During the Alaska Federation of Natives convention this year, speakers on an American Cancer Society panel all had a unified call to action — get screened for cancer.
The panel was prompted by a report released by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium earlier this year that compiled 50 years of data on cancer in Alaska Native people. It found that one in five Alaska Native people dies from cancer.
Jaeleen Kookesh is the vice president of policy and legal Affairs and corporate secretary at Sealaska, but she’s also a member of the advisory board for the American Cancer Society in Alaska. Her dad was former state senator and Alaska Native leader Albert Kookesh, who died from cancer early this summer.
“I joined this less than a year ago because my dad was in the middle of battling cancer. And I had two other uncles and other family members who succumbed to cancer,” Kookesh said. “Little did I know that my dad would pass within my first year of serving in this capacity.”
She said that her dad’s cancer was curable if caught early on, and that losing him made her even more dedicated to cancer education and prevention.
Eric Fox lost his mom to cancer. She was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in 2015. He remembered taking his mom to get treated for cancer and seeing a lot of elders there, just like his mom.
“I remember walking into the chemo room and just seeing tons of our elders hooked up to these, these machines. And they’re literally having poison put into their bodies to combat this thing. And there’s rows and rows of them. And I’m just at that time thinking, what’s going on?” Fox said.
He said that his mom’s generation is resilient, but that sometimes there’s also a sense of denial about needing help.
“But I think often with that, you know, there’s a certain sense of, you know, ‘Nothing’s wrong with me, I don’t I don’t need to do that.’ And oftentimes, it may be even taboo to have the discussion,” Fox said.
Fox says that people need to ask their families and their elders about being screened because it could save their lives, even if it’s an awkward conversation.
