Model Kenzi Osgood wears a creation by Jackie Qatalina Schaeffer, an Inupiaq designer from Kotzebue, at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
The Anchorage Museum atrium transformed into a catwalk for the 2024 Far North Fashion show Thursday night.
The show featured eight Alaska Native designers who created nearly 40 looks for the event. Walking to a playlist of music drawn from around the circumpolar north, some models wore traditional garments while others showed off looks that featured fur, skins and feathers on gowns and streetwear. Occasionally, a model broke into a traditional Alaska Native dance move as the crowd of about 650 people cheered their approval.
This is the second year fashion show coordinator Trina Landlord has organized the event. She said when she was 13, she and her best friend would dream about Alaska Native fashion on runways.
Advertisement
“We didn’t ever see anyone who looked like us who were designers or models,” Landlord said. “Fast forward to now, and this is my fifth fashion show I’ve done featuring Alaska Native designers. Some have shown at Toronto fashion week.”
The theme of this year’s fashion show — the “Black and White Raven Collection” — appeared throughout the night, from models’ makeup and hair to the feathered capelets and adornments of many looks.
The raven theme was inspired by the magical, transformative creatures that appear in the stories and songs of many Alaska Native cultures, Landlord said. But like the fashion show itself, it’s also a take on modern-day life — and 2024′s buzziest local celebrity.
“With the new paparazzi following the white raven around — keeping that in mind, it’s so new and unusual and unique,” Landlord said.
The show was presented by Arctic Encounter, a symposium of events centered on Arctic policy, business and culture that took place Wednesday through Friday in downtown Anchorage.
Advertisement
[Quannah’s connection: Model and activist makes a different sort of appearance at Elders and Youth Conference]
Model Deenaalee Hodgdon wears Inupiaq designer Jackie Qatalina Schaeffer featuring accessories by Tlingit artist Jennifer Younger at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
Amiah Xootsk Johnson wears a seal skin vest by Jeremiah James and a white raven mask by Jerry Laktonen during the Far North Fashion Show on April 11, 2024, at the Anchorage Museum. (Alena Naiden / ADN)
Inupiaq model Robin Thompson wears Unangax designer Mary Kelsay at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
Unangax model Erin Messmer wears a design by Unangax designer Mary Kelsay at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
Aaron Tolen models for designer Jeremiah James at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
Model Samuel Sivulaq Mecham wears Merna Lomack Wharton’s design during the Far North Fashion Show on April 12, 2024, at the Anchorage Museum. (Alena Naiden / ADN)
Unangax model Haliehana Stepetin wears Inupiaq designer Jackie Qatalina Schaeffer at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
Models Deenaalee Hodgdon, Keegan Richards, Ryan Richards and Kenzi Osgood wear designs by Jackie Qatalina Schaeffer, an Inupiaq designer from Kotzebue, at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
Yup’ik model Jenay Mike models for Tlingit designer Reine Pavlik of Yakutat at the Far North Fashion Show at the Anchorage Museum on April 11, 2024. (Kerry Tasker photo)
In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth.
For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.
That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.
“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.
“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”
Advertisement
When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”
An aerial view of Anchorage, Alaska. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.
Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.
The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.
All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.
Advertisement
One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling.
Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel.
It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip.
When Israel comes along for the ride
You also learn to read the Uber. “Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.” “Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.” We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.
Advertisement
But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.
On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.
Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.
“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”
Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile.
One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.
Advertisement
We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.
Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria?
My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.
But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.
Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.
Advertisement
So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.
“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?” “You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.
And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front.
Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■
I’m typically pretty wordy. But just watch the video.
Disclaimer: Matt Addington is a professional. These bears grazed toward him from 100 yards away while he held tight. Do not try this ever, under any circumstances, or you will likely spend the rest of your time on this earth as bear poop.
Matt Addington is an incredible professional photographer, and I can say that from personal experience. He’s captured images of me in rough shape and somehow made them stunnin’. The Minnesota-based photographer and filmmaker has built a career telling outdoor stories, and his latest bear video proves he knows exactly where to point a camera.
Places like Katmai National Park in Alaska (where this video was taken) can offer unusually close encounters with brown bears, thanks in part to abundant food and tightly managed visitor access. That doesn’t make encounters like this casual or safe to imitate.
Advertisement
Addington is an extremely experienced outdoorsman, and he was photographing with professional guides Scott and Jackie Stone. For people hoping to photograph bears this way, a guided wildlife photography tour is one of the safest ways to do it. Do not try this in Yellowstone or your local national forest.
The bears were grazing nearly 100 yards away when the group set up. They stayed put as the animals continued feeding and gradually moved closer, resulting in some incredible footage and a once-in-a-lifetime photo.
I can only hope he wore his brown pants under his waders.
A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.
A black bear in Alaska strolled through the automatic doors of the commissary mall on the military base on Sunday. Kory Godbout
The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson.
Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.
Advertisement
Barber shop employee, Kory Godbout, saw the black bear approach his store and ran to the break room. Joint Base Elmendorf Exchange
The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.
Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.
“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled.
The grizzly bear decided to “use the restroom in the hallway” of the shopping mall. Kory Godbout
“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”
After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it.
Advertisement
The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.
The bear cub stole a peach and ate it while exploring all that the commissary had to offer. Joint Base Elmendorf Exchange
But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.
“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said.
The bear cleared its bowels on the floor before leaving the shopping mall. Facebook
“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”
Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.
Advertisement
JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.
While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/adn/BHJYOLRFKVDMDG3CVMSVPMYAUM.JPG?ssl=1 "At the Far North Fashion Show, Alaska Native designs take flight")
