Feb
24
9:00pm
Extra Tough: A Conversation with Alaska Native Birthworkers
By Anchorage Museum
Join us for an Extra Tough: Women of the North program with the Alaska Native Birthworkers Community to learn about their Indigenous, grassroots efforts to support Native birthing families. Featuring Abra Nungasuk Patkotak, Charlene Aqpik Apok, Helena Jacobs, Margaret Olin Hoffman David and Stacey Lucason.
Abra Nungasuk Patkotak is Iñupiaq from Utqiagvik Alaska. She is a birth doula and Indigenous birth worker who managed Arctic Slope Native Association’s Pre-Maternal Home for five years. Patkotak is a founding member of the Alaska Native Birthworkers Community. Currently, Patkotak resides on Dena’ina land in Anchorage, Alaska where she works as Special Assistant to the President/CEO of First Alaskans Institute.
Charlene Aqpik Apok (she/they) is Iñupiaq and the co-founder of the Alaska Native Birthworkers Community. Her family is from White Mountain and Golovin, AK. She is mother to Evan Lukluan. Apok has served in many spaces as an advocate for Indigenous womxn, sovereignty, gender justice and rights to health and wellbeing. She is a lifelong learner in both her cultural traditions and decolonizing academia. Apok gratefully resides in Anchorage on the territories of the Dena'ina peoples. Here she has taught the Iñupiaq language and is part of Kingikmuit dance group with her son.
Helena Jacobs is Koyukon Athabascan, the daughter of Dee Olin and David Hoffman; the granddaughter of the late Lillian and Fred Olin, Lorraine and John Honea and Helen and George Hoffman. Born in Fairbanks with ancestral ties to Ruby and Kokrines and raised in seven different communities in Alaska, she now lives and works in Anchorage on Dena'ina land. She work as full-time mom and runs a small consulting firm with a mission to support collective impact approaches leading to positive social and systemic change and wellness for Alaska Native peoples. She has had the honor of supporting birthing families for over 15 years and is a cofounder of the Alaska Native Birthworkers Community.
Margaret Olin Hoffman David was born and raised in rural Alaska. She grew up spending summers at her grandparent’s fish camp on the Yukon River and is rooted by her Koyukon Athabascan culture. Through 15 years of working in tribal and rural community health promotion and program management, birthing her family, volunteering as a doula, and healing through Native ways of knowing, she realized her call to midwifery. The potential to heal ourselves, and our ancestors, during the transformation of childbirth is why she has chosen to dedicate her life’s work to midwifery. Through her work as a Certified Nurse Midwife she hopes to expand perinatal community health programs and birthing options for rural Alaska Native women by remembering traditional practices and supporting more pathways for Indigenous birth workers. She is a founding member of the National Indigenous Midwifery Alliance and the Alaska Native Birthworkers Community. She lives on Dena'ina land in Anchorage, AK with her partner and 4 children, and is a midwife at the Alaska Native Medical Center.
Stacey Lucason is the daughter of Richard Lucason and Sandra Rogers, mother of Olga Lucason and partner to James Manners. She is Yup'ik and Scandinavian, with family ties to Western Alaska in both Dillingham and Hooper Bay. She was born in Fairbanks and currently makes her home on Dena'ina elnena in Anchorage. She is a caregiver, learner and cofounder of the Alaska Native Birthworkers Community.
hosted by
Anchorage Museum
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