Hayward Field hosted the 2015 USATF Championships in Eugene, Oregon, June 25-28 2015.

Alysia Montano, Brenda Martinez and Ajee’ Wilson took first, second and third in the women’s 800 meter finals.

Wilson prior to the race. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Montano waves to the crowd. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Wilson started strong in the finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Montano pulls ahead to place first in the finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Montano with her daugher after placing first. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Nicholas Symmonds set to begin in the men’s 800 meter finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Nicholas Symmonds finished first in the finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Evan Jager leads the pack in the men’s 3000 meter steeplechase. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Omar Craddock looks to the crowd after securing first place in the men’s triple jump finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Justin Gatlin, Olympic gold medalist, collapses after taking first in the men’s 200 meter finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

From left to right, Wallace Spearmon, Justin Gatlin and Isiah Young. The trio took third, first and second respectively in the men’s 200 meter finals on Sunday. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Jenna Prandini, a University of Oregon student, breaks through the finish line to place first in the women’s 200 meter finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Prandini celebrates her first place finish. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Hayward Field hosts the 2015 USATF Championships in Eugene, Oregon, June 25-28 2015.

Matthew Centrowitz, University of Oregon graduate and member of the Nike Oregon Project, prepares to race the men’s 1500 meter. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Leonel Manzano, Olympic silver medalist, races in the men’s 1500 meter. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Matthew Centrowitz walks off the track after placing first in the men’s 1500 meter final. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Allyson Felix, four-time Olympic gold medalist, prepares to race the women’s 400 meter. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Athletes on their marks before the women’s 400 meter. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Allyson Felix after placing first in the women’s 400 meter finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

LaShawn Merritt, two-time Olympic gold medalist, preparing to race the men’s 400 meter. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Vernon Norwood prior to the men’s 400 meter finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

David Verburg after placing first in the men’s 400 meter finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Vernon Norwood and Marcus Chambers, current UO student, embrace after the men’s 400 meter. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Vernon Norwood, LaShawn Merritt, and David Verburg celebrate their third, second, and first respective placings in the men’s 400 meter finals. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Dawn Harper was ecstatic after clenching first place in the women’s 100 meter hurdles. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Nate Moore, UO student, lunging in the junior men’s triple jump. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

Raevyn Rogers prior to the junior women’s 800 meter. Rogers took first place in the race. (Cooper Green/Emerald)

A passerby is bound to hear a different breed of music on 8^th Avenue and Oak Street in Eugene.

The city’s Saturday Market hosts a myriad of vendors peddling a wide range of items. But the market is also host to a cultural platter of music.

The curbs are stages to an assortment of passing musicians. With trumpets, accordions and bongos abound, the blend of instruments can be heard blocks away. They’ll gather, disperse and reassemble in different combinations and groups. The only consistent theme being the happy tones they play.

But the market is also home to a more organized stage for performance. The main stage within the market has scheduled artists playing every Saturday until mid-November.

The market hosts six music acts a week, between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Kim Still, Promotion and Advertising Manager at the market for over two decades, organizes the lineups. From Americana and bluegrass to Zimbabwean thumb piano players, Still collects acts from up and down the Eugene music scene as well as the occasional passing traveler.

The main objective in her lineups: having something for everybody, Still said.

Still has a method behind the magic, a shape to each Saturday. The earlier sets often start out mellow. The 11 a.m. slot is generally reserved for a kid-friendly performance, for example.

As the day progresses, so does her lineup. By the afternoon, things have turned up a notch. The final time slot, 3:30 p.m., is reserved for a bigger band, something the crowd can dance to, Still says.

The cheery organizer had a tough time picking just one single performance she was looking forward to this summer.

“It’s like asking me to pick my favorite child,” Still said.

She picked a few.

On the July 4, Independence Day, the Saturday Market will host a few interesting acts: a saxophone quartet and a progressive folk band. On August 1, in celebration of the late Jerry Garcia’s birthday, a Grateful Dead cover band will be performing.

