Welcome to Litsy!

"Birth and Rebirth on an Alaskan Island offers the fascinating story of Mary's life, from her experience growing up within the traditional society of Akhiok to her work as a teacher, a community health aide, a mother, a grandmother, and an Alutiiq midwife and healer. Through her story we discover a society that blended native Alutiiq culture with the Russian Orthodox teachings handed down from late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonists; the mixed modern education and employment with a subsistence lifestyle; that sanctioned arranged marriages but upheld civil divorce laws; and, above all, that recovered its confidence in traditional healing - both of the body and of the community.".