Patricia Partnow

Patricia Partnow is an anthropologist with thirty years of experience living and working in Alaska. She moved there after graduate school in 1971 and spent three years in Juneau working at the Alaska State Museum designing learning kits for rural schools. When she moved to Anchorage in 1974, she became involved in bilingual education and curriculum development, eventually spending thirteen years with the Anchorage School District's Indian Education Program designing and publishing curriculum and student readers about Alaska Native cultures. She then returned to university to earn her doctorate in anthropology, concentrating on oral tradition and questions of ethnic identity in the Alaska Peninsula. She is the author of a number of articles and chapters in journals and books, and from 1999 through 2002 served as vice president of education, then as senior vice president of programs and education, at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.