Brian Ernst offers something even more unique on August 15. Ernst maintains an acoustic one-man band using looping tracks.

“Every week there’s a lot of things I’m really looking forward to seeing,” Still said.

Still said most of the bands actually come to her, due to the market’s popularity. Perhaps one of the toughest parts of her job is that she can’t book as many bands as she’d like. The lengthy schedule fills up quickly.

“Mostly I just try to keep it interesting for people,” Still said, “so that nobody’s ever bored at the Saturday Market. You just never know what you’re gonna see.”

Running a lemonade stand with my buds, playing soccer in the warm air, running around the backyard in oversized army surplus gear, imagining danger all around me — my favorite memories always happened during summer. I looked forward to that three month stretch of freedom from the first day of school. It represented a relief from the obligation of public school and a shot at freedom outside its tyrannical walls.

Having a season without responsibility may be one of the few favors that public school actually did me. It instilled the idea that if you work hard through the tedious stuff, you get to a place of choice.

Summer meant the beginning of friends, sleep and maybe even a sunny day or two. An event so infrequent in Portland that even the most pale-skinned resident has to appreciate the rare warmth for what it is.

As I grew up, the lemonade stand disappeared and the army surplus gear fit smaller and smaller. But year after year, no matter how difficult school and the social complications it comes with became, I could look forward to those three months.

This summer I’ll be staying in Eugene. Between summer classes and three jobs, I’ll be spending a lot of time in stuffy rooms. Not the ideal summer of my youth. It’s strange having to remind myself that I’m not about to step out of responsibility. I’m taking on more, in fact.

I spent last summer with my family in Portland. Although I’d been away in Eugene for a year, I came back and it felt like any other summer: same friends, same family, same city. But things were different when I left for Eugene again. I felt like I wasn’t leaving home, but heading towards it.

As my sophomore year of college drew to a close last week, I began to realize what that shift really meant. I caught myself with that familiar eager feeling that has always come with the end of a school year. But this summer is different.

The worn out words of my Midwestern family rang in my ears: Be ambitious, work hard, put food on the table. There was never much downtime in my family.

I haven’t thought of myself as a child in a long time, but these worried feelings about my loss of freedom gave me that sense. The sense that I am still young, but that I’m about to leave that part of my life far behind and trade it for one buried in bank accounts and internships.

It took the loss of my traditional summer to realize that, in a way that feels inevitable, I’m becoming an adult.

I struggled with this disconcerting concept for a while. But I came to a new conclusion.

Those summers when I was a kid meant so much not because school was out. They were important because they represented earning the right to choose how I spend my time. Time I could use to be around the people I love, doing the things I wanted to be doing. That freedom hasn’t changed, how I use it has.

I realized that no one forced me into an office this summer. It isn’t out of any sense of obligation. It’s because I like the work I do and the people I do it with.

The days are still going to be sunny (sometimes).

I’m still going to be with people I love — they’re just different people.

There isn’t any loss here, only change.

It isn’t that my childhood freedom is going away. But rather that, like every summer past, it’s growing up with me.

Most of us start college with no idea what we’d like to spend our time doing once we get out. Many of us leave under the same train of thought.

You can take as many Scandinavian film and juggling classes as you want, but they all end up falling in the, “Well, that was interesting” basket, rather than the, “Epiphany! I’ll spend my life as a circus performer!” basket.

But behind every dropped ball and Ingmar Bergman film, there are some dollar signs.

Thanks to the good, old fashioned American education system (emphasis on the old fashioned), we’re spending thousands of dollars every year to finance this supremely indecisive period of our lives, whether we know what we’re using it for or not. If we were all Swedish, we could be doctors at the mere cost of our time and energy. But alas, Northern Europe is about 5,000 miles away – so we’re all broke.

Though many brave souls are trudging solo through the financial crisis that is higher education (to those deep in debt at 22, Godspeed), many of us are here on the shoulders of an investor – most often our parents. Those lovely birth-givers who sometimes think ahead and put some paychecks away so the next generation can get one of those all-powerful degrees. Through thick and thin, the bank transfers have arrived. Whether you had the toughest hangover of all time or you failed a test after hours of studying – at least it’s paid for.

