Submission declined on 1 May 2026 by HitroMilanese (talk). This draft is not adequately supported by reliable sources. Wikipedia's verifiability policy requires that all content be supported by reliable sources. Reliable sources include: reputable newspapers, magazines, academic journals, and books from respected publishers. Unacceptable sources include: personal blogs, social media, predatory publishers, most tabloids, and websites where anyone can contribute. Replace any unreliable sources with high-quality sources. If you cannot find a reliable source for the material, it should be removed. If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted. If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Declined by HitroMilanese 37 days ago. Last edited by HitroMilanese 37 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author. Resubmit Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be declined again.

• Comment: Largely unsourced. Please see WP:V. Hitro talk 10:17, 1 May 2026 (UTC)

Meda Marie DeWitt (Tlingit: Tśa Tsée Naakw, Khaat kła.at, Jánwu Tláa (Mother of the Mountain GOATS); born 1980) is a Lingít (Tlingit) traditional healer, ethno-herbalist, conservation manager, and political organizer from Alaska. She serves as board chair and president of Yak-Tat Kwáan, Inc., the Alaska Native village corporation for Yakutat, and previously held a senior management role at The Wilderness Society focused on Alaska conservation and Indigenous-led stewardship. She came to statewide prominence as chair of Recall Dunleavy, the 2019–2021 grassroots campaign to recall Governor Mike Dunleavy, and as curator of Good Medicine, an exhibition of Alaska Native healing traditions at the Anchorage Museum.

In February 2026, DeWitt filed as an Independent candidate in the 2026 Alaska gubernatorial election, becoming the seventeenth person to enter the race.

DeWitt was born in 1980 at Alicia Roberts' home on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. She is an enrolled tribal member of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and a shareholder of Sealaska and Yak-Tat Kwáan, Inc. Her clan is Naanya.aayí, of the Eagle (Wolf) moiety, with the white grizzly bear (great white grizzly bear out of the north) as the primary crest; she is a child of the Kaach.aadi clan and belongs to the X'atgu Hít, or Mud Shark House. Her ancestral homelands are Shtuxéen Kwáan (Wrangell) and Yaakwdaatkhwaan (Yakutat); her broader lineage extends to Tahltan Athabaskan relations in Telegraph Creek and Glenora, British Columbia, and to families in Oregon and Washington.

In addition to her Tlingit names, she was given the Iñupiaq name Tigigalook by elder Mary Ann Warden from Kaktovik and the Cree name Boss Eagle Spirit Woman, or "Boss," by Harry Watchmaker from Alberta, Canada.

DeWitt graduated from Bettye Davis East Anchorage High School in 1997. She subsequently earned an Associate of Science (2008, magna cum laude), an Associate of Applied Science in Human Services (2012, cum laude), and an Associate of Arts in Alaska Native Studies (2023, cum laude), all from the University of Alaska Anchorage. She received a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Alaska Pacific University in 2017, with a focus on Tlingit women's rites of passage, and a Master of Arts in Alaska Native traditional healing from the same institution in 2018. Her thesis, Narrative to Accompany the Traditional Healing Certification Proposal for Implementation at Alaska Pacific University, is held by ProQuest. She was named MAP Student of the Year for 2017–2019.

Since 2021, DeWitt has been enrolled in the Indigenous Studies doctoral program at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi in New Zealand. She also completed a 750-hour certification at Ahern's Massage Therapy School (2009 and 2014) covering aromatherapy, reiki, cupping, and related modalities, and apprenticed with elder and healer Dr. Rita Blumenstein, Meda's ordination as a traditional healer in November 2011, recognized since before birth from Alicia Roberts and local Elders, in childhood by Ralph Wiser II, Patricia Wiser, and Linda DeWitt, and later by Walter Porter, and other notable Elders and leaders.

During her studies at Alaska Pacific University, DeWitt was mentored in Alaska Native history, federal Indian law, and Indigenous advocacy by Iñupiaq attorney and APU faculty member Victoria Hykes-Steere, of Unalakleet, who holds a JD from the University of Iowa College of Law and a master's degree from the University of Washington School of Law concentrating on environment, natural resources, human rights, and public-lands law, and Hykes-Steere received the Alaska Conservation Foundation's 2013 Caleb Pungowiyi Award for her work advancing Alaska Native environmental justice. That mentorship informed DeWitt's subsequent research on Alaska Native land rights and sovereignty, the Doctrine of Discovery, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), federal Indian law, and international Indigenous-rights frameworks.

