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With a Dauntless Spirit: Alaska Nursing in Dog-Team Days, Six Personal Accounts by Effie Graham, Jackie Pflaum, Elfrida Nord

2005; Oregon Historical Society; Volume: 106; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ohq.2005.0040

2329-3780

Terrence Cole,

Latin American and Latino Studies

threeout of one hundred Indians achieve a col legedegree. Martinez's adult life has been justas surpris ing. In 1940, allotments opened up forPaiutes inOwens Valley, and Martinez returnedwith her sisterand went into social servicework be cause "thepeople don'twant an Indian teaching white students" (p. 87). In the face of ongoing racism, Martinez became an office manager for the Indian Field Service Agency, managed a housing project for theDepartment of Labor with white workers under her supervision, and became a counselor at the Japanese Internment Camp atManzanar. Martinez's comments on the similaritiesbetween theBIA-run Indian schools and the Japanese intermentcamps of World War II aswell as Bahr's informativehistorical com mentary insightfullyexpose the interlinkingof race policies inAmerica. After raising her children, Martinez did become a teacher in 1968. She was an innovator in culturally pluralistic teachingmethods, and became a driving forcewithin theAmerican Indian Education Commission and theNative American Ministry of Southern California for the Presbyterian Church. Her life story closes with a car journeyback toOwens Valley?to the people she has known, theplaces important to her,and discoveries in localmuseums of images of amother she never knew, familymembers, and theworld she lived from 1917 to 1927 as a Paiute child.Viola Martinez isan extraordinary woman, and this autobiography/biography is well worth reading. With a Dauntless Spirit:Alaska Nursing in Dog-Team Days, Six Personal Accounts Edited EffieGraham, JackiePflaum, and Elfrida Nord University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks, 2003. Maps, photographs, endnotes, bibliography, appendix, index. 345 pages. $45.00 paper. Reviewed by Terrence Cole University of Alaska, Fairbanks When there is a doctor in the house, nurses sometimes do not receive all the credit they deserve. But ask anyone who has ever stayed overnight in a hospital, and they will explain how valuable a dedicated nurse can be.While the physician may come and go, the nursing staffistherearound theclock,providing kindly care and a personal touch and attending to all the small details thatcanmean thediffer ence between sickness and health. If the closest doctorwas hundreds ofmiles ormonths away,as was often the case inTerritorialAlaska, nursing carewas absolutely indispensable. This book isa collection of a half-dozen first hand accounts byAlaskan nurses,mostly from the 1920s and 1930s. It is a quiet but important addition toAlaska's medical literaturethat might easily be overlooked. The three editors ? who are apparently veteran nurses from Alaska them selves ? have selected and compiled the stories of six remarkable women who ministered to Alaskans during "dog-team days." The bulk of thematerial comes from the archival files of theAlaska Nurses Association, which began systematically collecting tales of Alaskan nursing history in the 1950s.The files are now housed in theRasmuson Library the University ofAlaska, Fairbanks. Thanks to the effortsof retirednurses such asDoris Southall, theNurses' Collection is a richwarehouse of material, and the editors of this collection have done a nice job in selecting letters, memoirs, and other first-hand reports fromamong themany stories at theirdisposal. Reviews 165 The book might have been strengthened if the editors had been able to elaborate on and refineconnections among these individual sto ries and some of the major themes and issues of Alaskan historyor at leasttogive fullercontext in thebiographical introductions in each section. The composite parts could have then been as sembled so thatthe sum totalwould have been a more throughexamination of theroleofAlaskan nursing in the "dog days" before antibiotics. For instance, after reading this book one realizes thatoutbreaks ofdiphtheriawere hardly unusual inAlaska's past. Perhaps amore analyti cal approach could have placed the famed 1925 diphtheria epidemic that spawned the Serum Run toNome and years later helped inspire the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in a proper context. The 1925 Serum Run is prob ably the most ballyhooed event in medical dog mushing history, but it is not treated here at all. LuluWelch, whose briefmemoir is thefirst account in the book, was the nurse, anesthesi ologist, andwife ofDr. CurtisWelch, theNome physician at the time of the Serum Run, but there isno discussion of either her role or his during thisnotable event. Without thiscontext, the subsequent complaintsmade bymany Alas kans? includingGertrude Fergus, one of the other six nurses profiled in thebook? about Dr. Welch's incompetence at the...