After nineteen years at UAF, Michael Koskey has retired from the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, leaving behind a legacy of teaching, learning, and leading with humility. Koskey first came into academia by a roundabout way: he moved from Germany to the American South at age six, spent a year abroad in high school on a Welsh sheep farm, joined the Marines at 17 partly just to see what was out there, and later ended up doing archaeology on a Mayan site in Belize during his undergrad. All these experiences held one thing in common: a genuine curiosity for other cultures. He eventually came to Alaska to get his Ph.D. in Anthropology, and began working as a subsistence anthropologist for ADF&G, putting him in direct contact with rural Alaska Native communities and Elders who would shape his worldview. By the time he joined the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies as Associate Professor in 2014, he had already spent decades learning what it means to be an outsider.
The elders he worked with changed how he understood nearly everything. He met them at the same time his own children were being born, and shares: "They had influence on my parenting, on my worldview, on what I taught in terms of even spirituality to my own kids, how I lived my life, my moral perspectives and my ethics, completely altered and changed."
What struck him most was the emphasis on genuineness. "To be genuine is so important in most Indigenous worldviews, and unfortunately, Anglo-American culture puts the appearance as what's most important, rather than what's deep down. When I came to realize that, I didn't want to be that person anymore."
That shift in values shaped his pedagogy. As a professor, he came to see knowledge not as something to accumulate or compete over, but as something built together. What distinguishes UAF’s Cross-Cultural Studies students, he says, was their motivation: "Almost everyone comes into the program because they're here to address a problem that's affecting their community, their family, themselves." That sense of purpose motivated Koskey to give back fully, reading every thesis line by line and always making time for his students. The learning was reciprocal: "Even though I don't necessarily set out to learn something from [my students], I always learn a lot." The impact shows: one former student was recently elected mayor of Fairbanks, another chairs the Education Committee in the state legislature.
"Almost everyone comes into the program because they're here to address a problem that's affecting their community, their family, themselves."
Koskey also reflected on the changes he has experienced within the field of anthropology over the course of his career. He entered anthropology in the mid-1980s, when the discipline was, by his own blunt assessment, deeply colonial. The decades since have brought real transformation toward service-oriented research and centering Indigenous knowledge on its own terms. He is especially proud of the indigenization of the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies itself, which recently hired two young Indigenous academics, Dr. Koodéik' Marks and Dr. Tara Christensen-Stiller, to fill roles vacated by Koskey and a colleague."People like me and Ray Barnhart worked for many years to develop these programs, but we never had any other intention than that our jobs would be filled by Indigenous scholars. We were basically building the infrastructure to step away."
Koskey sees similar handoffs happening broadly across the field in Alaska. "I'm seeing the power being peacefully and respectfully transferred to local, Indigenous, or long-time Alaska resident people, instead of outsiders. I was born on the other side of the planet. I'm always a guest here."
Retirement, for Koskey, means stepping away from UAF, but not the work itself. He's still advising graduate students, planning research projects, and working with deep care and commitment for his community.
His advice to anyone starting out? "Let your passion drive your interest. Find ways to work cooperatively. Build a community among fellow academics, not to outshine each other. That makes the work tolerable, sustainable, and meaningful."
