Alice Ambrose is a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Hughes, Alaska. She is the daughter of Susie Williams, a well known name in the Koyukon region.

Steven Attla, Sr. was a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Huslia, Alaska. He was born in 1924 near Hughes, Alaska, but his parents moved down to the Cutoff area when he was about three. He grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle living off the land; hunting, trapping, and fishing following the seasons to different camp locations. In 1944, he married Catherine Charlie, and they went right to spring camp. They settled at Cutoff, the old village site at the mouth of the Huslia River. In... Read More

Celia Beetus was a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Hughes, Alaska. She was born in 1922 to Annie and Jimmy Koyukuk at the mouth of the Alatna River at Allakaket, Alaska. She grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle moving from camp to camp with the seasons. Despite this seasonal lifestyle, Celia did attend the mission school in Allakaket for a while, and most of her summers were spent at the family's fish camp, ten miles below the village. In l938, when she was sixteen years old,... Read More

Lindberg Bergman is an Koyukon Athabascan elder from Allakaket, Alaska. He was born in 1929 and grew up living off the land and learning traditional skills. He is especially known for his boat building. He married his wife, Lydia in 1947, and they had eleven children. Like most Koyukuk River men of his generation, Lindberg worked away from home many summers when his kids were growing up. He worked at the Utopia mine, was an oiler on the dredge at Hog River, was a firefighter for the Bureau... Read More

Fred Lee Bifelt is Koyukon Athabascan from Huslia, Alaska. Born in 1958, he began his role as a community leader when he was still a relatively young man. He completed high school in Galena and attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks for a semester. Fred Lee's parents are Madeline and Cue Bifelt, and his grandfather is Fred Bifelt, one of the oldest elders in Huslia, [who is now deceased]. Fred Lee has served on the Board of Directors of Koyitlotsina Ltd., the village corporation created... Read More

Ross Brockman was a long time Wiseman resident who originally went there hoping the cold climate would help cure a lung ailment. He was an avid fiddler, writer, and gardener. Despite living in the Arctic, Ross was a vegetarian and maintained an extensive summer garden. In 1974, he even caught butterflies swarming around his garden for researchers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. In Wiseman, the story goes that at one point in time Ross Brockman would not speak to Harry Leonard, a local... Read More

Born in Seattle in 1930, Bill Brown was a long-time employee of the National Park Service, working in park planning, publication writing and editing, park management, and as regional historian. He came to Alaska in 1975 and was a member of the Park Service's Alaska Task Force that conducted research and worked with local people around Alaska to better understand the areas that were to become new national parks. He played an important role in planning for Yukon-Charley Rivers National... Read More

David David is a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Allakaket, Alaska. He was born in 1932 on the Upper Koyukuk River near South Fork, upriver from the village of Allakaket. His parents were Southfork David and Eva Adams of Stevens Village. The Allakaket community is basically made up of three groups. Two of these groups consist of Koyukon people, one from the Kanuti River and Allakaket areas and another from the region around the South Fork of the Koyukuk River. The Iñupiaq community of Alatna... Read More

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.... Read More

Originally from Seattle, Washington, Shirley English came to Alaska in 1945 as a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She married Bill English in 1948, who grew up in Wiseman, Alaska and made a living as a commercial pilot. As the wife of a pilot, she spent many hours waiting for her husband to come back home safely. For a number of years, Shirley wrote and edited news stories from around the Alaskan bush for the KFAR radio show, "Tundra Topics," while Bill flew in and out of those... Read More

Originally from Yonkers, New York, Clifford Robert "Cliff" Everts came to Alaska in 1943 as a pilot. He has been a major force in Alaska's aviation industry ever since. Much of his experience has been on the North Slope and in the Brooks Range. He flew for Wien Airlines and Arctic Contractors hauling supplies to Barrow and for the oil exploration program in the Naval Petroleum Reserve Alaska. He's also delivered supplies throughout the Brooks Range to places such as Chandler, Schrader, and... Read More

Lillian "Lill" Fickus was born in Arctic Village, Alaska and then moved to Fork Yukon when she was ten years old. Her father was from Old Crow and her mother from Arctic Village. She grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle where the family moved from camp to camp following the seasons. As a teenager, she went to school at Mt. Edgecumbe in Sitka and since she wanted to be a nurse she worked at the hospital in Fort Yukon in the summer. In 1959, she married Bill Fickus. In 1963, they... Read More

Millie Gray lives on the outskirts of Evansville. She and her husband have retired. Millie has a real love for history; she has old pictures of her father and grandfather, of her father's boats, of him making the boats, and of her mother. Millie's father Wilfred Joseph Evans was a trader on the river. Her mother was the daughter of Tobuk and Tinuk, Kobuk Eskimos from the Alatna. Millie's stepmother was Katherine Pitka, an Athabascan from Koyukuk Station. Millie's grandfather was also married... Read More

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Steve Grubis came to Alaska in the 1960s to teach on the Aleutian Islands. He has worked throughout Alaska in education. He then went on to live a subsistence-based lifestyle in a remote cabin in the Brooks Range. Steve met Kay when he hired her in 1983 to work on a project at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. At the time of his interview in 2003, Steve and Kay Grubis continued to live remotely and enjoy their wilderness lifestyle.

