Sadie Brower Neakok: An Inupiaq Woman

By Margaret B. Blackman

Book Overview

This is the life history of the daughter of Asianggataq, an Eskimo woman, and her husband Charles Bower, the first white settler in Alaska's northernmost community of Barrow. One of ten children, Sadie Brower was raised with a mixture of Inupiat and white traditions. Sent Outside for modern schooling, she returned to Barrow to use her education on behalf o her people. Now in her seventies, she has devoted a lifetime to public service, first as a Bureau of Indian Affairs schoolteacher, than as a health aide, a foster parent, a welfare worker, and, for twenty years, as Barrow's magistrate. She became a key figure in the introduction of the American legal system to bush Alaska as well as an outspoken advocate for people, eventually winning the right for the native language to be the language of the court in cases where the defendants could not speak English. Equally important, in private life she has borne thirteen children as wife to Nate Neakok, an Inupiaq hunter and whaling captain who, she states emphatically, "never went to school, but know more than I did, a college student, a teacher." Professor Blackman places Sadie Neakok's vivid narrative within the context of the recent history of Barrow and Alaska' North Slope, interweaving cultural and historical data from various sources with Sadie's own perspectives on herself, her people, and the outside world that has increasingly affected them. Blackman's concluding chapter offers a perceptive critical evaluation of the life history process itself. The book makes an important contribution to Alaskan cultural and legal history, to life history methodology, and to studies of women in cross-cultural perspective.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295968133
• ISBN13: 9780295968131
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 326 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A grandchild's brief reaction...

I am one of Sadine Neakok's many grandchildren, and I adored this book greatly. It makes me wish I had talked to her more during my life. The book illustrates the Inupiaq/Inuit/Eskimo way of life, mostly by way of my great-grandmother, Sadie's mother. The only real complaints I had with the book was the fact that Blackman butts in a bit more than I thought was needed, and if she was going to do that, having the footnotes at the bottom of the page would have worked quite well. You may notice that I speak of my grandmother in the past tense. Sadie Neakok passed away on the evening of June 13th, 2004. She lived a long, full life, and did many great things for her community, her people, and her state. The world is a better place because she was there to help.