Which raises the question – how do you repay that debt?

It may seem strange to consider, but graduation is another gateway to further independence, particularly if your parents have been supporting you financially. It’s an enormous change, for both parties. You might be tempted to say their financial relief switching to a post-graduation child is thanks enough for the support they’ve provided.

But that’s a pretty cheap copout for such a huge favor. Then again, it doesn’t seem like something a Hallmark card would cover too well, either.

So how do you repay the priceless gift (approximately $80,000) of education?

You get a job.

Yeah, that’s probably on the planner for most college graduates regardless. But maybe you haven’t considered what it symbolizes to the ones who raised you.

We spend so much time in classrooms here that we may forget about the practical applications of what we’re working for. That our parents aren’t just supporting our education, they’re supporting our future. They’re giving us the foot in the door we need in today’s job market so that we can be successful.

I don’t see a better way to thank our parents for the gift they’ve given us than to show that we know how to use it. Whether you’re aiming to be a CEO or a dancer, there’s no better return on investment than self-sufficiency.

@clygreen

A legendary and important line to live by. At its surface, blatantly offensive and degrading. However, the idea behind it is worthwhile when you remove the gender bias. Whether you’re a dude bro or a lady bro, don’t forget your friends.

Urban Dictionary eloquently lays out for us the meaning of the expression: “The law stating that you always keep your buds before the significant other. Gotta keep the priorities straight, yo.”

This unwritten law shows its value at a college. It’s easy to lose sight of the value of friendship when face to face with adolescent kryptonite. There are a few pieces to this famous code, keep them all in mind as you stumble through the weekends.

First: The Steady

When a relationship is going well there’s nowhere you’d rather be than by the side of your significant other, old friends can be forgotten. They’re left to their own devices – likely reminiscing on pleasant memories of bromance over a lonesome glass of whiskey.

But why choose?

That’s right, you can have it all. The steady sweetheart and the pack of drinking buddies back at the apartment.

It all comes down to time management and perspective. Pulling yourself out of the, admittedly enticing, butterflies of romance and taking a look around. You might realize it’s been a few days since you’ve had a night with the boys/girls.

There’s two nights a weekend, try dividing them between the two settings. Your pals will appreciate the effort and you get the best of both worlds. Your paramour will likely use the time in the same way, and the two of you will come back together with a renewed interest after a night away. Win-win.

Incapable of pulling away for even a moment?

That’s a little ridiculous. But salvageable. Try spending time with both together. It’s a compromise, and if you made a good pick, your friends might even begin to understand why you’re away so much.

But there’s more to the juxtaposition of bros and hoes than just the consistent relationship.

Second: The Irresistible Ex

Let me paint you a picture – you’re wandering around a large-scale house party. The music is loud, the room is crowded, and all the cups are glued to the table with dry beer. You look up – it’s an ex.

But not yours, they dated a close friend for a while. Maybe it was a year ago, maybe they split up last week.

Tread very carefully.

In the heat of a crowd it’s easy to lose track of your allegiances. To make a move you might later regret. To test a friendship for one night of fun.

You might think this is where the balance of the bro against the ho is most truly strained. You’re wrong. The trial comes after the fact.

The duty of a bro is to be as brotherly as you can. Brothers make mistakes. But they don’t lie about them. The worst thing you can do to a friend is to be dishonest. It isn’t a matter of right and wrong, because those don’t exist in relationships. There are only choices. It’s a matter of respect which one you make.

Owning up to what you did can salvage a friendship. Keeping secrets in a campus so interconnected is nearly impossible and finding out the truth from someone else can be devastating.

A real bro wouldn’t put another bro through that.

Honesty isn’t a common quality. It takes guts, it takes love, but it shows character and it shows loyalty.

Bros before hoes isn’t about always picking your buddies over whoever you’re dating. It’s about recognizing which relationships are most important to you and doing whatever you can to make those last.

