Katsi Cook
| Katsi Cook | |
|---|---|
| Born |
January 4, 1952 St. Regis Mohawk Reservation |
| Nationality | Mohawk Native American |
| Education | Skidmore College, Dartmouth College |
Sherrill Elizabeth Tekatsitsiakawa “Katsi” (pronounced Gudji) Cook is a Mohawk Native American midwife, environmentalist, Native American rights activist, and women's health advocate. She is best known for her environmental justice and reproductive health research in her home community, the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne in upstate New York.
She is the director of Running Strong for American Indian Youth and founder of the organization's Woman is the First Environment Collaborative which supports community-based health projects seeks that seek to empower Native women of all ages and increase knowledge concerning reproductive health. She has founded a number of organizations serving the Akwesasne community, including the Women's Dance Health Program, the Mother's Milk Monitoring Project, and the Konon:kwe Council.
The youngest of four children, Katsi Cook was born on 4 January 1952, to Kawennaien Evelyn Mountour Cook and William John Cook on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, or the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne. Her father, a graduate of Dartmouth College, was a pilot who fought in World War II and the Korean War. He died in a plane accident when Cook was nine months old. Her mother was raised in Quebec and educated by Catholic nuns, but died when Cook was 11 years old. During the remainder of her childhood, Katsi Cook lived with her paternal grandmother, Kanatires Elizabeth Herne Cook, a midwife who had delivered Cook as well as many other children at Akwesasne.
Katsi Cook was educated at Catholic boarding school, though she began practicing the traditional Longhouse Religion as a teenager. She attended Skidmore College from 1970 to 1972, and then transferred to Dartmouth College as a part of the school's first class of women. Shortly thereafter, she left school in order to participate in the American Indian Movement (AIM). She married Jose Eugenio Barreiro, a Cuban-born academic and indigenous activist; the first of their five children was born in 1975.
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