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Eskimo, Pacific Eskimo, or Koniag. As
Mulchay writes in her biography of Peterson, which explores her life as well as the complexity and situational fluidity of her ethnic identity: "Kodiak Alutiiqs may identify to varying degrees with the Russian, Swedish, or other European components of their heritage, welcoming rather than explaining away that ancestry." The complexities of Alutiiq cultural life after eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russian colonisation are illustrated in an account of how Peterson commonly sang "Orthodox Christmas songs in Alutiiq and Slavonic".
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communities, birth is viewed as transcending the boundaries of human society, requiring the ceremonial attendance of a midwife who has an intimate understanding of the land and the teachings of its elders – guarded knowledges which define her expertise as a healer. Like many midwives of her time, Peterson worked within this tradition while also observing
Russian Orthodoxy.
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Peterson integrated traditional
Alutiiq practices such as "keeping mothers warm and relaxed" with contemporary community nursing approaches. In Alaskan Alutiiq culture, midwives are also recognised as healers who are connected to the spiritual realm. As with Athabascans and other Alaskan indigenous
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Peterson has described her cultural affiliation with the
Alutiiq people simply as "Aleut", a name given to the indigenous community by the first Russian traders to Kodiak in the 1700s. Since 1970, the Aleut culture has been officially renamed as "Alutiiq", replacing its other terms such as Sugpiaq
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Elder House of Kodiak, Alaska. Her obituary reads that "She has many grand children and great-grandchildren, too numerous to list, but loved by her equally." A biographical book about
Peterson's life and legacy,
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As a young girl, Peterson picked berries, fished and gained tacit knowledge of ancestral traditions of the region such as
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Peterson was apprenticed within an
Alutiiq tradition under the teaching of local midwives including
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by Joann B. Mulcahy, was published in 2001 by
University of Georgia Press.
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Birth and
Rebirth on an Alaskan Island: The Life of an Alutiiq Healer
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Birth and
Rebirth on an Alaskan Island: The Life of an Alutiiq Healer
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Mary
Peterson died at the age of 93 on December 5, 2020, at the
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149:. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
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Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Additional terms may apply.
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