Behind the law library and the Global Scholars Hall at the southeast corner of campus, surrounded by standard university buildings, is a wooden sanctuary of culture. The wooden structure with a grassy rooftop looks out of place amidst the modern buildings. Inside, the architectural magnificence rivals the most beautiful buildings on campus.

The Many Nations Longhouse may not mean much to most who walk by every day, but to about 160 Native American students and a handful of Native American faculty, it means everything.

The University of Oregon is a leader in Native American representation on campus, according to Jason Younker. The longhouse and tribal flags in the EMU amphitheater are a major part of that.

Younker works in administration at the UO as an assistant vice president and advisor to the president. Unofficially, he’s known as the campus tribal liaison.

“Having a longhouse on campus is extremely important, that’s like the embassy for all the tribal governments,” said Younker.

The longhouse has traditionally been a common structure for Native Americans; often it is the center of community within a tribe.

In the late 1960s, the Native American community in Eugene requested a space from the university to gather and practice their traditions. UO gave them a “temporary” space — a decrepit World War II barracks that remained their only community center for nearly 40 years. The current longhouse was built in 2005.

The longhouse is home to the Native American Student Union.

NASU is an organization of Native American students from a number of tribes. About 30 Native American students attend the meetings regularly. UO reports 162 American Indian and Alaska Native students enrolled in Fall 2014.

The longhouse is more than a meeting place. It represents the idea that Native Americans have a place in higher education.

“When I went to undergraduate school I didn’t know any Native Americans. I didn’t see anybody that looked like me. And that’s a very lonely feeling.” Younker said.

It wasn’t until he went to graduate school at Oklahoma City that he found a Native American community, and his grade-point average jumped by two points.

“I didn’t feel lonely anymore. I wasn’t studying in isolation,” he said.

Native American attendance at universities has been low for a long time. The number that graduate is even lower.

CC Wright is one of the co-directors of NASU. She’s a member of the Klamath Tribe and grew up in Chiloquin, a small town in southern Oregon that resides on the land that belonged to her tribe before their reservation was taken from them.

Many of the Native American youths in Chiloquin didn’t think education was important, and many dropped out before graduating high school.

But Wright fought against this mentality.

“I can remember from a very young age wanting to go to college and believing I was going to college,” Wright said.

For Wright, finding NASU at the UO was a way to make that transition easier.

Wright also realizes the opportunity that she has to take her newfound knowledge and education back to Chiloquin.

“Not sharing that with my community would be a huge disservice to them. Even if they don’t accept it, I’m going to try. Because that’s important to me,” Wright said.

Wright is not the only Native American student at the UO who plans to return home. They all have different motivations, but the underlying idea is the same: they have a responsibility.

“In an ideal world I’d go back and live in the village and catch fish all day,” said Meghan Siġvanna Topkok, a Native Alaskan and a law student at the UO. “But that’s just not possible.”

Topkok has a desire to take her knowledge of the law back north in order to better her community. Alaska may need it — only one reservation remains in the massive northern state.

But Topkok struggled when she first came to the UO. In law school, she’s expected to put herself in the spotlight and argue for the sake of arguing. Ideas that directly oppose the ones she was raised with.

“We have to walk in two worlds,” she said “Be that person that can navigate between our traditional community values and upbringings and also the Western World.”

Younker is adamant: Native Americans coming to higher education is a good thing. Even if they don’t directly take that knowledge back to the reservation, just taking that learning out into the world is important, too.

“One thing people don’t realize about culture is that it is ever-adapting to the environment in which you live.” Younker said. “It’s not a step back if you change to adapt to the environment – it’s a step back if you don’t.”

Besides the practical benefits of university, educated Native Americans are also crucial role models for Native youths.

“It really meant that I had a responsibility. And that responsibility meant at times that I had to do things I didn’t want to do,” said Muriel Miguel.

