Helen C.

Frost's Missionary Images

of the Inupiaq (Eskimos)
by JULIEANNA FROST

I n 1926, a woman celebrated her thirtieth birthday with the

realization of a long-held dream. For years she had felt called to
be a missionary and here she was finally aboard the steamship Victoria
arriving at Nome, Alaska. It proved to be worth the wait in order
to serve God in this remote and wonderful land. For approximately
the next thirty-five years, she would work among the indigenous
Inupiaq peoples, then called "Eskimos," serving them in various
capacities, as health care worker, teacher, preacher, music director,
postmistress, shopkeeper, and friend. Her memoirs and her photo-
graphs share her story.
This biographical study, grounded in feminist studies and historical-
comparative social science research, examines the photography and
missionary work of Helen C. Frost (1896—1986). As the daughter of
a Lutheran pastor in the Midwest, Frost felt called from an early age
to help others. She studied to be a teacher and a nurse and eventually
served for over thirty years as a Lutheran missionary, primarily among
the Inupiaq in Alaska. This study used interviews, Ufe history, archival
research, and especially her photographs to document her response
to the Inupiaq. Frosts photographic images underscore how she
incorporated aspects of Inupiaq culture into her own life and how
she, unlike many other missionaries of the period, did not portray
them as "primitive others."
Initially, the missionary focus of the Norwegian Lutheran groups
was upon inner missions. Many of the pastors who came to America
did so in order to provide religious guidance to Norwegian immi-
grants. Early settlements often relied upon lay workers to serve the
isolated newcomers. Norwegians in America also developed their
own institutions of mercy, such as children's homes, deaconess'
homes and hospitals, and homes for the aged. Donations from
congregations went to support these endeavors and any additional
funds would go to foreign missions.

296

LUTHERAN QUARTERLY Volume XXIII (2009)

 H E L E N C. F R O S T ' S M I S S I O N A R Y IMAGES 297

One type of group that emerged to raise such funds was the
Ladies'Aids. Mrs. Gustava Kielland has been noted as the founder
of these groups, the Kvindeforeninger, in Norway in 1840. Its pri-
mary purpose was for women to gather once a month to make
goods such as quilts in order to sell them and donate the proceeds
to missions. It is assumed that immigrant Norwegian women
transplanted these types of groups to the United States upon their
arrival, although few records exist.1 These Ladies'Aids were typically
connected to the congregation, and members often had to pay a
small fee each month. Not all members of the congregations were
positive about these groups. "Opponents of the societies were, on
the one hand, worried that the women would spend their time in
unedifying gossip. O n the other hand, they feared that the women
would form a divisive clique which would become a church within
a church."2 In 1862, a small sewing circle in Decorah, Iowa, was
created to raise building funds for Luther College. By 1865 it became
a society that also mended and made clothes for these students.

This Lappeforening (Mending Society) continued its labor of love for many
years . . . Another group in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, started out by buying a
whole bolt of heavy, warm, red flannel from which they made substantial
underwear for the Luther College boys.3

By 1867, this Wisconsin society also raised funds for the Zulu Mission
in South Africa, which may make it the first to send money directly
to a foreign mission. More often the money raised was given to the
Norwegian Mission Society in the home country to disburse.4 The
first attempt to link together the various congregational women's
societies was in the Hauge Synod in 1901, called the Mission Dove.5
Two years later the Norwegian Synod and United Church also
created church-wide women's organizations, with a particular focus
on funding educational institutions.6 Eventually, the various Ladies'
Aids groups combined in 1917 along with the merging of the synods
in order to better coordinate their efforts and to support the missions
as the Women s Missionary Federation (WMF). 7 One of the missions
that began as an inner mission and received WMF support was the
Teller Mission in Alaska, which was started in 1900. The town of
298 L U T H E R A N QUARTERLY