DeWitt practices and teaches Lingít traditional healing, ethno-herbalism, and ceremonial work grounded in Alaska Native knowledge systems. In 2023, she curated Good Medicine at the Anchorage Museum, an exhibition presenting work by Indigenous healers from across Alaska and framing traditional healing as a continuous practice that survived colonization, the early-twentieth-century epidemics known as "the Great Death," and the boarding school era. The show featured changing displays aligned with the lunar cycle, as well as workshops, story circles, and ceremonial programming. She has also collaborated with the Alaska Native Heritage Center on traditional foods camps and the design of an Indigenous demonstration garden organized around three concentric circles representing the living, natural, and spiritual realms.

From 2011 to 2015, and again from 2017 to 2018, DeWitt was a Program Associate in the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention division of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC). She organized and co-chaired the annual Alaskan Plants as Food and Medicine symposium from 2012 through 2015, an event that drew between 72 and 148 participants and reached more than 500 Alaskans through associated trainings each year. She co-developed and led the Women's Rites of Passage project, which integrated traditional maturation knowledge into public health programming. Her curriculum-development portfolio at ANTHC included content editing and contribution to the National Library of Medicine resource Selected Alaska Native Medicinal Plants: Applications, Wisdom and Cautions; the development of training materials and the delivery of statewide trainings, in coordination with the ANTHC Behavioral Health division, for Doorway to a Sacred Place: Restoring Community Wellness and Responding to Historical Trauma; and the co-development of curricula on Alaska Native digital storytelling, traditional food systems and the Store Outside Your Door initiative, maternal and child health, and culturally grounded prevention practices. As a master's-level practitioner, she also led plant walks and traditional healing sessions for the inaugural Alaska Indigenous Research Program, convened by ANTHC and Alaska Pacific University.

DeWitt has taught as an adjunct faculty member or contractor across the University of Alaska system since 2012, including at the University of Alaska Anchorage Center for Human Development and Trust Training Cooperative, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Southeast, and Alaska Pacific University. The continuing-education and academic courses she has developed and taught include Traditional Health-Based Practices; Behavioral Health and Traditional Alaska Native Healing Methods; Behavioral Health and Solastalgia; Behavioral Health and Climate Change; Behavioral Health and Healing from Trauma; BHS 375: Native American and Indigenous Ways of Healing (University of Alaska Southeast, Fall 2025); and World Religions: Shamanism (CS 20118 B01, Alaska Pacific University). Her Traditional Health-Based Practices offering is described by the UAA Trust Training Cooperative as the longest-running and most successful course in its continuing-education portfolio for licensed behavioral health professionals, supporting culturally responsive care, the ethical integration of traditional practices, and trauma-informed systems change.

In parallel with her institutional roles, DeWitt has worked as a traveling educator across rural and urban Alaska, leading workshops, ceremonies, and presentations on traditional plant knowledge, Alaska Native healing practices, climate change and adaptation, maternal and child health, and traditional food systems. Her statewide outreach has spanned tribal health programs, conservation convenings, museum public programming, and academic settings, reaching communities across all six regions of Alaska, as well as Yukon, other parts of Canada, and the contiguous United States. Topics she has presented on include Southeast Alaska traditional healing and plants as food and medicine, Alaska Native concepts of health and wellness, Indigenous food sovereignty, women's rites of passage and seclusion practices (sacred women's business), traditional child rearing practices, traditional governance and leadership, and community resilience in the face of environmental change.

DeWitt is the director and owner of Haa Jooní, LLC (also known as Haa Jooní Productions), an Indigenous-owned consulting and media-production firm she founded in 2016. Through Haa Jooní she delivers culturally grounded facilitation, conference and convening design, and end-to-end event management, including agenda development, speaker coordination, logistics, budgeting, and post-event reporting for institutional clients. The firm also provides videography, virtual programming, and storytelling services that translate Indigenous knowledge systems, health concepts, and climate topics into accessible educational, media, and programmatic formats. Her recorded media work has included a series of conversations and virtual exhibitions on women's rites of passage, men's roles in seclusion practices, intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge, traditional healing and coming of age, and leadership through a cultural lens.

Since 2024, DeWitt has also operated under Haa Jooní as a Qualified Expert Witness under the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and as a cultural expert on Alaska Native culture in state, federal, and tribal courts in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona.

DeWitt joined The Wilderness Society (TWS) on contract in 2020 and was a salaried employee from 2022 until 2026. As Senior Manager for Alaska, she provided leadership for TWS's Alaska-based work in climate solutions, connected landscapes, and community-led conservation. She co-founded the Imago Initiative, a multidisciplinary platform that convened Indigenous leaders, scientists, philanthropic funders, and federal and state agency staff to advance tribally led climate resilience and co-stewardship. Within Imago, she created the On the Land Healing Model, a place-based framework that integrates Alaska Native traditional healing, land-based ceremony, and intercultural dialogue with public-lands managers, and that has anchored Imago convenings held in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In 2023, DeWitt was elected board chair and president of Yak-Tat Kwáan, Inc., the Alaska Native village corporation for Yakutat, which manages roughly 23,000 acres of ancestral lands. She has led the corporation through a period of restructuring, including the management of multimillion-dollar liabilities and a stated transition away from extractive timber revenue toward diversified, sustainable economic development.