Miguel and her sisters founded Spiderwoman Theater, a New York-based Native American theater company, maybe the most prominent in the nation. In mid-May she spent a week at the UO, teaching workshops and visiting the longhouse.

“Three little girls came up to us. Three really little girls … and the mother said ‘You know, this is the first time they’ve ever seen brown women on stage acting,’” Miguel reminisced fondly on this moment. “At that point it clicked in my mind that we were role models.”

Representation, or its absence, can have a huge impact on the lives of young Native students.

Lorraine Goggles, another co-director at NASU, described her struggle with first coming to Oregon from high school – a distinct shift in faculty demographics from the reservation schools.

“I went and I was the only person of color at all,” Goggles said. “It was a fish out of water-type situation.”

Finding NASU provided a community as well as a way to stay connected with her cultural traditions.

“To have that representation is really crucial so ideas don’t get forgotten, things don’t get lost,” she said.

One thing is certain – Native ties are strong. Without them, Native students suffer.

“This longhouse is a big step in the right direction,” said Chance White Eyes, a fourth year doctoral student researching why few Native American students make it to higher education.

“NASU as a group, in my opinion, really serves two major purposes. One, is so that Native American students who come here from a tribe that may not be heavily represented, which happens a lot, know that they’re not alone in this space,” White-Eyes said. “Two, so that this institution knows that we’re not gone.”

It may not be apparent what the longhouse represents from the outside. But inside, with the towering ceiling and massive wooden rafters, there’s an inherent sense of something larger. A sense of progress.

But there’s always work to be done. Jason Younker has high hopes.

“I dream that someday the UO will have Native American alum in every single one of the 566 tribes.” Younker said. “I dream of that day.”

Most wouldn’t hold on to the nickname Frog by their own choice. David Miller did. And he has kept it for about 40 years.

“I still use it because ‘Recycled Jokes by Frog’ sounds a lot better than ‘Recycled Jokes by David Miller’,” he said.

Miller, 67, came to Eugene in 1979. Initially, he took a job at a Fred Meyer to get by. But that was not the destiny of Frog.

“People kept telling me, you know so many jokes you should write a book,” Miller said.

So he did. That was in 1986. Since then, he has put together 92 different paper joke books. He has sold them all around Eugene at $2 or $3, for the children’s books and adult books, respectively.

But before Frog, there was David Miller of Ohio.

Miller was born in Cincinnati. His parents are both former members of the military, and they met at a hospital where his mother was a nurse and his father had been injured in his service.

Miller also has a sister, Paula Miller, now living in Richmond, Virginia.

Miller went through high school in Cincinnati. As he tells it, he’s always wanted to be a writer — a dream his parents supported.

“My parents believed I should do what’ll make me happy,” Miller said. “We got along pretty well.”

Miller stayed in Ohio for college, attending Ohio University. He wrote for the school newspaper there and published short stories in local magazines. He graduated in 1970 with a degree in journalism — a means to an end for the destination of working as a writer.

It’s at this period of his life when things become a little difficult to organize on a timeline. Miller was everywhere. He spent some time writing for an Ohio newspaper. He also saw some of the greatest musicians of his time.

Miller attended Woodstock. He also saw Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix in Ohio, and Bob Dylan open for the Grateful Dead in California later on. An impressive resume, to say the least.

“I was born at the right time,” Miller said. “It was a fun time, ya know?”

Miller spent a lot of the ’70s on the road.

“I was trying to see the world,” he said.

Miller hitchhiked across the U.S., to Canada and to Mexico.

“Back then it was easier to get a ride,” Miller said. “All kinds of people were hitchhiking. All kinds of people would pick you up.”

Miller’s most unexpected driver — a congressman.

While in Mexico, Miller seized the opportunity to visit the place that topped his list — Cuba.

He flew into Havana, a city he immediately loved, but Miller found he preferred the countryside.

“I worked on a farm, for a time, just to have the experience. We sat around afterwards and drank Cuban rum,” Miller said. “I wanted to experience how the people lived.”

Miller has settled down on the wanderlust since he landed in Eugene. But that doesn’t mean he’s done.