Teller and its environs was considered a foreign mission field at the
time, even though it was on United States territory.
The purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 had devastating
consequences for many indigenous groups. Unlike the Russian
American Company, which had quotas implemented to conserve
sea mammals, the Alaska Commercial Company expanded dramati-
cally the harvesting of sea otters and seals.8 The goal of this company
was to harvest as much as possible, as quickly as possible, thereby
increasing profits. This led to scarcity; groups such as the Inupiaq
were threatened with starvation. As a solution to this problem the
U.S. government began to import reindeer for the Inupiaq to herd.
The government also imported groups of Norwegian Sami, an
indigenous people of Northern Scandinavia called "Lapps" at that
time. As Lutheranism was Norway's state religion, a Lutheran pastor
was also recruited. The Rev.Tollef Brevig related in his diary: "An
inquiry came from the Rev. H.A. Preus, president of the Norwegian
Lutheran Synod, whether my wife and I would be willing that I go
as pastor for a few families of Norwegian Lapps, whom the
government was importing to northern Alaska for the purpose of
teaching the Eskimos the art of reindeer raising."9 Although the
initial main mission was for the Norwegian Sami, outreach to the
indigenous Inupiaq eventually occurred as well. This was especially
true after a measles epidemic in 1900. The Teller Orphanage, Helen
Frost's eventual base, was begun by the Brevigs in order to take care
of the children, as approximately half of the population of Teller had
died.10 The Teller Mission utilized missionaries provided by Home
Missions to serve in a variety of roles. In the early twentieth century,
the Women's Missionary Federation encouraged women's support
through fundraising, prayers, and staffing of the missions.11 Female
missionaries, some of them deaconesses, soon outnumbered men in
this foreign mission field.12 One of these missionaries was Helen
Frost, who arrived in 1926.

Helen C. Frost

According to her memoirs, Helen Frost was born in Council Bluffs,

Iowa, in 1896 to a Danish immigrant family. Her father Hemming
 HELEN C. FROST'S MISSIONARY IMAGES 299

(fluent in English, Danish, and Norwegian) was employed as a pastor

for several Lutheran mission churches in the Midwest. Helen related
that her mother was a sickly woman who died from consumption
when Helen was about six.13 For approximately two years Helen and
her brother Herbert lived with a few different relatives until their
father remarried. Four more children were added to the family over
the years and when Helen was sixteen, her father took a position in
Minnesota serving three congregations—Riceford, Newberg, and
Blackhammer. Helen attended the Sioux Falls Normal School for
two years and received a second-grade teachers certificate in 1914.
Helen planned to teach full-time, but when her stepmother Gina
asked her to stay home to help take care of the family, she postponed
her plans. While still living at home, Helen attended a talk about
missions by Dr. Birkelund, a missionary to China, and it made quite an
impression upon her. She later recalled, "that Mission Festival touched
me and I prayed that if the Lord wanted me on the mission field I
would be shown in some way. I told some people how I felt but they
claimed that it was just my fantasy. But to me it was more than that."14
Once again Helen s dream had to be deferred when a flu epidemic
struck her community. She provided health care to her family who
had all become sick. It was this experience, along with an article on
the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital, that influenced Helen to become
a nurse. In the fall of 1919, she began study at this Chicago hospital.
During her second year, Helen herself became ill with the flu and
nearly died. Despite the delay of three months of convalescence,
Helen still managed to graduate from the program and then spent
the next two years working at the Lutheran Deaconess Hospital.
In 1923, Helen began a Registered Nursing program at Ancker
Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. In a year she graduated and then
worked as a private duty nurse in Minneapolis. In 1926, Helen
received a letter from an old friend encouraging her to join the
mission field. She boarded that steamship for Nome and for the next
thirty-six years practiced her vocation as a missionary, primarily
in Alaska. Although initially recruited as a nurse for the Teller
Orphanage, over the years she took on other occasional roles, such
as storekeeper, postmistress, musician, and teacher, in the Lutheran
missions at Teller, Igloo, Shishmaref, and Sitka.
300 L U T H E R A N QUARTERLY

So here I was, supposedly only a nurse by profession, but later finding myself
preaching, teaching, baptizing, even giving communion privately, when we had
no pastor. The day also came when I was given a license to perform marriages.
Many times I felt very inadequate, but when there was no one else to do it, I did
what had to be done. With God all things are possible if we are in His will.15

Susan Tjornehoj has commented that "Helen Frost was only one
of the women preaching and leading worship long before Lutheran
churches (ALC) voted to ordain women in 1970."16 After she retired
in 1961, Frost moved to California and wrote her memoirs in 1969
about her life in Alaska. Published as Frost Among the Eskimos in 2001,
her reminiscences mainly focus on describing the type of work she
was engaged in, her exterior life, with little background information
or details about her interior life. Although she talks about her service
among the Inupiaq, there was not much about her relationships
with them. Unfortunately for the historian, she did not leave behind
an abundance of additional written documents, although this is not
too surprising given her heavy workload.