DeWitt is the chief executive of SANER (Sanctuary, Animism, Natural & Environmental Renewal), an Indigenous-led nonprofit she co-founded in 2008 and that was formally incorporated in April 2024. SANER supports the continuity, protection, and ethical practice of Indigenous healing traditions and is governed by an intergenerational council. The organization received seed funding from the Novo Foundation in fiscal years 2024 through 2026.

DeWitt is a co-founder of the affiliated organizations Alaskans Take a Stand (a 501(c)(3) education and capacity-building entity) and Stand Up Alaska (a 501(c)(4) advocacy entity), founded in 2019. Together, the organizations work on public health, climate, equity, and democratic engagement across rural and urban Alaska. Due to her entry into the gubernatorial race, she has stepped down from both boards to remove any conflicts of interest.

DeWitt served as chair of Recall Dunleavy, the statewide grassroots committee formed in July 2019 to recall Governor Mike Dunleavy following the governor's proposal of sweeping cuts to state programs, including reductions to the University of Alaska system, the Alaska Marine Highway, the Power Cost Equalization program, senior benefits, and the Alaska Pioneer Homes.

The recall committee initially submitted more than 49,000 signatures in September 2019. After the Alaska Division of Elections rejected the petition on the advice of Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, the committee prevailed in superior court and then before the Alaska Supreme Court, which in 2020 affirmed the petition's legal sufficiency. Signature gathering for the second phase, requiring 71,252 signatures, was disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. DeWitt led the committee's transition to a remote, mail-in signature-gathering model that became one of the first such efforts in the United States.

On August 25, 2021, the campaign ended with 62,373 signatures collected, approximately 9,000 short of the threshold to force a recall election. Announcing the wind-down in an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News, DeWitt argued that the campaign had served as a public-policy "firebreak" against the deepest of the proposed cuts. DeWitt has maintained that, although the petition did not advance to a statewide vote, the recall held Dunleavy in check across the remainder of his tenure by keeping the threat of removal as an ongoing political constraint. By early 2026, the Morning Consult quarterly governors' tracker placed Dunleavy at the bottom of all U.S. governors in approval, with a 37 percent approval and 49 percent disapproval rating, the lowest of any governor in the country.

On February 17, 2026, Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, DeWitt announced her candidacy for Governor of Alaska as an Independent and filed a letter of intent with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. She is one of two independents in a field of seventeen candidates and the only Alaska Native woman in the race at the time of filing. The campaign committee is registered as "Meda for Governor," with the public-facing campaign branded "Meda for Alaska."

DeWitt's campaign platform addresses economic diversification of the state's budget, holding industry accountable to pay their fair share of taxes and removing corporate welfare subsidies, climate adaptation (with attention to the roughly 141 Alaska communities facing climate-driven relocation), reform of North Pacific fisheries management, public-school and university funding, public safety, the future of the Alaska Marine Highway System, food security and import dependence, the Alaska Permanent Fund and dividend, data sovereignty, and protections under the Alaska Constitution's privacy and equal-protection clauses.

The August 18, 2026, nonpartisan blanket primary will advance the four highest-placing candidates to a ranked-choice general election on November 3, 2026.

• DeWitt, M. (2018). Traditional Health and Wellness Resources Guide. Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Office of Children's Services.
• DeWitt, M. (2019). Narrative to Accompany the Traditional Healing Certification Proposal for Implementation at Alaska Pacific University (MA thesis). Alaska Pacific University.
• Miller, E., DeWitt, M., & Dashevsky, J. (2022). "Relatives, Not Resources: Applying an Alaska Native Lens to Climate Sovereignty, Economic Justice, and Healing." Nonprofit Quarterly.
• DeWitt, M. (2017). "Store Outside Your Door: A Community-Based Initiative." In Wisdom Engaged: Traditional Knowledge and Northern Community Well-Being (Chapter 7). University of Alberta Press.
• DeWitt, M. (2022). "Establishing a Women's Rites of Passage." In Walking Together, Working Together: Engaging Wisdom for Indigenous Well-Being (Chapter 8).
• DeWitt, M. (curator) (2023). Good Medicine (exhibition). Anchorage Museum.
• DeWitt, M. (curator) (2020). Women's Rites of Passage and Seclusion Hut Virtual Exhibit. Anchorage Museum.

DeWitt resides in Anchorage, Alaska, on Dena'ina lands.