“I plan on going to Australia next winter.” Miller said. “Next summer I fly back east, to Richmond.”

On this trip, Miller also plans to visit Washington D.C.

“Last time I went to D.C. was to protest the Vietnam War,” Miller said.

This opened up a brief conversation about his politics. It’s difficult to quote him directly on this topic as it quickly became very vulgar. Needless to say, Miller has never been afraid to speak his mind.

I couldn’t leave without picking up a book myself. He recommended his latest addition, “Frog Joins I.S.I.L.”

“A couple of I.S.I.L. members flip a coin, they both took heads,” the first page read.

Miller doesn’t seem to consider much to be off limits when it comes to jokes.

He signed the book personally and even drew a self-portrait in the cover — an artist of many talents, have no doubt.

These days you’ll find Frog, bushy-bearded and grinning, on 13th Avenue, outside the Duck Store — all 92 copies in hand.

Every Thursday, a single-door garage opens up on 19th Avenue between Emerald Street and Onyx Street. From 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., a line of students run down the block, waiting to pick up a little bundle of free food. The man standing with a smile in the entrance of that garage is Doug Hale.

Hale, 59, grew up in Portland under the guidance of his stay-at-home mother and his father, a local school principal.

“I had a really idyllic family upbringing,” Hale said.

He still carries that today. Hale is a beaming figure, full of laughter and easy to talk with. His parents were Methodist Christians, so he spent a lot of his early life at church.

In high school, Hale began to have some questions about the faith in which he was raised, questions that his church seemed to brush off.

“If it doesn’t matter what I believe than why am I doing this?”, Hale had asked himself at the time.

It wasn’t until he was a senior in high school that Hale reconsidered his separation from religion. He was working in the set construction shop of the theater and lifted a piece of wood that happened to have a protruding nail, the nail caught his eyelid.

After a trip to the hospital, Hale spent winter break recovering.

“A couple of my friends, more religious types, came to visit me and brought me a bible. I laughed at them.”

They left the bible with Hale anyway. With little to do in his position, Hale gave it another pass. This time it read differently – it wasn’t a new book, but rather a new perspective.

“I think there’s a real difference between exploring something on your own and having it fed to you,” Hale said. “I started becoming really intrigued with this Jesus guy.”

Hale gradually began to regain some appreciation for the ideas he once believed in. But, as is often the case, the final push came from the words of a girl.

“She wouldn’t date me because I wasn’t a Christian. And I was blown away by that,” Hale said. “I didn’t hear it as a rejection. I heard it as, ‘Woah, this can make a difference. People actually make choices about how they live their lives by this.”

Hale pursued upper level education at the University of Oregon. Originally he studied psychology, later picking up a second major – religious studies – and graduated in 1978.

After a few years, Hale decided to attend seminary in San Francisco to attain status as a Master of Divinity and later become a fully ordained minister. But first, he worked a part time job in Portland delivering flowers. These were a more related pair of careers than one might expect.

“I realized it was really interesting because I’m dealing with people at significant points in their lives, just as I will in the ministry… birth, death and marriages,” Hale said.

Hale completed his time at seminary in four years. He later went on to attain a master’s in theological studies. Along the way, he met his wife, Patti.

“She’s just someone who’s really kind of a compliment to my personality. We’re not the same. And we stir things up in each other,” Hale said with a laugh. “I would probably crawl into my little cave and hide there if she didn’t come along and yank me out of it from time to time.”

The two have a 17-year-old son, Emmett.

“The poor guy, both his parents are clergy,” Hale chuckled. “I wish my parents were alive at this point because I’d like to ask them, ‘What was I actually like as a teenager?’, as I’m trying to deal with my son.”

Hale took on management of the food pantry on 19th Avenue in 2013. At the time, there were about 45 students coming through each Thursday. More recently, the count has climbed to over 100 almost every week.

Hale understands that there’s a stigma attached to the idea of handouts, but he doesn’t want that to stop students from coming by.

“Having to admit that they need the help could be hard,” Hale said.

