Savoonga was a Yup'ik Eskimo village forty miles from Russia on the northern Bering Sea.
Alowa developed well-known skills as a traditional skin sewer and doll making artist.
[1] A U.S. military Air Force base was started in 1952 on St Lawrence Island at Northeast Cape.
Before telephone services reached St. Lawrence Island, health aides and village healers worked on their own knowledge and training as midwives and first responders, including tuberculosis and injuries.
Over the next three decades, Alowa noticed the health problems which she suspected were associated the hazardous material wastes from the military base.
Cancer occurred in several people for the first time, as well as increases in miscarriages and low-birth weight infants.
Alowa continually sought government assistance and hearings to advocate for cleanup of the base on the island, but with no success until 1997 when she met Pamela Miller.
[1] Alowa died of liver cancer, that may have been caused from the hunting and fishing in the area affected by the military bases toxins in Northeast Cape.
In the spring of that year, filmmaker Jean Riordan created a documentary of Alowa's interviews named with her quote, "I Will Fight Until I Melt (whanga pillugaghlleqaqa kenlanga ughullemnun)".
[5] Alowa was inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame in 2016 due to her large involvement of the environmental and health care in St. Lawrence Island.