Siobhan Wescott keeps a small framed photo in her offce that reminds her of home — and of just how far she’s come. It’s a picture of a wide dirt road in a forest near the tiny cabin outside Fairbanks, AK, where she grew up. Along the horizon, the road meets a billow of smokelike clouds, then fades to a white nothingness.
As kids, Siobhan and her brother, Liam, would sometimes walk that road to catch a ride to school, clambering over snowdrifts to get there.
Siobhan, now 56, is an Alaska Native of the Athabascan tribe and one of the few Native people in the U.S. to hold an endowed professorship. (She holds both an M.D. and an M.P.H., serving as the director of American Indian Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.) “The Athabascans are a group that is inherently nomadic,” says Siobhan, which might explain the many addresses she’s had over the years. “But even nomads find a way to have a home base. Alaska always seemed like home.”