N o scholar has all the evidence that he or she would like for solving the
conundrums of mission history. The data are always fragmentary . . . the archives
are not only incomplete but skewed . . . missiologists working today who
specialize in the history of mission are challenged as scholars by the fact that
foreign missionaries dominate the accumulated reserve of texts at our disposal.17

Frost s archives certainly reflect this fact as to written evidence.

However, she did leave behind many photographs.

Frost's Photographs

Historians are recognizing that photographic records are significant

and may be used as a source to explore mission history. Traditionally,
scholars have held a bias for written sources, yet in recent decades
other overlooked primary texts, such as scrapbooks, have provided
historical evidence. "Snapshots are paradigmatic historical documents
precisely insofar as they are inherendy partial (meaning both slanted
and fragmentary); as such, they call for creative reconstructive labor
on the part of the historians."18 Historian Nell Irvin Painter has
encouraged biographers to utilize photographs to explore a subject's
 HELEN C. FROST'S MISSIONARY IMAGES 301

life. "We need to separate the insight from scholarship's bias against
images and in favor of words. We need to recognize what can be
learned from images in historical space . . . biographers can also use
images to explore their subjects and their subjects' cultural milieux."19
In analyzing photographic evidence, it is important for historians to
understand that the images held some type of personal relevance to
the photographer.

As individual creators produce these artifacts, they remake themselves as they work
out ideal, alternative or potentially trasgressive identities. Omissions are crucial.
The process of forgetting—that is, editing the extraneous or the unwanted, first
through photography and again through album-making—begets a remembered
self. Once it is complete, an album's narrative function achieves primacy. It
becomes a record, destined to be replayed as a special chapter in one's life story.20

Skreslet has emphasized that "other forms of nonliterary self-

representation are among the means available to scholars to recover
more of what may otherwise be missing from what we know of the
history of mission."21 Thus Helen Frost's photographs can be used to
gain a greater understanding of her Lutheran mission.
Frost's photographs reflect her singular focus upon missionary
work. In the Region 3 Archives of the Evangelical Lutheran Church
in America, five large photo albums survive with approximately 100
photographs in each, along with many loose photographs and slides,
and two home movies. O n the ELCA website, the "Daughters of the
Reformation" fundraising film (ShishmareJ) also features Frost. These
images date from the 1930s through the early 1960s, although there
are far fewer photos from her time in Sitka just prior to her retire-
ment. Most of the photographs lack labels and have no particular
arrangement, except for two of the albums, one from the 1930s, with
images from Igloo and Wittenberg, Wisconsin, and one from the
early 1950s when Frost served in Shishmaref.22 Some of these
photographs Frost displayed during her fundraising tours, but there
were also pictures from her personal scrapbooks in the archives. Frost
often projected the slides that she had developed as an important
part of church programs for the Inupiaq.23 She would also show
these photos as part of her outreach. For example, when she was
serving in Sitka she would often visit the hospital.
302 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

One week I showed my Eskimo movies to the T.B. patients in the different
sections. Later a nurse in the occupational therapy department asked if I would
show them to a group of children. "Please show especially those of the children
playing in the snow, the dog teams and ice skating." I did and it was surprising
how quietly the patients sat, looking and listening. Another time the nurse and
staff asked if they could see the pictures. So I felt I was making good use of my
far-north pictures, even in Sitka.24

The majority of Frost's photographic images, whether for public

or private use, were focused upon daily life in Alaska and the Inupiaq
people. Niece Helen Frost Thompson recalled that "She was a
photographer—she took lots of pictures. She also loved going around
in her boat. She was very outdoorsy I think that is why she loved
Alaska so much. Her main hobby was definitely photography" 25 In
many ways, Frost's photographs inadvertently provide an ethno-
graphic record of this indigenous nation and her relationship with this
group. (See photograph #i.)

