The Outstanding Scholar Award is given to applicants who we feel are utilizing their studies in promising ways, and show innovative and creative ideas for how they plan to build on their studies to bring healing and safety to our communities.
NYCHÉ "SKAVAQ SIVULLIUQTI" ANDREW
Nyché “Skavaq Sivulliuqti” Andrew is Yup’ik and Inupiaq Alaska Native, from Anchorage, Alaska. She has worked to uplift Native people, specifically within education. Nyché’s helped create a policy that would allow students to wear their cultural regalia during high school graduation ceremonies by gaining support from organizations, legislatures, villages, and people and her testimony to the Anchorage School Board. As vice chairwoman on the district’s Native Advisory Committee, she championed a policy extension to honor more aspects of traditional regalia. In her first year of college, Nyché continued to help with expanding the policy for high school students still in the district.
She established the Indigenous Student Union at her school to bring together Native youth to encourage cultural identity in pursuit of academic excellence. Nyché lead the implementation of land acknowledgments at school, and distributed essential school supplies and food staples during the height of COVID-19.
As a student at Yale University, Nyché is a member of the Native and Indigenous Student Association at Yale, a research assistant within the Yale School of Medicine department of psychiatry assisting in research regarding Alaska Native and American Indian communities, and a part of the Yale Undergraduate Legal Aid Association. Nyché’s experience in community service defines her career path as she attends Yale to study political science, and enrich her passion for helping others, pride in her culture, and the ability to be a force for positive change. She sees her commitment to scholarship as a way to build her Native community by representing her Indigeneity in her studies.