Hale tries to dispel that stigma through sheer positivity. He greets every newcomer with a big smile and a warm hello – “Oh, I’m glad you’re here!”

Between Doug Hale and the words “free food,” there surely isn’t a more welcoming garage in Eugene.

You can connect with the pantry on Facebook at “Student Food Pantry”.

Follow Cooper Green on Twitter @Clygreen

“Every time I go back to the village, I have to completely step out of being in a western culture and that mindset, because when you go back to the village, life is at a completely different pace.”

Meghan Siġvanna Topkok, 24, was born in McMinnville, Oregon.

Topkok’s heritage on her father’s side is of the Iñupiat– a subgroup of the Inuit people of Northern Alaska.

Topkok’s father was a pilot; he died in a plane crash when she was eleven.

“My dad and I had a really complicated relationship.” Topkok spoke of her father’s struggle with alcoholism. It was a burden that he didn’t project on to others, but one that affected the family regardless. “I think he always worked really hard to provide for his family…I loved him a lot, but it was frustrating.”

Her father never felt connected with their native heritage, a detachment instilled by his parents who had suffered discrimination for embracing the culture.

“I think alcoholism was his way of coping with that historical trauma,” Topkok said. “It wasn’t a good thing to be native…I think he wished he could just erase that whole part of himself.”

With an Oregon born mother and a father who was trying to move on from his origins, Topkok had little exposure to her roots.

“Growing up I always felt like something was missing.” She said.

Topkok sought the missing piece throughout the Northwest. She attended public schools across Oregon and Washington through high school, but she learned less about her culture as it is and more about the way it is seen in the eyes of history.

“As a kid, the most exposure we had to Native American culture was maybe one day in history class, five pages where it talked about the Plains Indians, tipis and bison.” Topkok said.

She was ready for change.

This came first in the form of acceptance to an Ivy League school. An opportunity her mother encouraged.

“She really pushed me to focus on my academics, she thought education was a way to overcome a lot of these issues and make a better life for myself.” Topkok said.

Topkok studied linguistics and Native American studies at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

She was funded by Dartmouth College to head to Nome, Alaska – a town with strong family ties for Topkok.

“I wanted to go back and kind of ground myself, kind of reconnect.” Topkok said.

In Nome, she worked at Kawerak, Inc – an organization that strives for better social conditions for Native Alaskans and sustain the culture and traditions that belong to them.

Topkok’s interest in law began at Dartmouth, but it developed further working in Kawerak’s legal department.

“I loved my job, waking up in the morning was the best thing.” Topkok said.

After working in Nome for a year, Topkok was inspired. She returned to the Northwest to study environmental law at the University of Oregon.

The transition wasn’t immediately smooth.

“It was just really hard adjusting to the mindset you’re expected to have in law school,” Topkok said. “It goes against a lot of the values I was brought up with…I felt like I was supposed to be very vocal and argue for the sake of arguing.”

But more than that, Topkok saw differences between herself and her peers in their reasons for studying law.

“(For many of them) it’s because of the good paying job. For me, it’s because I want to go back and help my tribe.” Topkok said. “I’m not doing any of this for me.”

Topkok spoke at length about her aspirations for change in Alaska on issues that rarely pass through the minds of those unfamiliar with the culture – tribal jurisdiction, environmental issues and the devaluation of native traditions, to name a few.

But until she can return north, Topkok is finding ways to connect with her people at the UO.

Topkok recently had a major role in the UO theater production of Sila, a play centered on environmental and cultural decline in Northern Canada featuring a number of native Inuit characters.

“There have been very few opportunities here for me to engage with my culture or grow my knowledge of our history and our traditions.” Topkok said. “I think this play has been one avenue where I can keep doing that and keep that up, because otherwise I’m just studying property law.”

The play has provided an opportunity for Topkok to reconnect with her geographically distant culture and reestablish her motivation. It’s been a reminder of what she is fighting for.

“The future – we can change that.” Topkok said. “We have control over ourselves.”