#1 Elizabeth Facktuo and Helen Frost

 HELEN C. FROST'S MISSIONARY IMAGES 303

The Inupiaq people have lived in Alaska for approximately 10,000

years,26 adapting to the difficult environment and terrain. The basic
social unit was the nuclear family with help from extended kinship
groups in order to have allies in the struggle for survival. Hunting,
fishing, and gathering of wild plants, like berries, sorrel, and scurvy
grass provided sustenance for the people. Women's work primarily
consisted of cooking, making clothing, gathering plants, and taking
care of the children.27 Residency was influenced by the seasonal
pattern of their food sources, which also led to the wide variety of
housing styles, for example, living in seal-skin tents during summer
encampment and in snow houses during the winter camp.28 "By 1910,
the traditional Inupiaq nations had ceased to exist as autonomous
social systems. The Inupiaq people survived, but they were beginning
the long process of colonization by the United States."29 By analyzing
Frost's photographs, it is possible to explore some of the interactions
between this one missionary and the Inupiaq. For Frost, "Alaska is
my home; the Eskimos my people,"30 and the photos show that this
was not a one-way street. Skreslet has noted that there is often "the
misconception that mission history is an unvarying story of mission-
ary initiative followed by indigenous response; . . . a missiological
perspective on the history of mission must be broader."31
Frost readily adapted to Inupiaq clothing. There are many images
of Frost dressed in the traditional style, especially during the
wintertime. She recalled, "some time later I had the thrill with the
temperature of 30 or 40 degrees below zero. But with a fur parka, fur
pants, fur cap and mittens, home-knit stockings, woolen underwear
and shirt, together with for mukluks up to my knees, I was warm and
comfortable."32 As the above passage indicated, the main motivation
for adapting some indigenous dress was for comfort and survival in
the extreme temperatures. In contrast, there are a few photos of
Frost dressed as a Winnebago when she served at Wittenburg Indian
School in Wisconsin, but this was not her regular dress during her
three years as a missionary there. Instead she dressed as a Winnebago
during special school programs, such as for Thanksgiving. One of
the main reasons for this difference was due to the environment.
Trott describes it: "missionaries came to realize through their own
experience that Western woolen clothing is useless in the Arctic
304 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

context and that, indeed, Inuit skin clothing is much more

effective."33
Frost also adapted Inupiaq methods of food production and
preparation in her daily life. There are countless images of Frost with
the Inupiaq harvesting and preparing various food sources. There
are images of fish and seal processing, as well as berry collecting.
Frost did not discourage the traditional diet; she learned to cook
various Alaskan recipes and even helped create an Eskimo cookbook
for the Teller school. The proceeds from the sale of this book went
to the school.'4 Frost loved salmon35 and especially looked forward to
berry picking season.36 At times she went fishing and utilized seal
pokes (skins) to store food.37 (See photograph #2.) She also prepared
foods from her own culinary heritage. One particularly popular
food that Frost would make the Inupiaq was the doughnut.

#2 Filling Seal Pokes

 H E L E N C. F R O S T ' S M I S S I O N A R Y IMAGES 305

Yesterday morning I got up bright and early because I wanted to make some
doughnuts for the mens meeting in the evening and also for the women's
meeting next Friday p.m. So I made about 100 doughnuts and put some of them
out to freeze. In this way, I can keep them fresh, just taking in those wanted,
heating and dipping in sugar. Then they are just like fresh. So that's what I served
the men last night, besides coffee and a Jersey cream with jam 0η. 3 8

For church events, there was typically a mixture of traditional

foods and foods from the "lower 48." Frost would not have dreamed
of replacing the traditional foods, because the Inupiaq liked them. 3 9
For example, Frost described one Easter meal:

Dinner was served to all present. The natives had brought some cooked fish,
rabbit meat, and frozen berries. Reindeer meat has been very scarce this year,
so there was none of that. Then I brought bread, cupcakes, cookies, and a
ketde of beans, some fruit pudding and cocoa. The store furnished the coffee.
Everybody was happy and felt that they had a nice dinner. 40

There was a lively intercultural exchange of food traditions

between Frost and the Inupiaq. There are home movies where Frost
proudly picked berries, and numerous photographs of drying fish
and seal pokes.
Frost also adjusted to Inupiaq transportation technology for her
mission. When first in Alaska, she often went from place to place by
kayak or dog sled. This was typical among most missionaries in
Alaska. Trott relates that, "northern travelers, including missionaries,
quickly adopted Inuit technology as being far more effective given
the environmental conditions."41 As time progressed Frost, as well as
the Inupiaq, adopted new modes of conveyance, such as the airplane
or motorboat, although these methods were not always as reliable.
Frost once described to her brother a common problem, namely,
breakdowns. (See photograph #3.)

