Originally published in Student Lawyer magazine, December 2004 (Vol. 33, No. 4). All rights reserved.

SPOTLIGHT

Alaska Native Plans to Serve Her Community After Graduation

by Matt Christensen

The life experiences of Ethel Patkotak have been vastly different from those of her classmates at Northern Illinois University College of Law. As a Native Inupiaq Eskimo from northern Alaska, Patkotak traveled far from her hometown to attend high school and even farther for college. Alaska has no law schools, so she searched far and wide for one that would suit her and had a school system that would challenge her gifted 13-year-old daughter. She wound up in Illinois but wants to return to Alaska after she graduates to serve the Inupiaq community.

Raised in a family of eight children, with more than 90 first cousins, Patkotak learned the value of hard work from her parents. She grew up hunting and fishing, mining and hauling coal for heat and ice for water, and preparing and storing food for the entire year. Learning these skills helped Patkotak prepare for the cross-country trip to Illinois with her daughter and the challenges of law school.

Patkotak’s village had no schools past eighth grade, so she attended high school in the southeastern Alaskan town of Mount Edgecumbe. “Geographically, it would be like sending a 13-year-old child from central British Columbia to the Florida Keys in a military-like dorm setting,” she says. “School was fine, but the strictures left us so grateful to be home in the summer.”

A high school teacher threatened Patkotak with a D if she didn’t apply to Stanford University. Having never heard of Stanford, Patkotak found the threat difficult to understand. “I gave in to Miss Powell at the very last minute, mostly to get that A,” she says. “I was amazed that other people were impressed when I was accepted.”

After she graduated from Stanford, Patkotak worked in a variety of jobs across the country. But when she returned to Alaska to work with the Alaska Federation of Natives, an advocacy group, she discovered the legal realm was where she was happiest.

“Law was the missing part of my jigsaw puzzle for life,” Patkotak says. Knowing she would have to move again, she considered a variety of law schools throughout the country and researched their local public school systems. She chose Northern Illinois for two main reasons: the quality of DeKalb’s schools and her love of water. As she puts it, “Lake Michigan’s not that far away.”

Patkotak wants to be Alaska’s first fully bilingual Inupiaq lawyer. “The bulk of Native Alaskans live in remote rural villages, with very small numbers of people,” she says. “There are very few people who possess the articulation and analytical skills needed to pursue legal remedies. I am very good at interpreting legal concepts into Inupiaq so the elders can understand what it is that affects us as a people.”

Rosita Worl, an anthropology professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, heard Patkotak was attending Stanford while Worl was doing field research in Barrow. They struck up an acquaintance and later worked together when Patkotak was at the Alaska Federation of Natives. Worl says Patkotak has “lived and breathed Native issues.”

When the two traveled to public hearings across the state, Worl saw how well Patkotak got along with the Native population. “I was impressed with her abilities to laugh and joke with participants, easing the formalities of the hearing and the seriousness of the issues,” she says. “I can recall her laughter ringing out through the meeting places as she engaged with the different participants.”

Patkotak knows of only two Inupiaq-speaking lawyers in Alaska. Both are corporate lawyers who live in Anchorage, and neither is fully fluent. “There is a definite need for attorneys who feel comfortable in the American legal system, but who also realize the dichotomy in traditional tribal and cultural norms, understanding what factors the Inupiaq system considers that state courts do not,” she says.

Patkotak wants to balance her desire to return to her village with what she has found she loves at law school—appellate advocacy. But “there is little chance of honing those skills on the Arctic Slope,” so she is considering returning to a larger city in Alaska.

“There will always be that tension between what people’s expectations will be of me as an Inupiaq lawyer, who is fully bilingual, and my own desires,” she says. “Finding a comfortable niche will be difficult.”

Matt Christensen is a third-year student and LL.M. in international and comparative law candidate at Duke University School of Law.

Do you know a distinguished law student who would make an interesting subject for Spotlight? Please e-mail suggestions along with your name, address, and daytime/evening phone numbers to studentlawyer@abanet.org (subject line: Spotlight).

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