Alaska Native Wins MacArthur Prize

"Amazement to joy, incredulity, stunned silence, denial -- they are all different," he said.

Fellowships have been awarded since 1981 to "celebrate the creative individual in our midst," the program's Web site says. There is no application process. Candidates are nominated anonymously. Then a selection committee researches the nominees, which can take six months or six years, Socolow said. The foundation names 20 to 25 recipients a year.

"We do not explain why we choose the people," Socolow said. The selection is made after looking at candidates' work, reading what has been written about them and talking to peers and friends "to form an opinion on how much creativity we see," he said.

Katherine Gottlieb
(Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)

"We are really betting on the future," Socolow said. "They know far better than we what to do with the money. We hand it off in confidence."

Past MacArthur fellows include artists, inventors, scientists and educators. Among this year's class, announced Monday, are a robot-maker, a ragtime pianist, an archaeological illustrator and a businessman working to free political prisoners in China.

Gottlieb, the daughter of a Filipino father and Aleut mother, began her ascent through Southcentral Foundation in Seldovia, where she grew up and was the agency's local health representative. In 1987, she and her then husband moved to Anchorage so he could study. Southcentral hired her to answer phones, and she enrolled at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

At the time, health care for Anchorage-area Alaska Natives was meager, "provided by an indifferent government," she said. It took days to see an Indian Health Service doctor; emergency room visits often required hours of waiting.

But all over Alaska, tribal health organizations were taking advantage of a change in federal law that allowed them to assume health service functions, such as dentistry or optometry. They could also seek grants to supplement their Indian Health Service funding.

Southcentral Foundation took advantage of the opportunities, and Gottlieb, who became president in 1991, began exerting her creativity. "When we were able to assume our own management, we had a lot of freedom to move and design. And we had our own motivation" -- improving day-to-day health care for their own people.