About the Author, Leah L Burton

You may email Leah at:

leah@godsownparty.com

Born in Ketchikan, Alaska (aka “NoWhere,” Alaska) Territory, in 1957,daughter of an Alaska State Trooper, which resulted in frequent moves among various communities throughout the state. I say community because “town” would be a huge stretch when describing some of the places we lived.

Alaska is vast in land mass, but very much a “small town” in its social relationships.  Because of Dad’s work as a State Trooper and his political involvements and associations, I had the opportunity to meet many different influential people who left their mark on Alaska in a variety of ways.

As a child, my siblings and I played in the Governor’s Mansion and the halls of the Capitol Building in Juneau – Alaska’s capitol when we were “stationed” there.  I learned at an early age that respect goes, where respect is due, regardless of your status.  I appreciated that the opinions and lives of the clerks at the customer counter in the capitol were just as important to me as those of the governor’s office.

Further molding my expanding views, our family spent a “tour” overseas when my father took a position with the Agency for International Development, requiring him to live in Vietnam for two years, placing our family in Taipei, Taiwan.

Living overseas contributed to the development of a world view beyond the majority of my peer group in Alaska.  The exposure of living there at the end of the Vietnam War contributed to a greater global comprehension and consideration of things outside Alaska’s remote sense of self.

The isolated proximity of Alaska to the “Lower 48” (as we call the continental U.S.) creates a challenging environment for developing a sense of belonging and connection to the rest of the country.  And now, even though we are inundated with reports from around the globe instantly through the internet, CNN, and a host of agencies poised to be the first to report, and be recognized, no matter how big or small the story, the tendency is still to hold a limited perspective in many cases.

As a result, we still do not accept how integral our relationships are with respect to the rest of the world. This contributes to living in our local “bubbles” with regard to how far reaching our associations are to other countries, states and even neighboring counties, cities and towns.  Our inclination is to think regionally – not globally.

In the late 1970s I worked on the British Petroleum side of the “North Slope”, the northern-most region of Alaska where the Prudhoe Bay oil field is located.  During that time it was transitioning from a construction project to a production machine.  In the two years I was there, I had access to, and learned a great deal from industry people, that were managers of oil fields worldwide, on how the discovery, development and production of oil has immense socioeconomic impacts on us all. This was yet another experience that contributed richly to my growing personal library of knowledge.

I also found time to become a mother, with the inordinately important job of raising a child in this world.  A job I take with convicted seriousness, even now that she is 20 and in college.

As a young adult I studied Social Psychology at the University of Alaska in Anchorage.  Concurrent to those studies, I jumped into politics as a citizen lobbyist on important issues affecting Alaskan families, then transitioned later to that of a paid lobbyist for Children & Family interests, and “played” in those same capitol hallways that I frequented as a child, only now I was engaged in what became – adult games.

Do not be misled by my title of lobbyist, I was not wielding undo influence upon lawmakers. I was, however, effective and proud of my accomplishments on these social issues. Comically, at one point I was contrasted to the wealthiest oil company lobbyist in Alaska in a full page article in the Anchorage Daily News, wholly because I was the poorest lobbyist in the State.

I point this out to dispel any notion that I was capable of any manipulation of lawmakers by means other than with the credibility of my arguments themselves, a distinction necessary given the “business as usual” environment that permeates the legislative hallways by those who canafford to literally buy votes – which occurs on both state and national levels.