Do you believe in equal rights? 

Lately, I have been thinking about being a teenager in the late fifties and early sixties, when the rights and expectations of women were extremely different. As young women, we were taught that if (God forbid) we didn’t get married or if our husband died we needed a career to fall back on. Unless you had been brought up in a family that championed the independence of women you were left with few options: a nurse, a teacher, perhaps a physical therapist or a social worker. Rarely were we told that we too, could be doctors or lawyers, although many of us were capable. Some of us were not expected to go to university at all. Father Knows Best or Marcus Welby M.D. were the popular T.V shows. Women were portrayed as housewives, never doctors and never having careers.

I went to university but I worked and saved my money to help pay my tuition. Because I was a female, it was not expected or assumed that I would go on to a higher education. I remember at my university there was a song that many sang: My father sent me to Victoria and resolved that I should be a man. In the casse of the women it was and “resolved that I should get a man.”Was that all we were going to university for or were we there to to get a better education and a chance to live-up to our potential? I hope and believe that for most of us it was the latter. Yet most of my friends including me had a ring on our finger by the time we graduated.Some of the women I graduated with had no intention of doing anything with their education except get married and become a housewife.

I am not sure what my goals were. I had a B.A in Liberal Arts and a B.A in social work. I thought someday I would work with autistic children.See my memoir: Journey Through Fire and Ice for the reason I never did this.

I married my husband, Tiger at the age of twenty two, knowing that nine months later, we would move to Alaska to a primitive village where we would be two of four white people. Did I give any thought to this? Could I do it at all? The answer is a resounding no. If I was going to marry him, I would do whatever he wanted and not question it. This was the way life was for many of us. Of course I had the choice of not marrying, but that wasn’t a decision I wanted to make. I loved him and was willing to live a life I knew nothing about. So I left my safe cocoon for a life that was full of challenge, adventure and hardship. 

My B.A in social work came in handy when I interviewed the native people.   These people are now known as Inuit, but then they were known as Eskimos. I was doing a participant study with my husband Tiger. I didn’t want to live in primitive conditions away from everything I loved and I didn’t want to skin seals or clean and dry fish with the other women.  I did it for him and not for me. Had I been more independent, I would have said “Do the seals yourself.” In those days most of us were afraid to speak up. 

When we lived in Alaska, I had no money and no credit cards. They weren’t needed in the village we lived in. When Tiger was in a tragic accident, and we had to leave Kivalina, there was no money for me to stay in a hotel or to buy something to eat. I had to rely on the kindness of strangers. I was a naïve woman, depending on my husband and trusting that he knew what we needed to live above the Arctic Circle. I never thought that some day I would need money for something and neither did he.

We left Alaska in the fall of 1965 and in May of 1966 we welcomed our first daughter. Our second daughter came two years later in May of 1968. Alaska loomed again. My husband had decided to take a sabbatical there in 1969. We would go to Alaska, and live in a small town for spend ten months ; it was his choice, not mine. He just announced to me one day that we were going to live in Kotzebue when he took his sabbatical. I went along with his plan. I didn’t want to go, fearful for  the safety of our two tiny girls. Tiger was a good man and I loved him. I followed his lead because it was expected of me. He promised me that when we returned to Alaska we would have a telephone, running water and electricity; unfortunately only the latter was available.

We were happy for the most part, going along with what our spouse wanted to do. Some of us were liberated by the early seventies and decided to work. We learned to speak up for ourselves. I developed a passion for photography and opened a studio, becoming a successful photographer. My husband supported my choice, making sure that I didn’t need his signature on the property I bought.  He also made sure that I didn’t need his signature on my bank loan. He encouraged me with every step I made in my career. After all the time I had let him chase his dreams, he encouraged me to pursue mine.

I loved photographing all my subjects but for many men, the idea of having a female photographer was not appealing. I had been hired to photograph a doctor at the Hershey Med Center. He was expecting a male photographer and when I appeared he told me where he wanted to be photographed and how he wanted to pose. The lighting was not appropriate and so I did what he wanted and what I knew was best. At the end of the session, he asked me what would happen if he didn’t like his photograph; I knew at that moment, he had made up his mind that because I was a woman, I wasn’t “good” enough. Two weeks later I was asked to photograph him again. I had enough confidence in myself to say no. In  fact, I decided not to do any more photography of the doctors at the med center. I was finished with the men there who didn’t want a woman photographing them.

