Born in 1922, Kenny Thomas Sr. has been a trapper, firefighter, road builder, river-freight hauler, and soldier. Today he is a respected elder and member of a northern Athabaskan tribal group residing in Tanacross, Alaska. As a song and dance leader for the Tanacross community, Thomas has been teaching village traditions at an annual culture camp for more than twenty years. Over a three-year period, folklorist Craig Mishler conducted a series of interviews with Thomas about his life experiences. Crow Is My Boss is the fascinating result of this collaboration. Written in a style that reflects the dialogue between Thomas and Mishler, Crow Is My Boss retains the authenticity of Thomas's voice, capturing his honesty and humor. Thomas reveals biographical details, performs and explains traditional folktales and the potlatch tradition, and discusses ghosts and medicine people. One folktale is presented in both English and Tanacross, Thomas's native language. A compelling personal story, Crow Is My Boss provides insight into the traditional and contemporary culture of Tanacross Athabaskans in Alaska.

Born in 1922, Kenny Thomas Sr. has been a trapper, firefighter, road builder, river-freight hauler, and soldier. Today he is a respected elder and member of a northern Athabaskan tribal group residing in Tanacross, Alaska. As a song and dance leader for the Tanacross community, Thomas has been teaching village traditions at an annual culture camp for more than twenty years. Over a three-year period, folklorist Craig Mishler conducted a series of interviews with Thomas about his life experiences. Crow Is My Boss is the fascinating result of this collaboration. Written in a style that reflects the dialogue between Thomas and Mishler, Crow Is My Boss retains the authenticity of Thomas's voice, capturing his honesty and humor. Thomas reveals biographical details, performs and explains traditional folktales and the potlatch tradition, and discusses ghosts and medicine people. One folktale is presented in both English and Tanacross, Thomas's native language.

The story of the Blind Man and the Loon is a living Native folktale about a blind man who is betrayed by his mother or wife but whose vision is magically restored by a kind loon. Variations of this tale are told by Native storytellers all across Alaska, arctic Canada, Greenland, the Northwest Coast, and even into the Great Basin and the Great Plains. As the story has traveled through cultures and ecosystems over many centuries, individual storytellers have added cultural and local ecological details to the tale, creating countless variations. In The Blind Man and the Loon: The Story of a Tale, folklorist Craig Mishler goes back to 1827, tracing the story's emergence across Greenland and North America in manuscripts, books, and in the visual arts and other media such as film, music, and dance theater. Examining and comparing the story's variants and permutations across cultures in detail, Mishler brings the individual storyteller into his analysis of how the tale changed over time, considering how storytellers and the oral tradition function within various societies. Two maps unequivocally demonstrate the routes the story has traveled. The result is a masterful compilation and analysis of Native oral traditions that sheds light on how folktales spread and are adapted by widely diverse cultures.

The upper Yukon River basin is one of the wildest, most beautiful, and coldest places on earth. The indigenous Han Indians, whose homeland straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, traveled this country as hunters and gatherers and found a way to survive in it that exemplifies their intelligence and tenacity. For Craig Mishler and Bill Simeone, the Han are not only an ethnic and linguistic group but a living community of individuals, and the authors write about them as people who spoke to them and touched them in a special way. The history of the upper Yukon valley from the earliest Western contact with the Han in the 1840s has been one of continuous change. As a result of the gold rush, the Han suddenly became homeless in their own homeland. This book tells the story of the displacement and of current efforts by the Han to reclaim their lands and restore a vibrant way of life. In-depth profiles of Chief Isaac, Chief Charley, and others illustrate the critical importance of traditional leadership in stressful times. Mishler and Simeone have carefully researched and compiled new information from historic records, adding their own, firsthand field observations and oral interviews with elders during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. They present detailed historical data on the fur trade, missionization, and the gold rush, as well as an analysis of Han social structure, settlement patterns, religion, subsistence, and expressive culture. The final chapter illustrates contemporary life in Eagle Village with two vivid "ethnographic snapshots"--a Christmas eve dance in 1972 and a long summer day in 1997. Appendices include a methodological essay, a historic chronology, rules for Han card games, andgenealogies for many Han families. As a model of innovative ethnographic and ethnohistorical work, Han, People of the River makes and important contribution to anthropological and indigenous studies literature. As a vivid and deeply thoughtful depiction of the past, present, and future of the Han, it is meant for all Alaskans and everyone who cares about Alaska history and Alaska Native peoples.