I got one of the native men to go with me in our boat and my motor (4 HP).
Everything went fine until we were on our way back. We have a large lake 15
miles across which we had to cross and sometimes it can be very treacherous
in storms.We were halfway across the lake when we heard a click and a bang.
The shaft of the motor had broken. The only thing we could do then was to
row, but by this time it was beginning to blow again. We started to row for
3θ6 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

#3 (Boat)

shelter and had gone about 2 miles when we heard a motor. Three of our
Igloo boys were going up the river so they came and towed us into shelter, but
of course they did not like to leave us there. It was too stormy to do anything
then, so they waited around for a while, made some coffee and by that time it
started to calm and they decided to take us to the end of the lake which was a
great help. From there we rowed for about five miles more and then another
boat took us the rest of the way . .. however there was not shaft to be gotten
in Teller and it had to be ordered, so I guess I'll not have a chance to use my
motor again this year perhaps. 42

There was also a partial appropriation by Frost of residing in

traditional housing styles. Frost primarily lived at the missions where
she served or nearby them in a small wooden framed house. However,
when she traveled to visit with Inupiaq families she stayed with
them in their traditional homes. 43 During the summer months she
traveled from fishing camp to fishing camp and lived like the Inupiaq,
in a tent. She took photos of both the summer homes, as well as the
winter homes. For example, near one image she noted in her
scrapbook, "a winter Eskimo home in the wintertime, when it is
covered with snow is barely visible except for a smoke stack." It was
not unusual for missionaries to take photos of this unique type of
housing; what is unusual is that Frost also took photos of the Inupiaq
 H E L E N C. F R O S T ' S M I S S I O N A R Y IMAGES 307

at their summer homes. (See photograph #4.) Unlike other mission-

aries Frost showed Inupiaq life as multi-faceted and diverse.

#4 Coffee in the Open

Okpowruks

One area where there was a lack of adaptation by Frost was

linguistics; she never learned much of the Inupiaq language. She
learned a few words and phrases such as oogruk (sea lion) and
mukluks (shoes),44 but she primarily had to rely on interpreters45 to
communicate with many Inupiaq people. For example, in a letter
from 1954 she wrote, "then this evening we have our mid-week
meeting. One of the Eskimo men will be leading the meeting,
talking in Eskimo, announcing songs, then prayers by the natives
3θ8 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

themselves in the Eskimo language." 46 One possible reason for the

lack of language acquisition by Frost, who was at least nominally
bilingual prior to moving to Alaska (she was taught some Norwegian
by her father)/ 7 could be the complexity of the language group.
Garbarino and Sasso note that it "has been classified with languages
spoken in northeastern Siberia—Chukchi, Kamchadal, and other
tongues—as belonging to the Paleo-Siberian linguistic phylum. It
bears no resemblance to American Indian languages, and is the only
North American language group that shows clear linguistic ties to
any Old World tongue." 48 There is also a possibility, with the speaking
of English by the younger generation (see photograph #5) and the
use of translators for the older generation, that Frost believed it was
not necessary to become fluent in the language.

#5 Children With Dolls

The final area with little cultural interchange was between

traditional religious beliefs and Christianity. This is reflected in that
she had no photos of shaman in her albums. According to Trott, this
was an image that many other missionaries had in their collections.
"In their representation of the angakkut (shaman), the missionaries
depicted wild-looking people, with long unkempt hair and a startling
 H E L E N C. F R O S T ' S M I S S I O N A R Y IMAGES 309

look in the eyes. The opposition was represented as devilish, within

Western conceptions of the devil, despite the fact that most angakkut
were indistinguishable from their fellows in everyday life."49 Frost
knew of the existence of shaman,50 yet in her photographs she
depicts the Inupiaq as Christianized. For example, there are images
of Inupiaq children in the nativity play for their Christmas programs
and attending confirmation class. (See photograph #6.)

