Author: Elise Patkotak

As a member of the sixties hippie generation, I am also a child of the Vietnam War. I don’t know if there are enough words to express what an overwhelming presence and force that war was to my generation. It encompassed us like a tsunami. When it ended, it felt as though the whole world shuddered in an attempt to find the new normal. I think we all regret that the new normal turned out to be the seventies.

I started the sixties as a good little Catholic schoolgirl. It wasn’t until I got to college in the mid sixties Continue reading →

A story in Sunday’s paper described a lawsuit filed by the Southcentral Foundation against the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) over compensation paid some board members and its chairman. The amounts seem extremely high given they are within a system that is chronically stretched to its financial limits in trying to provide health care to Natives throughout the state. The compensation for the chairman in particular looks questionable given that the gentleman apparently is working two full time jobs at once. Both jobs are very demanding and that leads to some legitimate questions about how anyone can claim to Continue reading →

Columbus Plaza was a block away from my childhood home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. In it was a large statue of Columbus. Given that I grew up in an Italian-American immigrant community, finding the statue so nearby is not really a stretch. He was an Italian hero; the man who discovered America. He stood on the only patch of green for miles around my neighborhood. In fact, his statue stood in the nearest I could get to nature back then – an approximately two block square of grass with pigeons, a few trees and the statue of Columbus. Along Continue reading →

As the question of taxes is being raised across the state on many October ballots, it might be interesting to take a look at the term commonwealth. It’s a word used by Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia in their official titles. So what does it mean?

Here’s the formal definition: “Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically it has sometimes been synonymous with ‘republic’. The noun ‘commonwealth’, meaning “public welfare general good or advantage” dates from the 15th century.”

So the founders of some of our most original states believed that Continue reading →

Here’s the quote from Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price that I never thought I’d hear from a Fed. “They (Alaska Natives) know best how to care for their people, and we need to facilitate that.” For someone who came to Alaska as an employee of the Indian Health Service (IHS) in 1972, that statement is mind blowing.

When I arrived in Alaska to serve as a nurse in the IHS Barrow hospital, the entire attitude of the organization was paternalistic in the extreme. It’s not that the people working for IHS were bad people or had some prejudice Continue reading →