"Knowing women": Narratives of healing and traditional life from Kodiak Island, Alaska

• Main Author: Mulcahy, Joanne Burke
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: ScholarlyCommons 1988
• Subjects: Folklore|Cultural anthropology|Womens studies|Minority & ethnic groups|Sociology; Kodiak; Alaska
• Online Access: https://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI8816208

Native Women on Kodiak Island, Alaska tell a different story of the past than that recreated by the visible, dominant cultural forms. This study explores the differences in women's perceptions, values, and beliefs based on oral history interviews. These were conducted on Kodiak during two years as a resident, then intermittently over a seven-year period. Conclusions are based on participant-observation, comparison of ethnographic materials, and analysis of gender as a critical factor in the construction of identity, cultural values, and history. Most histories and popular cultural forms on Kodiak are drawn from a periodized model celebrating major events and key, usually male, figures. Women, in contrast, tell stories about everyday life, bearing and raising children. Their narratives have kept alive important aspects of Native identity which integrate religion, subsistence, foodways, and, prominently, health care. Traditional healing based on intuitive "knowing," the role of the village midwife, and the work of tribal doctor Oleanna Ashouwak are central to women's memories. Women were historically important as midwife/herbalists who had an extensive knowledge of plants, midwifery, lancing and other surgical techniques. The introduction of Western medicine and other socio-economic changes have transformed birth into a medical event and replaced the midwife's authority. However, women's healing roles remain symbolically and practically important. The cornerstone of village health delivery today, the Community Health Aide, is in many ways the present embodiment of the Native midwife. Women's stories reveal an historical connection in their roles which is obscured in the dominant history of health care. Women's knowledge of healing is emerging as increasingly relevant today and is being sought by young people on Kodiak as part of a revitalization of Native life. The values which women have maintained are at the very center of this reformation of identity and renewal of cultural issues. Their knowledge is proving essential to new mental health programs instituted to combat the alcoholism, violence, and suicide which have emerged with modernization. A culturally based conception of health offers possible ways to balance tradition and modernization in approaching current problems.