For Angela Noah, 28, a citizen of the White Mountain Apache Tribe with Choctaw Nation descent, telling stories has been an integral part of her identity since she was young.
In elementary school Noah remembers telling her mother elaborate stories about what happened each day at school. A natural storyteller from a young age, she began journaling about her daily life in fourth grade, stacks of filled composition notebooks piling up next to her bed.
“I totally fabricated a story just to get her attention,” Noah said while laughing, remembering the drives home from school with her mom. “I remember thinking ‘oh, that’s a gift. I should make money off that.’”
That love of storytelling and history-keeping has stuck with Noah.
This spring, she graduated as a first-generation college student from the University of Oregon with a degree in Native American and Indigenous Studies.
Her research culminated in an Indigenous fashion show in November, telling a story through significant dates to the White Mountain Apache, which she pinned as powwow numbers to the clothes she sewed. Pieces include ribbon skirts and ribbon shirts, Apache camp dresses, and a jean jacket with the “Young Elders Podcast” logo on the back.
“I’ve tried to be smart with using my creative gifts,” Noah said. “[And learning] as a Native woman how to navigate the world while keeping your people in mind all the time.”
Maintaining Connections
Noah and her family moved around a lot when she was a kid, back and forth between the White Mountain Apache tribe in eastern Arizona and Oklahoma.
Nearing graduation from high school in 2016, from Chemawa Indian School in Oregon, Noah wasn’t sure what she wanted to do. But she did know she wasn’t ready to go home.
That summer, she signed up for a program called Northwest Youth Corps, which built trails around Oregon. Though she loved the outdoor education component, Noah felt tokenized as a young Native woman in the program.
“[I was] being tokenized like crazy from this outdoor conservation center who wanted to do good work. Their intent was there, but they didn’t know how and so I felt very tokenized,” Noah said. “When I applied to U of O, that was the mindset I walked into this university with. I wanted to change that. I wanted to be the executive director of that outdoor nonprofit.”
In 2020, as a freshman in classes at the University of Oregon, Noah was active in the Native American Student Union and served as Miss Indigenous UO for three years. During her reign as Miss Indigenous UO, she created the roles of Mr. Indigenous UO and Cultural Ambassador. In that time, she found inspiration to pursue a degree in Native American Studies stemming from the late Klamath Elder, Gordon Bettles.
Noah was moved talking to Bettles about being afraid of college and being the first in her family to make it that far in her education, during a community dinner at the Many Nations Longhouse.
“He told me that salmon leave to the ocean but come back home to the rivers,” Noah said. “He said I am like a salmon and that I’m arriving to the scary world, the ocean, but that maybe I can stay a while and learn. He encouraged me to then see how I can return back to my rivers at my homelands to share what I learned while I am out here.”
Throughout her time at the University, she never stopped feeling a pull toward home.
“I associated leaving the rez to success, and now I’ve reframed that,” Noah said. “I really wish these opportunities didn’t require leaving our community because now I’m having to learn how to get back into it now, and how it was really hard to maintain connections [back home] too.”
Telling stories through fashion
Noah first learned to sew from fellow OU student, Keyen Singer, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, majoring in Environmental Studies with a minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies. A few years ago, leading up to a Mother’s Day Powwow at OU, Noah approached her friend Singer about teaching her how to fancy dance.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, of course, I want more people to dance with me,” Singer said.
Singer recalls practicing steps throughout campus, smiles and laughter lighting up their faces.
Eventually, Singer taught Noah how to sew her own regalia as well. That sewing, which started with her own Apache camp dresses to wear to powwows, led Noah to her final project weaving together storytelling and fashion.
“It meant ‘we will always be here and we are resilient,’” Singer said of her outfit as a model for the fashion show. She wore a blue gown and rainbow hat, with her powwow number as the infinity symbol.
“The dress was very modern but her Apache rainbow hat was traditional and connected her back to her roots,” Singer said. “It was an empowering piece to wear.”
Learning to sew for Noah meant a new way of showing up for her community. Now, she gets to be the auntie that her nieces and nephews can ask to make new regalia for them, or moccasins for graduation, or a cradleboard to welcome a new baby.
“I want to be the one in my family that people hit up for an order, or just to adorn them,” Noah said. “And so they know what our people wore, what we wear still.”
‘Reclaiming my Sunrise Dance ceremony’
Storytelling also found its way into other aspects of Noah’s time at the University of Oregon.
In the fall of 2023, Noah signed up for an Indigenous Data Sovereignty course taught by Jennifer O’Neal, a citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
For her class project, Noah pitched the idea of creating a podcast. The first episode of the “Young Elders Podcast” aired in November 2023.
The podcast invites on other young adult guests, covering topics such as data sovereignty, the history of Apache camp dresses and decolonizing education.
“This podcast and this research, this is my way of reclaiming my Sunrise Dance ceremony. This is my coming of age ceremony is how I frame it,” Noah said, explaining that she didn’t get to have her coming of age ceremony because a family member passed around that same time.
The logo for her podcast features an image of a young Native woman. For Noah, it reminds her of what Apache young women look like during the Sunrise Dance ceremony.
The logo was designed with graphic designer Miranda Guppy, of the Ute Indian Tribe.
“Miranda said, ‘when I saw the final thing, I just cried because the lightning symbols looked like airwaves.’ And she said that spoke to her and she said ‘we’re going to Indigenize the airwaves,’” Noah said.
As Noah Indigenizes the airwaves with her podcast, she also hopes to inspire young listeners back home on the White Mountain Apache Reservation, providing a sense of what is possible.
“I always think of the listeners, and I hope it’s someone like me back on the rez, who knows that college is possible and to just make all my eight year old dreams come true,” Noad said.
Although unsure of exactly where she will end up next after graduation this spring, Noah is certain that whatever she does will be integrated with sharing her culture and emphasizing the importance of storytelling.
“I’ve always tried hard in school, and I thought that was the way to a successful, happy life,” Noah said. “But now I’m learning how to balance academic Western expectations with cultural ones.”
Editor’s note: This story is the latest installment in our Youth Profiles series. You can read past stories in the series here, and stay tuned for more in the future.
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