant stories
Unpacking, Then Diving In Angelina Estrada-Burney with two young dancers of the Xochiquetzal-Tiqun Mexican Folkloric Ballet, at a Bridge Builders event. courtesy Angelina Estrada-Burney
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hree women from varied cultures have come together to uncover the stories of individuals from immigrant cultures who settled in Anchorage since 1915. Shirley Mae Springer Staten, Vivian Melde, and Angelina Estrada-Burney call themselves the Cultural Divers. The name came to them while they were filling out their on-line application for a second round Anchorage Centennial community grant for the Alaska Humanities Forum. The limited number of characters visible on screen within one of the data fields limited the words “Cultural Diversity” to “Cultural Divers.” Melde found it to be the perfect name for their intended work. “I remember saying to Shirley Mae and Angelina, ‘That’s what we are doing here. We’re diving into the stories of how some immigrant cultures arrived here and chose to make Anchorage their home.’” Their project, which was awarded a $15,000 Anchorage Centennial Community Grant, is entitled, “Unpacking
our cultural history: the growth of diversity in Anchorage during her first 100 years.” The three women will research the stories of individuals within six cultural groups in Anchorage: African, African American, Chinese, Filipino, Hispanic, and Pacific Islander. The stories will come to life in the spring of 2015 in a multi-media performance and community workshop revolving around immigrant narratives. Staten, Melde, and Estrada-Burney’s own personal cultural roots have a powerful influence on the project, which they acknowledge and honor in this article by sharing their own accounts of how they came to Anchorage, and how they transitioned from outsiders to Anchorage-ites. Angelina Estrada-Burney
Angelina arrived in Anchorage in July of 1991 with her husband who had been assigned to Elmendorf Air Force Base. She had never before lived
anywhere outside of her hometown of Alamogordo, New Mexico, and remembers being excited about the promise of an adventure in a land so far away and so different from anything she had ever known. As a child of the Southwest, her notions of diversity were dominated by the comingling of Anglo cowboy and rancher culture and her Mexican heritage. “I grew up hearing my father’s stories of the severe racism that he and his family had suffered during his childhood. In 1947 my grandmother couldn’t get a loan to buy a modest house despite having a full-time job and money for a down payment. Banks were reluctant to lend money to Mexicans, or “Mess’cans” as my father bitterly put it. These stories of my father’s childhood make me that much more appreciative of how far we’ve come as a society,” Estrada-Burney says. “I have to say I was lucky, mainly due to the efforts of my parents, never having been the victim of racism personally. What I did find though, was a
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