SADIE BROWER NEAKOK: AN INUPIAQ WOMAN by Margaret B. Blackman.
University of Washington Press, P.O. Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145.
Illustrated (30 black-and-white photographs), index, bibliography,
map, notes. 274 pp., $14.95 paper. 0-295-97180-0
REVIEW
Magistrate of Barrow, Alaska for twenty years, Sadie Brower
Neakok rose from already distinguished beginnings. Her mother was
an Asianggataq Eskimo and her father was Charles Brower, considered
Barrow's first white settler.
Blackman, in this paperback reissue of the 1989 edition,
traces Neakok's life from 1916 to the mid-1980s - a life that
encompasses many careers. She began college "Outside" (a reference
to the lower forty-eight states), but after two years returned to
Barrow as a schoolteacher for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
In the following years she was a health aide, nurse, welfare
and social worker, community activist, and magistrate, as well as
raising thirteen children. As a magistrate, she performed the
duties of a judge, coroner, justice of the peace (especially in her
own household), and social worker.
Blackman met Neakok in 1984, at a two-week archaeology and
oral history field school for Barrow High School. Neakok and Roxy
Ekowana were willing to be interviewed by twelve students about
their lives, contributing their "oral histories."
After that two weeks, Blackman returned to Barrow several
times to make further recordings, which became the basis for this
book.
Neakok's life is broken into four periods: childhood, teen-
age years, early adulthood, and later years. While this seems to
be unequal (Neakok's most distinguished acts have occurred in the
latter category), there is no feeling of inequality in the
presentation.
Blackman has produced a fascinating account of growing up in
the Inupiaq culture, in a period of increasing outside influence.
In her preface, she says that "Sadie's life story addresses the
relative dearth of life history literature on Eskimo women,
particularly contemporary women." After reading this book, there
will, I assure you, be calls for more.