Angeline Derendoff's Slideshow

Angeline Derendoff was a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Huslia, Alaska. She was born in 1912 to Happy John Issac and Cecelia Happy, and grew up around Hughes and Hog River. Her family spent summers on the Yukon River, where she remembers going to Nulato. She spent many of her younger years in Cutoff, which her father helped found, before the residents relocated to Huslia in the 1950s due to flooding, because it was on higher ground and they could have a school there for their children. Angeline had a deformed leg since childhood, but she learned to live with her disability and find new ways of doing things. Her disability could not be an excuse for not doing those tasks necessary to get along and make a living. She had to learn ways of doing things, even if they took longer or required her to improvise. She married Richard Derendoff when she was twenty-seven years old.