Kirkina Mucko

Kirkina Mucko
Born	Elizabeth Jeffries 1890 near Rigolet, Labrador
Died	1970
Nationality	Canadian
Other names	Kirkina Mukko, Elizabeth Mukko
Occupation	nurse, midwife
Years active	1918-1970
Known for	nurse, midwifery

Kirkina Mucko also known as Elizabeth Mukko, (1890-1970) was a Canadian Inuit nurse and midwife. Having lost her legs as a child, and possibly her parents, she was raised in a series of mission homes, hospitals and boarding schools. Returning to Canada around 1908, she worked at the Grenfell Mission in Labrador. After losing family members in the 1918 flu pandemic, Mucko trained as a nurse and midwife, providing services for her community until her later years. A woman's shelter in Rigolet has been named in her honor.

Elizabeth Jeffries was born in 1890 on the shores of Hamilton Inlet, near Rigolet, Labrador to Adam Jeffries (another source calls the father Emo Jeffery), an Inuit-Scots trapper and his wife. As a toddler, her legs were frozen and amputated below the knee by her father with an axe. Later, she was taken to the Indian Harbour Hospital for a surgery to create proper stumps, where Wilfred Grenfell met her when she was around four years old. A nurse, took Elizabeth to a temporary school at Halifax, Nova Scotia and by 1902, she was writing letters in English.

By age ten, Elizabeth was able to agilely move about on the leather pads which her father had fashioned for her. In 1900, Grenfell, who renamed her Kirkina, took her to Battle Harbour Hospital, where she remained for two years. A letter dated 9 November 1902 from Kirkina to a Massachusetts family who had sent Jeffries a doll, said her legs would be completed within a week by Dr. John McPherson, who was part of the mission staff. He fashioned temporary wooden artificial legs, which she quickly learned to use. Around 1903, Kirkina received her first pair of cork limbs from donors in Boston, Massachusetts and when Dr. McPherson and his wife left Labrador later that year, they took her with them first to Boston and then to Mexico. Kirkina returned to New York for schooling for two years and then returned to the McPhersons in Mexico. After four years in Mexico, Jeffries returned to Canada, in 1908 and initially lived with a nurse in Forteau. In 1912, Gaffney secured a new set of legs for Kirkina through donors in the U.S. Gaffney continued to use the story of Kirkina and other indigenous orphans to garner donations for his charitable works.

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