Governor to honor 3 from Juneau

Soboleff (far right) has led the All Nations Children's Dance Group for 20 years. (Picture courtest Vicki Soboleff)
Soboleff (far right) has led the All Nations Children’s Dance Group for 20 years. (Picture courtesy Vicki Soboleff)

Three Juneau residents will be honored at the 2016 Governor’s Awards for the Arts and Humanities later this month.

Vicki Soboleff will walk away with the Margaret Nick Cooke Award for Alaska Native Arts and Languages. She’s been the leader of the All Nations Children’s Dance Group for 20 years. Here’s what she’s most proud of:

“The fact that the dance group met my goals, which were to promote self-esteem and pride and leadership among Alaska Native youth. To help them in their self-esteem and development and to be able to have better tools for dealing with all of life’s challenges,” said Soboleff.

Steve Henrikson will receive a Distinguished Service to the Humanities Award. He’s the Curator of Collections at the Alaska State Museum.

“It’s the kind of job that you put a lot of work into and then other scholars come along and write books or publish photos or do other things with the collection. In some ways, they discover the collection that has been here for a long time put together by people like me who do a lot of work in the back room and often times it’s not really that noticeable. But in this case, to my surprise, someone noticed and I’m totally blown away and grateful for it,” said Henrikson.

The Juneau Arts and Humanities Council’s Executive Director Nancy DeCherney will receive the Arts Advocacy Award.

“Having the JACC up and running and I’m very proud of how many new and exciting things people seem to be doing and feel comfortable doing. It seems like having the JACC here has started all kinds of new things that we never knew about. I am also proud that our arts organization is now employing quite a few people. We used to have one-and-a-half persons and now it’s got close to nine. So I feel like we’ve done a good job of making the arts a productive part of the economy as well,” said DeCherney.

The awards are co-presented by the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Alaska Humanities Forum in coordination with the Office of the Governor.

The ceremony will be held be at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center Jan. 28 at 6:30 p.m. The event will include live music, arts and cultural performances, and will be broadcast statewide on 360 North.

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