#6 Confirmation Class

These types of portrayals were more accurate for the majority of

Inupiaq, because most readily adopted Christianity.51 In the film
Shishmaref, Frost was also seen leading a worship service with many
Inupiaq taking part.52 In her early years as a missionary Frost did
seem to describe the Inupiaq as heathens, and thus needing mission-
ary help. In her fundraising article, A Trip to Alaska, she wrote,

With God's help, who is using the D O R [Daughters of the Reformation] as an

instrument in His Hand, we are hoping that this year, the wishes of these natives
may be granted. There are over 200 people waiting to hear that Gospel, which
means so much to our happiness.You have all heard it. Are you going to be so
selfish, as to keep it to yourself? Won't you please share your joy with these
people by helping to make the beginning of this station, a possibility in 1929?53
310 LUTHERAN QUARTERLY

By at least the 1950s Frost referred to the Inupiaq as being Christian,

for example, in the magazine, Lutheran Youth, "they take part in the
service, sing in the choir, and go regularly to Holy Communion." 54
Frost did not seem to need to justify her missionary service at this
point in her career. It is telling that at this time some authors were still
portraying the Inupiaq as "primitive others." For example, in a study
for the Board of Charities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Dr.
Henriette Lund reported that, "it is hard to know whether evil spirits
of the past still plague them. Here and there one catches glimpses of
the strong hold of paganism on even the Christian Eskimo."55 The
photographs that Frost took did not support this view.

Conclusion

In his analysis of Anglican missionary photographs of the Inuit,

Christopher Trott noted that this indigenous group has often been
portrayed as the "primitive other." In contrast, Helen Frost in her
body of photographic work represented the Inupiaq as being part of
her family, as brothers and sisters in Christ. Her images show a
respect and love of this Alaskan culture, a culture that she adopted
in many ways as her own. This is apparent in her acceptance of
Inupiaq food ways, transportation, housing, and community life.
Frost's photographs also raise questions in the history of missions,
Lutheran or otherwise, and reveal the complexity of interactions
between missionaries and those they served. There is much work to
be done in reviewing missionary photographs, yet a tentative
conclusion can be offered. In contrast to those in Trott's study, it
appears that Frost was unusual in the degree of her acceptance of
indigenous culture. It is probable that various elements—such as
Frost's years of uninterrupted contact, the relative isolation from
other missionaries, and her own personality—all worked together
to create such close relations with the Inupiaq. As she said, "I love
the Eskimo people, and I doubt that I could ever be happy anywhere
else but working for and among them in some way."56 It is very
possible to see this merely by looking at one of her photographs.
(See photograph #7.)
 H E L E N C. F R O S T ' S M I S S I O N A R Y IMAGES

#7 Mother & Child

NOTES

i. J.C.K. Preus, ed., Norsemen Found a Church.An Old Heritage in a New Land (Min-
neapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1953), 371. (To be cited as Preus, Norsemen.)
2. L. DeAne Lagerquist, From Our Mother's Arms: A History of Women in the American
Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1987), 32.
3. Preus, 373-374·
4. L. DeAne Lagerquist, In America the Men Milk the Cows: Factors of Gender, Ethnic-
ity, and Religion in the Americanization of Norwegian—American Women (Brooklyn: Carlson,
1991). 54· (To be cited as Lagerquist, In America.)
5. Lagerquist, In America, 50.
6. Lagerquist, In America, 52.
7. Martha Reishus, Hearts and Hands Uplifted: A History of the Women's Missionary
Federation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House,
1958), 43-
8. Colin F. Taylor and William Sturtevant, The Native Americans: The Indigenous
People of North America (London: Salamander Books, 1996), 411.
9. J.L. Maakestad, ed., The Lutheran Church in Alaska (Alaska: Ken's Print Shop,
1978), 3·
10 Ross Hidy, ed., Frost Among the Eskimos: The Memoirs of Helen Frost Missionary in
Alaska 1926-1961 (Concord: Lutheran Pioneer Press, 2001), prologue. (To be cited as Memoirs.)
11. Lagerquist, In America, 186.
12. Lagerquist, In America, 187.
13. Memoirs,/^.
312 L U T H E R A N QUARTERLY

