Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
— 35 —
Channeling Elizabeth Peratrovich
I FIRST HEARD OF ELIZABETH PERATROVICH
from Ernest Gruening, who was my very first
hero. (Well, okay, after Herbie “The Shishmaref Cannonball” Noyukpuk, who mushed to
great glory in the World Championship Sled Dog Races.)
I guess Ernest Gruening was my first political hero. He was the territorial governor of
Alaska from 1939 until 1953 and he was one of our first US senators. In that capacity, he
was one of two in the US Senate who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964.
That resolution authorized American military action in Southeast Asia which, as any mem-
ber of my generation knows, led to the Vietnam War.
In 1964 I was a lot more concerned with the effects of the Alaska Earthquake, 9.2 on the
Richter scale, that hit in the middle of my twelfth birthday party, but in college in Fairb-
anks, sweating out the draft lottery with my friends, I wondered how and why we'd gotten
involved. So I did what I always do, I went to the library and looked it up. Somewhere
along the way, I stumbled across the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, and when I noticed that only
two senators had voted no and that one of them was from Alaska, I decided I had to find
out more about this senator. (This is the way research works. It cascades, and it's labor in-
tensive, time consuming, and addictive. Stay away from it.)
So I read Gruening's autobiography,
Many Battles
. He's a good writer and explains his
position on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution with conviction and clarity, but I almost didn't get
that far, because 150 pages before Vietnam shows up in his book he tells the story of how
Elizabeth Peratrovich, in one speech before the Alaska Territorial Legislature, caused the
passage of the 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act.
It is this event that is at the heart of actor Diane E. Benson's one-woman show in Febru-
ary at the Gathering Place in the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. Diane goes
