{"id":15264,"date":"2016-12-05T09:01:02","date_gmt":"2016-12-05T17:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/community-planner-returns-to-help-native-villages\/"},"modified":"2016-12-05T09:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-12-05T17:01:02","slug":"community-planner-returns-to-help-native-villages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/community-planner-returns-to-help-native-villages\/","title":{"rendered":"Community planner returns to help Native villages"},"content":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 <\/strong>After spending years Outside studying community planning and development, Charlene Stern returned to Alaska to fulfill her goal of helping Native communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned there\u2019s a big diversity of Alaska Natives and they have their own traditions and models of government,\u201d Stern told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. \u201cI always expected to be working with Native communities but not in other cultural regions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that she is a parent, Ph.D. candidate and a faculty member at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who is heavily involved with student organizations, her free time is sparse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about balance, which I haven\u2019t achieved yet,\u201d Stern said. \u201cGetting hobbies \u2014 I\u2019ll make time for that after I get my Ph.D.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern grew up spending her summers in Arctic Village and each academic school year in Fairbanks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just love this community. I have a home (in Fairbanks),\u201d Stern said. \u201cIt\u2019s my hometown but it\u2019s not my home-home. Arctic Village is beautiful; it\u2019s a one of a kind place surrounded by mountains, on the east fork of the Chandalar River.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern left Alaska for college. She got her first taste of community planning as a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque.<\/p>\n

She said it was both good motivation and experience to work on a project as a master\u2019s student and to have Native tribes implement her work. She was most proud when the Zuni Pueblo used her plan for a train station.<\/p>\n

After New Mexico, she returned to Alaska and has since helped communities all across the state implement plans for infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would travel to villages and help leadership develop plans. It was mainly in the Bethel region, but all over as well,\u201d Stern said. \u201cI was traveling five days a week. I would get weathered-in (from snowstorms) and I slept on tribal council floors and tribal clinic floors. The people were always very hospitable, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern said she is always impressed when a village is able to secure funding for an infrastructure project, as it can be extremely difficult, because of the multiple public and private agencies that the villages have to go through and also because of the short construction season.<\/p>\n

Stern\u2019s 4-year-old son is part Gwich\u2019in and part Navajo, and she puts a lot of time into immersing her child in the two cultures.<\/p>\n

In Fairbanks, she takes her son to a Gwich\u2019in language nest, in which parents get together and teach their children the Gwich\u2019in language.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice to be in a place and time where that\u2019s an option,\u201d Stern said of the language nest. \u201cIt\u2019s the generations beyond their late 40s that are still fluent. We didn\u2019t have that opportunity growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stern makes a point of bringing her son to Arctic Village when she can so he can be around his extended family as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can see us carving caribou meat and go to potlatches and celebrations. My people love him there and that love exists throughout the entire community,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

Stern also took her son to his First Laugh Party, a Navajo tradition, in which the first person to make the baby laugh hosts a dinner party for the baby and gives gifts on behalf of the baby so that it can learn to be a generous person. It was Stern\u2019s sister that made her son laugh for the first time.<\/p>\n

Stern\u2019s favorite part about raising a child is \u201cjust watching a child develop. You see these trademarks of other family members, but they\u2019re still their own person,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Stern is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in indigenous studies, which she described as \u201cintense.\u201d She also teaches in the Department of Alaska Native Studies and Rural Development. She is has been very involved in the Native Student Union as an adviser, too.<\/p>\n

UAF junior Ben Nemqerralria Anderson-Agimuk said Stern has steered the NSU in a positive direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s definitely a strong partner and mentor,\u201d Anderson-Agimuk said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

UAF senior Christina Kk\u2019odohdaatlno Edwin said there is only a handful of people she can count on and Stern is one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter working beside (Stern), I\u2019m in awe,\u201d Edwin said. \u201cShe\u2019s one of the reasons I\u2019m considering a master\u2019s program. She\u2019s supportive of my ideas and she knows how to implement them. I\u2019d like to work with her when I\u2019m done with school. I don\u2019t want to cut that relationship short.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love my job and this program,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

With the holidays approaching, Stern said she plans on doing a lot of baking, if she can find the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI make the best zucchini-cranberry bread,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FAIRBANKS \u2014 After spending years Outside studying community planning and development, Charlene Stern returned to Alaska to fulfill her goal of helping Native communities. \u201cI\u2019ve learned there\u2019s a big diversity of Alaska Natives and they have their own traditions and models of government,\u201d Stern told the Fairbanks Daily News<\/a>-Miner. \u201cI always expected to be working […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":15265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15264\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15264"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}