Born in Gibson, Illinois in 1917, Harmon "Bud" Helmericks is a well-known Alaskan pioneer, who was a bush pilot, adventurer, guide, businessman, and author. He came to Alaska with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, having studied engineering at the University of Arizona. He has a long history as a bush pilot in northern Alaska. He lived a remote lifestyle at Walker Lake in the Brooks Range and in the Colville River delta near the Beaufort Sea coast. For years, he kept... Read More

Marie Henzie is a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Allakaket, Alaska. She was born in 1933 to Frances Ned and Walter Koyukok, After her parents died when she was a child, Marie was raised by her mother's parents, Lilly and Ned Ned. Marie is married to Moses Henzie, and they have a son, Moses Jr., and a daughter Catherine Marie, adopted from Catherine and Stephen Attla in Huslia and several grandchildren. Marie was raised in a household that emphasized traditional skills such as sewing and... Read More

Originally from Pennsylvania, Susan Holly came to Alaska in 1978. In the 1980s, she and her husband, Tom, ran a trapline in the Talkeetna area. They moved to Bettles in 1985 in search of a more remote lifestyle. At the time of her 1992 interview, Susan Holly was working as a seasonal park ranger for Gates of the Arctic National Park stationed in Bettles. During the winter months, she and husband lived at their trapping cabin on the John River. Susan was able to combine summer work in the... Read More

Born in Illinois in 1923, John Kauffmann worked for the National Park Service for twenty years, six as chief planner for Alaska's Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve and Noatak National Preserve. As a park planner, he played a key role in the establishment of Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, assessing and recommending lands to be included in the new park, and determining what the boundaries and wilderness philosophy would be. He is the author of a book about the... Read More

Born in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1944, George Lounsbury spent twenty years mining on claims near Wiseman that he and his brother, Jim (Clutch) inherited from long-time Wiseman resident, Harry Leonard. George is an expert on Wiseman's history. George also possesses a large collection of historic photographs that originally belonged to Harry Leonard.

Elaine Meader McCausland was born in Massachusetts. She married her husband, Fred Meader, in 1954, who she met while attending nursing school in Boston. In the 1960s and 1970s, Elaine and Fred lived with their children at a remote lake in the Brooks Range. They lived a simple life and chose to live off the land as much as possible. After her son's tragic drowning at the lake and later her husband's accidental death, Elaine left Alaska, earned a PhD in psychology, and moved to northern... Read More

Justus Mekiana was a Nunamiut elder from Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska. Originally from the Killik River area, Justus was an expert in Nunamiut history and traditional culture, having grown up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle and moving from camp to camp following the seasons and the animals. He was present in 1949 when bands of nomadic Nunamiut living at Chandler Lake and the Killik River in the Brooks Range settled together in the newly established village of Ankatuvuk Pass. His... Read More

Originally from Rampart, Alaska, Renee Merry met Pete Merry in Petersburg, Alaska in the late 1940s, when she was down there working. They married, lived in Fairbanks, and together they raised a family.

Originally from North Dakota, Art Mortvedt came to Alaska in January 1974. He was a teacher in the village of Shungnak, Alaska, moved to living a subsistence lifestyle in a remote location in the Brooks Range, has been a pilot, guide, and dog musher, and at the time of his interview in 2002 was running the Peace of Selby Wilderness Lodge at Selby Lake in the Brooks Range. He met Demaris (Dee), his wife, while working at Jewel Cave National Monument in South Dakota, when she was on her way to... Read More

Bertha Moses was an Iñupiaq elder from Alatna and Allakaket, Alaska. She was born in 1930 in Alatna, the Iñupiaq (Eskimo) village directly across the Koyukuk River from Allakaket. Her parents were Cora Tobuk and Oscar Nictune. Her grandparents, Tiluq (or Dinook) and Tuvaq (or Tobuk) on her mother's side and Tikitchuak (or Dickachalk) and Niuqtuun (Nickdoon or Peter Nictune) on her father's side, who lived in Alatna and in camps on the Alatna River, were important to her growing up. In fact... Read More

