ABSTRACT
As a thirty-three-year-old mother, Tlingit activist, and president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS), Elizabeth Wanamaker Peratrovich helped compel the Alaskan territorial senate to pass the 1945 Alaska Equal Rights Act to prohibit racial segregation. She dedicated her life to fighting for Indigenous rights for the Native community. Native mothers, Native women, and the members of the ANS played an integral role in asserting Indigenous Alaskan rights in the 1940s. Indigenous domesticity was a central site for settler colonial efforts at Native assimilation and where Indigenous people resisted Western assimilation. The ANS facilitated partnerships that allied Native organizations while it promoted the preservation of Indigenous livelihood that included control over Native land and subsistence activities. Through their service to the ANS, Native women upheld Indigenous rights while they promoted racial equality in Alaska. The women in the ANS used their identities as Native mothers to advocate for resources for their families that benefited the entire Native community.