Young girls have so many choices now. Several years ago, when I was photographing a four year old, I asked her what she wanted to  be when she grew up. She put her hands on her hips and said “ My mommy told me I can be anything I want to be.” I watched Sophie grow up through the lens of my camera. The last time I photographed her, she had become an intelligent and self-assured young woman. I knew she could be “whatever she wanted to be.”

Women are starting to break the glass ceiling. They can become vice president of our country or the poet laureate for the inauguration. Times have changed and although we have come a long way, we still have a long way to go. Many of my friends are successful and respected by the men they work with.To the girls who are growing up today : You will be able to succeed in anything you want to do. You may have to try harder; you may not get equal pay but you can achieve your dreams.

My grandmother(fondly known as Goggy) was prescient. She seemed to know things  before they happened, or she dreamed about them after they occurred, even when she wasn’t present for them. One day, my grandmother said to my mother, “Ruth, I don’t want Elizabeth living with the Eskimos.” (My grandmother often called me by my middle name, Elizabeth.) 

      I was fifteen at the time, and still in high school. I was about to enter our small kitchen when I overheard their conversation. They were sitting at the metal table and as I watched from the doorway, I could smell the smoke from the cigarette Mom always lit when she was agitated, which was most of the time. My grandmother was drinking tea and eating her lunch at eight in the morning. For reasons unbeknownst to us, she started her day at three a.m. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” my mom replied, flicking her cigarette, “Deanne wouldn’t do that. Whatever gave you this idea?” (Excerpt from my upcoming book: Journey through Fire and Ice to be published soon.)

My grandmother lived with us and she had a profound influence on me. She was a strong woman, bringing two small children up after her husband died. My uncle was a baby and my mother about three. Goggy had had her fortune told and this had all been predicted by the fortune teller, long before she met my grandfather. I never would have my fortune told because of this.

Sometimes I wonder if I had inherited a tiny bit of her second sense. As a child, I was haunted by dreams of fire. My dream which occurred many times was this: I was alone in the middle of a lake  surrounded by fire. I treaded water praying someone would save me. As a teenager my fear of fire continued. I was afraid to light a match, afraid  to light a candle — afraid to do almost anything that might cause a fire.

Suddenly, I found myself at the age of 23 living in Alaska, and these fears came along with me. I was afraid to light the kerosene lanterns that we had in our house and unless I was by myself I wouldn’t do it. Maybe I was haunted by my childhood dream.

Here is another excerpt from my memoir:

“Whatever you do, don’t let the flap of the tent go into the tipi,” Tiger says, as he watches the fire that he has built outside our tent. He’s not paying attention and pushes the flap into the fire with his foot, just as he says this to me. He tries, unsuccessfully, to beat out the flames. We are standing in the tent watching in horror as the walls of the tent burn around us. Within a minute both the tent and tipi are gone. Aside from being shaken up mentally, we are totally unscathed. I am left standing in the frigid air, holding my cup of tea. I’m not sure whether I am laughing or crying when I say, “If my mother could only see me now.” 

We had gone on a camping trip and were 30 miles from our home. Instead of a lake, we were surrounded by snow and were totally alone except for our dogs. The temperature was thirty below and as in my dream, there was little chance that either of us would survive. Strange that these dreams as a child were in so many ways similar to what happened to me as an adult. 

In addition to this, I always feared for Tiger’s life when he was hunting or fishing. I couldn’t sleep until he was safely at home. Was this hyper-vigilance or was it a premonition that something would happen to him? Had I believed my grandmother’s prediction and her fear of me going to Alaska, would I have changed my mind? Would I  have changed my mind and not gone to Alaska if I had known that in some way my dream of being surrounded by fire would come partially true?

When you read my upcoming book, you will read about a young woman, still a child in some ways, who was faced with challenges time and time again. When I look back to that time, I think of the people I met, and the experiences that I had, and I realize I would not be who I am today if it had  not been for the time I spent in Kivalina.That young girl, the one who left on an unknown journey so many years ago, filled with excitement and fear will live inside me forever.