Born in Illinois, Gil Mull came to Alaska in 1961 as a geologist working for Atlantic Richfield Corporation. Having been involved in early oil exploration on the North Slope and doing extensive geological mapping in the Brooks Range, Gil was an expert on Alaska's northern geologic history. In addition to working for the oil industry, Gil also worked for the US Geological Survey and the State of Alaska, Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, Division of Oil and Gas. He retired in... Read More

Born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1941, Richard Nelson received a Master's degree in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1971. He first came to Alaska in 1961 to do research on Kodiak Island. He was involved in some of the early studies that were used in developing subsistence policy for Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. Richard's involvement with Native communities on the North Slope and the... Read More

Wallace Nictune was an Inupiaq elder from Alatna, Alaska. Born in 1926, he grew up living a subsistence lifestyle based upon hunting, fishing and trapping. His father worked on boats hauling freight on the Koyukuk River. He married Florence and they raised eight children together. Wallace lived near Evansville, Alaska until he passed away in 1996.

Jim Pepper was born in Annapolis, Maryland and went to law school at Georgetown University. He began working for the National Park Service in the Division of Plans and Objectives in 1971. He worked for the National Park Service in Washington DC during the time of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which set aside over a 100 million acres of public lands in Alaska. He was very involved in land use policy, management, and legal issues related to Alaska's national parks. Jim... Read More

Born in 1947 in Patterson, New Jersey, Dick Ring got his education at Pennsylvania State University, University of Rhode Island, and George Washington University. He also served in the U.S. Army. He worked for the National Park Service for most of his career. In 1981, Dick became the first superintendent of the newly formed Gates of the Arctic National Park. After leaving Alaska, Dick was the superintendent at Delaware Water Gap National Park and Everglades National Park and . In 2000, he... Read More

Elma Sam is an Inupiaq elder from Alatna, Alaska. She is the eldest daughter of Oscar and Cora Tobuk Nictune. Her sisters include Ann Edwards, Kitty David, and Bertha Moses. Elma grew up living a subsistence lifestyle moving from camp to camp with the seasons and speaking her Native language. Her father and both sets of her grandparents had camps up the Alatna River. When her mother died in 1942, she and her siblings worked together to keep the family going while her father took a job with... Read More

Originally from California, Dennis Schmitt first came to Alaska in late summer 1965 as a volunteer with the OEO program, what eventually became the VISTA program, and was assigned to Anaktuvuk Pass. He got a bachelor's degree in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and studied linguistics with Noam Chomsky. Schmitt speaks ten languages, including Russian, Norwegian, Danish, and French. Given his aptitude for languages and previous experience in Alaska, at age 19, Schmitt... Read More

Lydia Simon was a Koyukon Athabascan from Huslia, Alaska. She was born in 1917 to Francis and Christine Olin. Her sister was Mary Vent. When she was only three days old, her parents gave her to Rose and Peter Kokrine who adopted her and took her to live with them in Old Kokrines. When she was six, her adoptive father became ill with TB and died. The next year her adoptive mother also become ill and died. For about a year she lived with her grandparents, Old Man Tom Marie and his wife. Then... Read More

Ted Swem was born in 1917 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and came to Alaska in 1962. Working for the National Park Service in Washington, D.C, Ted was key to development of new national park areas in Alaska in the 1970s. He was Chairman of the Alaska Planning Group for the Department of Interior, and his work set the stage for enactment of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA). Ted received his Bachelor of Science in Forestry from Iowa State University in Ames, and completed... Read More

Bobby Vent was a Koyukon Athabascan elder from Huslia, Alaska. He was born in October 1913, grew up near Anvik, and attended the Holy Cross Mission school in Holy Cross. He later moved to Huslia. Bobby was known as one of the original "Huslia Hustlers", a group of men from the Koyukuk River region who were quite successful at raising winning racing sled dogs. He ran dogs in the early Iditarod International Sled Dog Race and the North American Championship Sled Dog Race,and came in second in... Read More

Born in eastern Washington in 1920, Bonnie Wartes came to Alaska with her husband, Bill, who was the Presbyterian minister for the North Slope in the 1950's. They were based out of Barrow, Alaska, and Bill was the first minister to also be a pilot. In 1958, he worked with people in Anaktuvuk Pass to build their log church, later named "The Chapel in the Mountains." Bonnie helped Bill with his Presbyterian mission work while also raising a family in Barrow.

Susie Williams was an Koyukon Athabascan from Hughes, Alaska. She was born in October 1905 to Leon and Ida. Leon was a prominent member of the early Allakaket community that coalesced around the St.-John's-in-the-Wilderness Mission. He died when Susie was about nine years old, so Susie did not have as much chance to go to school as she would have liked. She had to stay home and take care of her younger sisters while her mother went out hunting and trapping to support the family. Susie grew... Read More