Opinion

Interview with Nora Sadek on being Alaska Native and a Muslim

Thursday, July 28, 2011

'My name is Nora Sadek. We are in Duluth, Minnesota. So, the Muslim community in Duluth. we’re a really small group; they’re mostly young families and some people who are working in hospitals. We weren’t gonna have like an organized like Muslim Student Association the first year that I came to Duluth. But I was like, “No, come on, you know, we should have a group” And, you know, so we did form the group even there were about three of us to start [laughs] and now the group I think has about 20 people. Our prayer services are every Friday, so they offer the Friday prayers both at the University of Minnesota Duluth campus and also at the local mosque.

My mother is Native American. She is actually Alaska native from Tsimshian tribe. So, it's a royalty tribe in Southeast Alaska and so we're a rare breed. And she was born and raised over there and lived in Seattle, Washington most of her life. My father is Egyptian. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, and he was raised there until he went to Britain for a while. And then came to the States back in the early eighties to study and how they got married is a whole different story.

So, growing up in a bi-cultural home is always interesting. And what is so beautiful is that a lot of Native faith and Native culture is very in tune with Islam as well. It’s very family oriented, it is very cyclical, it is very community yet individual, you know, the individual living in the community. And she would always share that. But my mom would always share with us Native stories, we used to go to Pow Wows and. Those are different because they are more the, what we call the lower 48 Native Americans versus the Alaska Natives. But still my mom wanted us to be exposed to also who we were. So, because I am half Native American, my mother is full blood."

Get the Story:
The Muslim Experience in Minnesota - Nora Sadek (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 7/28)