14. Memoirs, 5.
15. Memoirs, 11.
16. Susan Tjornehoj, "Helen Frost," Lutheran Woman Today (April, 1990): 35.
17 Stanley Skreslet, "Thinking Missiologically about the History of Mission," Inter-
national Bulletin of Missionary Research 31.2 (April, 2007): 59-64. (To be cited as Skreslet,
"Thinking Missiologically")
18. Joel Smith, "Roll Over: The Snapshots Museum Afterlife" Afterimage 29:2
(Sept./Oct. 2001): 8-11.
19. Nell Irvin Painter, "Ut Pictura Poesis; or the Sisterhood of the Verbal and Visual
Arts," Writing Biography. Historians and their Craft, Lloyd Ambrosius, ed (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2004), 104.
20 Catherine Whalen,"Finding Me," Afterimage 29:6 (May/June 2002): 16-17.
21. Skreslet, "Thinking Missiologically," 59-64.
22. Memoirs, 169
23. Helen Frost, Igloo, to Mrs. Stoctroen 3 January 1949. ELCA Region 3 Archives,
St. Paul, Minnesota
24. Memoirs, 144-145
25. Helen Frost Thompson, interview by author, tape recording, Ft. Wayne, IN, 10
July 2006
26. Colin Taylor, ed., The Native Americans· The Indigenous People of North America
(NewYork. Salamander Books, 1991), 204
27. Merwyn Garbarmo and Robert Sasso, Native American Heritage (Prospect
Heights, IL. Waveland Press, 1994), 119. (To be cited as Garbarmo and Sasso, Heritage.)
28. Ernest Burch, Social Life in Northwest Alaska The Structure of the Inupiaq Eskimo
Nations (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2006), 215 (To be cited as Burch, Social
Life.)
29 Burch, Social Life 12
30. Memoirs, prologue by Hidy.
31 Skreslet, "Thinking Missiologically," 59—64.
32. Memoirs, 12.
33. Christopher Trott, "The Dialectics of 'Us' and 'Other'. Anghcan Missionary
Photographs of the Inuit," American Review of Canadian Studies (Spring/Summer 2001): 171.
(To be cited as Trott, "Dialectics ")
34. Memoirs, i n
35 Memoirs, 16.
36. Helen Frost, Teller, to Reuben Frost, 1 August 1939. Private collection of Helen
Thompson Frost.
37 Memoirs, 14.
38. Helen Frost, Shishmaref, 9 February 1954. ELCA Region 3 Archives, St. Paul,
Minnesota.
39. Memoirs, 13.
40. Helen Frost, Igloo, to WMF and LDR Minneapolis, 5 April 1945. ELCA Region
3 Archives, St. Paul, Minnesota.
41. Trott, "Dialectics," 171
42. Helen Frost,Teller, to Reuben Frost, 1 August 1939. Private collection of Helen
Thompson Frost.
43. Memoirs, 27.
 H E L E N C. F R O S T ' S M I S S I O N A R Y IMAGES 313

44. Memoirs, 27.

45. Memoirs, 10.
46. Helen Frost, Shishmaref, 9 February 1954. ELCA Region 3 Archives, St. Paul,
Minnesota.
47. Memoirs, 4.
48. Garbarino and Sasso, Heritage, 105-106.
49. Trott, "Dialectics," 171.
50. Memoirs, 64.
51. Trott, "Dialectics," 171.
52. Tex Zeigler, producer. ShishmarefDOK film, circa 1952. Accessed at: www.elca.
org/archives/film/shishmaref.html.
53. Helen Frost,"A Trip to Alaska," The Friend (August, 1929), 21.
54. Helen Frost,"Alaska.. .the State of," LutheranYouth (August 2,1959), 14.
55. Henriette Lund, "Lutheran Eskimo Missions in Alaska Report on a Study,"
Board of Charities of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. October-November 1959, p. 2.
ELCA Region 3 Archives, St. Paul, Minnesota.
56. Helen Frost, Shisfmaref, 9 February 1954. ELCA Region 3 Archives, St. Paul,
Minnesota.
 ^ s
Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use
according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as
otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement.

No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the
copyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling,
reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a
violation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission
from the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However,
for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article.
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific
work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the
copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available,
or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s).

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously

published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association
(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American
Theological Library Association.