In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, “Nuestra Huella (Our Footprint)” recently opened at the Anchorage Museum, holding space for Alaska’s Latino community spanning back nearly 150 years.
“It was a lot of work, but I am very happy I was able to do it,” said Gabriela Olmos, curator of the photo exhibit for Nuestra Huella. “I feel like we are unveiling a different layer of Alaska history that tells our audience how powerful our community has been since, ever.”
Nuestra Huella is on display now through April 13, 2025, and features stories from community members, photographs and art contained into two exhibitions: on the first floor in the east wing education hallway, and the second floor in the west wing.
Olmos has been working on her dissertation at the University of Alaska Fairbanks on cultural bereavement and said that she knew “some pieces” of the Latino community’s history in Alaska, but wanted to ensure that everyone was included and fairly represented.
“Suddenly when you’re transplanted to a very different part of the world, it’s just like, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing here?’ How am I going to survive?’’ Olmos said.
“We see the things that are around us, but we don’t see what is not around,” Olmos continued. “I thought, ‘Okay, if I just rely on my things, I would overlook a lot of things.’ So what I proposed to Lina, let’s do community based research.”
Olmos reached out and spoke to 23 community members about her work with Nuestra Huella. Some were instrumental in founding Latino media, or are spiritual leaders. Others were entrepreneurs opening some of the first Latino owned businesses. Olmos said she spoke with people due to their family connections and how they migrated to Alaska.
She cross referenced everything that community members shared with her, through newspaper clippings and recounting of people’s stories for validity.
“We tried to interview people who have been here a long time and have made community contributions in any field, and the story began evolving,” Olmos said.
When Francesca DuBrock, von der Heydt Chief Curator at the Anchorage Museum, began back in 2017 as a guest curator, her focus was on highlighting stories of immigration and multiculturalism in Alaska.
“I kind of see this as like a culmination of a lot of different years of different types of collaboration exchanges,” DuBrock said. “So it was super fun to work on because I’m friends with all of the people who were working on the show, and it was a really delightful way to collaborate in a new way.”
DuBrock says the folks at Enlaces had seen a number of projects that the Anchorage Museum had completed, including Black in Alaska and Mana, and wanted to have a Latinx community focused project.
The downstairs exhibit features the community-focused project Olmos curated. Upstairs, Itzel Yarger curated the project based on existing research she had done from the collections at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Museum of the North.
“That exhibition is really focused on kind of drawing out his stories of indigeneity in the Latinx diaspora, and kind of connecting that to stories of indigeneity here and through this combination of very old artworks, and also contemporary artworks that were some existing and some commissions that are a part of that exhibition,” DuBrock said.
Joan Ryan is the president of Enlaces Alaska, a nonprofit empowering, educating and engaging Alaska’s Latino community through collaboration with communities across the state. Enlaces also advocates for equity and social justice for Latinos and Hispanics in Alaska, and organized Nuestra Huella.
Ryan says the team, which includes herself and Enlaces, Lina Mariscal, Olmos, Yarger and the Anchorage Museum, have been planning Nuestra Huella for over a year.
Community members can attend the Anchorage Museum free on Oct. 4 during First Friday and attend Nuestra Huella’s opening celebration from 6:30 – 8 p.m.
“We have a woman who is Native, she is American, and she is Mexican, so she is going to be able to do the land and acknowledgement in three languages,” Ryan said. “I really wanted to find someone that could do that.”
There will also be five countries represented through dance, as well as Latin American food and crafting traditions shared.
Sam Davenport is a writer residing in Anchorage. She's a leo and a plant-person, and loves spending quality time with her dog, Aspen. She is a Real Housewives fan and has been called a Bravo historian.
