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- Title
“IT SEEMED AS THOUGH THE WHOLE COUNTRY WAS DOOMED”: EBENEZER EVANS’S ACCOUNT OF THE 1918–1919 INFLUENZA PANDEMIC ON SEWARD PENINSULA, ALASKA.
- Authors
Pratt, Kenneth L.
- Abstract
The importance of context cannot be overstated when evaluating a major historical event like the 1918– 1919 influenza pandemic, which had devastating impacts on people and countries around the world. In cultural terms, however, the true scope of that devastation can only be understood when the pandemic is evaluated in the context of local experiences. The Seward Peninsula region of western Alaska provides an ideal forum for such an evaluation. The region’s largest community, Nome, had an established newspaper that published regular updates about the pandemic’s impacts; those updates are supplemented by information in government records concerning activities of the United States Bureau of Education in the region. When Alaska Native oral history accounts about the pandemic and land claims research data documenting settlement histories on Seward Peninsula are added to the mix, a finer-grained evaluation of the pandemic’s local-level impacts is possible. By illuminating traumas experienced by Seward Peninsula’s Native peoples during the 1918–1919 pandemic, this article provides critical context for understanding Alaska Native responses to the COVID-19 pandemic a century later.
- Subjects
SEWARD Peninsula (Alaska); INDIGENOUS peoples; ORAL history; UNITED States. Bureau of Education; COVID-19 pandemic
- Publication
Alaska Journal of Anthropology, 2022, Vol 20, Issue 1/2, p103
- ISSN
1544-9793
- Publication type
Article