TUKTOYAKTUK
Mahalia Newmark says stories about her great-grandmother inspired her to learn more about the traditional leadership roles of Dene women.

Mahalia Newmark received an award for her paper on the traditional leadership roles of Dene Women. She is earning a master's degree at Arizona State University. - photo courtesy of Kevin Russell

Harriet Gladue, known to her family as "small granny" first helped to deliver a baby at only 14 years old. She then spent the next 50 years helping women give birth, often travelling by herself to remote camps on the land.

"She was intimately knowledgeable about the land and could survive on the land," Newmark said. "She was one of the last traditional midwives in the community."

Newmark grew up in Tuktoyaktuk but often visited Tulita, her mother's hometown.

She is now earning a master's degree in public administration at Arizona State University, concentrating on aboriginal studies.

"When I was considering what type of degree I wanted to get, I really wanted a degree that would give me sort of some education in policy, which is what I'm really interested in," she said.

"But I really wanted to have that from an indigenous perspective."

After more than a year of research, Newmark wrote a paper titled "Reclaiming Dene Womanhood in Our Stories," which examined the impact of colonialism on Dene women's traditional leadership roles. The paper won the Vine Deloria Jr. Student Paper Competition at the Western Social Sciences Association Conference in Reno, Nevada in April.

Newmark said when she began researching strong Dene women, her small granny was a consistent example.

"That's when I really began to look at the women, and really looking at the women in my family, as examples of that, and that's where my small granny kept coming up for me," she said. "When I was doing this research, she was constantly referred to."

Newmark's great-grandfather was Chief Albert Wright, Tulita's first chief and negotiator of treaty 11 on behalf of the Mountain Dene in the area.

Before he accepted his role as chief, Newmark said he first asked his wife for her support.

"From a Dene perspective, his leadership meant that he would need to have a strong wife to support him," she said.

In addition to her strength, Newmark said Gladue was also well known for her kindness.

"She was beautiful and very kind and really generous and soft spoken," she said. "She didn't really speak English, but to be honest with you, I actually never even realized that until even a few years ago because I always was able to communicate with her. It never seemed like it was a challenge."

Newmark said her great-grandmother personified what it meant to be a strong Dene woman.

"It's about having those Dene values. For me, she was just always the embodiment of that," she said. "One of the things that I admire about her the most was that she was just an extremely generous person."

Tulita's health centre, the Harriet Gladue Health Centre, was named in honour of her.

Newmark is now spending part of the summer in Tuktoyaktuk before attending the Hatfield Resident Fellowship program at Portland State University in August.

In the meantime, Newmark said she is still dedicating time to learning more about her culture .

"Traditional knowledge is critical to who we are," she said. "Who I am is not complete without understanding where I come from."

She said her great-grandmother was instrumental in learning those lessons.

"She was somebody that I always loved as a child and she was such a loving person," she said. "I really didn't appreciate who she was as a leader until later in my life, especially writing this paper."

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.