Mary Peltola Is Surprised She’s the First Alaska Native in Congress
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It’ll be hard to top Representative Mary Sattler Peltola’s 49th birthday. After months of campaigning—charming voters with her meditation-app-worthy voice, pro-fish platform, and salmon earrings—Peltola had been waiting to hear if she’d made history. It was August 31, after roughly two weeks of post-Election Day vote counting, when she finally got the good news: Peltola won Alaska’s special election, making her the first Alaska Native ever elected to Congress and the first woman to represent the state in the U.S. House. Alaskans hadn’t sent a Democrat to the House in nearly 50 years, and some attributed Peltola’s extraordinary win against big-name Republicans like Sarah Palin to the state’s new ranked-choice voting system. But in many ways, her victory is a full-circle story, one that began when her dad and mom, pregnant with Peltola, campaigned for Don Young, the man whose office she now occupies.
Young, a lifelong friend to Peltola’s father and Alaska’s at-large congressman until he passed away in March 2022, used to joke that Peltola was his “Youngest” volunteer. “There was a benefit to feeling like public office isn’t for other people,” she remembers. “It’s for everyday people that we know.” She was elected to the state legislature when she was just 24, serving for 10 years before moving to the 6,000-person city of Bethel to raise her children. As people began to discuss who might fill Young’s position last year, Peltola looked around at her soon-to-be empty nest. “I had been doing some hand-wringing about what life would be like without kids at home. I thought, ‘This might be a good time to get back into politics.’”
Now her presence as a proud Yup’ik Alaska Native brings Congress one step closer to being a truly representative body. Peltola, who wore a pair of traditional boots known as piilugguqs to her swearing-in ceremony, is just surprised it’s taken this long. “Alaska is full of Alaska Native leaders,” she says. “There’s nothing new or unique or noteworthy to me about being an Alaska Native leader.”
Even so, Peltola’s background makes her a rarity in Washington, DC, as does her approach. She’s courteous, committed to bipartisanship, and loath to attack her opponents. (Case in point: She and Palin are friends.) “I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s when everything about politics was much more civil,” she says. But Peltola is also an example of what happens when the concept of collaboration is no longer a platitude, but the difference between life and death. “If you come from a really small place, you have to get along with people. For Alaska Natives, it’s a matter of survival. There are so many things about the Arctic where it doesn’t seem fit for human habitation. There’s a reason we have existed and persisted and thrived.”
On why she got into politics
“Being raised in remote Alaska, I was very drawn to public service. When you grow up in a small community, you realize how important each individual is to making things happen. When our hunters and fishermen go out, they not only provide for their family, but they provide for households that have elders who aren’t able to hunt and gather anymore. They provide for women who don’t have a hunter in their household. My godmother lost her youngest son in October, 2021. It was beautiful to see how many people who knew my godbrother just rallied. We didn’t have to cook a single dish. His friends dug the grave. People were shoveling [my godmother’s] snow. Her nieces were there helping her organize her freezer. Even if you’re not officially in public service, everybody is a part of public service; it’s the fabric of how a community operates.”
On being labeled a “kind” politician
“I would not use that word to describe me ever. Me and my kids and my husband often chuckle about this. A better description might be polite and respectful. I think in American politics, there’s a hint of weakness to [the word kind]. I was intrigued along the campaign trail when people would come up to me, expressing concern that they didn’t think I was ready to be at this level, because people will just eat me alive. There is this conflated idea that if you’re kind, you’re naive. But I think you can be strong and effective and do it in a way that isn’t mean or disrespectful.”
On what she hopes her biggest impact will be
“I hope I’ll be a peacemaker and someone who can bring people together. In the history of humanity, we have always struggled to find ways to get along. In a lot of ways, we’re born competitive, and we’re born looking to be in conflict. I really feel like your spiritual self and your physical self are tied together, so it’s important for me to have the old teachings of Alaska Native people and the new teachings of Christianity at the top of my mind. There’s a lot of alignment in both of those spiritual teachings about living harmoniously with other people. That’s what I hope I can bring to this process, as well as making sure that people feel like there is a place for them, that as a human being, they understand they’re precious, and they belong here.”
On what she wishes she knew before entering politics
“How similar we all are. When I first got involved in politics, I used the same language that you often hear: ‘I want to go to Juneau and fight for us and fight for the things that we deserve.’ I think it would be wonderful if, as people in public service, we would speak in a different way about championing for our constituents. I want to go and collaborate and work with people and help people understand where we’re coming from and help people understand how we’re, in so many ways, exactly the same as they are. We all want good schools for our kids. We all want a safe, peaceful, and loving home. We all want good paying jobs and a good quality of life for our family.”
On the most challenging part of her job
“One of the things this experience has revealed to me is what an enormous country we’re a part of. I almost couldn’t have been further away, geographically, from the capital of our nation than coming from Bethel, Alaska. Just physically being here presents challenges. I’m away from my family. I’m away from all of my closest Alaskan friends. That’s been challenging, but certainly not anything we can’t overcome. More and more, I’m getting comfortable with Washington, DC and the Capitol Complex, but for many weeks, I felt perpetually lost in the office building, on the campus, in the city.
On how she stays grounded
“It helps that I’m not extremely young. It helps to have habits that die hard. It helps to be almost 50 years old and set in my ways. But it also takes discipline to stay connected to the spiritual teachings that I’ve picked up over the years. Sometimes before I do something that makes me nervous or that’s brand-new to me, I repeat little mantras like, ‘Faith, hope, love, and wisdom.’ I make sure that before I fall asleep, I express gratitude for all the things that I have. I saw a meme once that said, ‘What if tomorrow morning you only woke up with the things that you thanked God for today?’ That’s a pretty terrifying thought.”
A version of this story appears in the April 2023 issue of ELLE.
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