| Today, increasing numbers of Alaskan Native women are assuming nontraditional roles as elected officials and corporate leaders in Alaska. This study investigates the ways Aleut/Alutiiq, Athapascan, Haida, Inupiat, Nisgaa, Tlingit, Tsimshian and Yup'ik women in leadership positions mediate their inherited cultures and time-worn traditions within the dominant culture of their organizations, and in their communities. It is the influence of culture, that powerful dimension of human understanding, that this dissertation unveils.;The underlying framework of the research protocol is that language is the medium through which our present is shaped and through which we perceive our future. It is an intrinsic component of our ontology that allows us to share meaning across generations. In the hermeneutic tradition, the conversations were pivotal in providing the texts which became the fodder for interpretation, and eventual reinterpretation by the participants through the concept of reciprocity. Together the participants and the researcher circumnavigated the hermeneutic spiral in the search of new understandings.;Unveiled in this study was an extensive library of culture deeply imbedded within the memory of each participant. What was revealed was: a discerning realization of the ontological nature of their cultural heritage; a recognition of the power of language to project the promise of being-in-the world; a sagacious awareness of the potency of shared stories to imbue a world-to-be; a perspicacious understanding of the cataclysmic authority imbedded in the clash of opposing cultures and forced acculturation; and a heightened consciousness that trying to live one's culture in the face of opposing worldviews, requires judicious mediation of one's own culture.;Mediation of one's culture is an approach that allows for reflection on a life lived by one's ancestors that has worked for untold centuries, applied to one's present situation, allowing for the appropriation of a new future. To take what one is given--a cultural history--and chart an honorable path through the obstacles that confront us, is to take hold of one's life. That is what the women in this study have accomplished. These women will continue to lead their people. |
