Alma Manabat Parker honored with Governor's Arts and Humanities Award

Alma Manabat Parker accepted the Governor's Arts and Humanities Award for Distinguished Service to the Humanities in Community on Oct. 29. The award was presented by Alaska Lt. Gov.  Nancy Dahlstrom during a ceremony at the Anchorage Museum. It is the latest in a string of accolades and recognition for Parker's dedication to the rejuvenation of Filipino culture in Ketchikan.

During the presentation, the ceremony's Emcee Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer said the annual award "recognizes an Alaskan individual or organization that helps strengthen community by forging connections between people across race, class and cultural divides." Parker was one of three winners of 2024 Governor's Awards in the Humanities, and is the first person from Ketchikan to receive the award.

Parker was born in Manilla, Philippines and immigrated to Ketchikan at eight months old. In a recent interview with the Daily News, Parker said that her childhood was marked by ideas of assimilation and not standing out from her peers. This caused her to "push away her cultural identity of being Filipino." As a child, Parker wanted to be seen as anything but Filipino. Now, her cultural identity colors both her personal and professional lives, and she has become known community and statewide as a champion of Filipino culture.

She describes receiving the award and subsequent attention as "humbling," but says she wants to stay focused on her work instead of accolades.

"I try not to think about it," Parker said. "I love posting pictures with my family and my friends who come and support me, but then after that event's done, it's like, go on with your work. I don't really try to get more people to write about me or anything like that because the work must go on."

Parker began her work in the "reinvigoration" of Filipino culture in 2021 when she accepted the role of health equity coordinator for the Ketchikan Wellness Commission. Initially, Parker said she was unsure of what the role would entail, and worried about leaving her "stable" position at the Ketchikan Pioneer Home. She ultimately accepted the position with the goal of improving health care and access for Filipinos.  

Parker noted that she did not immediately know what "health equity" was, but that she knew this position was a chance to help her community.

"I really didn't even know where to start," Parker said. "I just knew [health equity] improved the overall health of my people, and that's obviously something that's very important to me."

Her role came with three years of guaranteed funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which provides grants to combat health inequity among disadvantaged groups of people. Parker said the grant played a large role in her decision to accept the position, and that she knew she had to put the funds to good use.

Parker's first project as health equity coordinator was to put on a Filipino-American festival, dubbed Fil-Am, in October 2021. The festival aimed to highlight different aspects of Filipino culture and relate them to healthcare.

"I said, 'Well, I need people to know about this grant that we got, so maybe we should throw a big event and celebration,'" Parker said. "That started the Fil-Am Festival, and now fast forward to 2024, everyone's looking forward to it. We've expanded our reach to really incorporate culture as part of the medicine to reach individuals that maybe are hesitant to get health care access.  And we're using culture as that angle to say, 'We understand as a fellow Filipino what it means to be healthy. We know we already have specific social determinants of health and other things like the high diabetes rates and things that we have to address, but we know that our culture has to be infused in our overall health.'"

Parker's favorite part of her job is inspiring the next generation to embrace their cultural identity. She says her work in schools has had a noticeable impact on young students who may not fully understand or identify with their Filipino heritage.

"When I do cultural enrichment classes with little kids and their teacher comes to me later or sends me a quick text message that says, 'Hey, our little Filipino boy rarely spoke. But after spending 30 minutes with you, he was just like, 'Do you know I'm Filipino? I'm Filipino too, just like Miss Alma.'' And then he all of a sudden had this boost of confidence in raising his hand a little bit higher. He wanted to be noticed. And those are the impacts that happen when people can connect their identity to some sense of culture."

Parker said that helping children connect to their heritage and culture on a personal level can have positive impacts on their mental health and their social skills.

She also wants the younger members of her community to feel "seen and heard," and said she doesn't pay much attention to awards, as long as the work is being done. She wants the next generation to understand that hard work and dedication is more important than awards and recognition.

Parker calls the community support behind her work "validating," and said that she thinks her ancestors would be proud of what she's doing for the Filipino community. At the same time, she still wonders what kinds of critiques they might have.

"I can hear a little bug in my ear of the Filipino auntie saying, 'You didn't do that one very well. You need to make that one better,'" Parker said. "Really critiquing everything I'm doing, which is very much a Filipino auntie thing. And I keep that in mind when I do my work, that I never want to just be happy at reaching a hundred percent. You always try to exceed that. And that's why the recognition [I've received] is just a way of showing that I'm trying to reach further and not represent myself, but the community."

During the nomination process for the Governor's Award, five community members — Czarina Nicole Cabillo, Rachel Lucy, Linda Montecillo, Diane Gubatayo and Dave Kiffer — wrote letters to the selection committee on Parker's behalf. She didn't read any of them until the interview process, when she was asked about what her fellow community members said about her.

Parker called the experience "heartwarming" and "powerful," and said she got emotional reading the kind words of support from her community.

In his letter on Parker's behalf, former City of Ketchikan and Ketchikan Gateway Borough Mayor Dave Kiffer highlighted the renewed attention Parker has brought to the local Filipino community.

"To be sure, there is a great resilience within the local Filipino Community in which it has always 'done for itself' in many ways that didn't require interaction with the Ketchikan community at large," Kiffer wrote. "But the cost of that resilience has indeed further impacted the community in a negative way because it has further highlighted [its] 'invisibility.' Then came Alma. For the past several years, she has tirelessly worked through the Ketchikan Wellness Coalition to engage both the Filipino Community and the Community at Large in numerous events that have indeed created new and profound connections between different communities in Ketchikan."

Parker's next project is a documentary titled "Bridging our Stories" about her story as a Filipino immigrant growing up in Ketchikan. She hopes the film can shine a light on immigrant stories and their struggles with cultural identity, just like her own.

"I really wanted to bridge the story of me as an immigrant," Parker said. "I was born in the Philippines, left there at eight months old, raised in Alaska and tried to assimilate and not feel different. I really tried to push away my cultural identity of being Filipino. I would refuse to speak Tagalog. When my parents would talk to me in Tagalog, I would answer only in English."

"I think as you get older you discover that you can never push that identity aside," she continued. "Now how do I bring it back? Because I'm not Filipino enough because I don't speak Tagalog, or I don't have a lot of Filipino friends or however people perceive me to be. But clearly, I'm not also American enough because I'm physically not the typical idea of what an American looks like. So that is the central theme, trying to identify that common story of these generations of kids who come to the United States and really set aside their identity."

Through her work, Parker hopes to inspire more people in her community to follow her lead. She would like to see a more longstanding commitment to Filipino culture — like a museum or cultural center — opened in Ketchikan to better preserve and continue the kind of work she's done.

Parker wants to cultivate a "continuous movement that finds a permanent place in Ketchikan." She looks at her work as not only current, but something that can hopefully continue on for generations to come.  

"When I'm gone, or when I'm trying to move on with other parts of my life, [I hope] that other people can carry on that torch," Parker said. "You have to look at the bigger picture of what can come out of this for yourself, your family, and then as a community. Not just the Filipino community, but the Ketchikan community as a whole."

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News