JUNEAU — Richard Dauenhauer, an expert on Tlingit lore and language and a former Alaska poet laureate, has died.
Dauenhauer, 72, died Tuesday of cancer, the Juneau Empire reported.
Dauenhauer is survived by his wife, Nora Marks Dauenhauer, with whom he collaborated on many of his projects as a translator, scholar and historian.
His contributions to Tlingit culture are immeasurable and future generations will benefit from the decades of scholarly work he pursued with his wife, Sealaska Heritage Institute executive director Rosita Worl told the newspaper in an email.
“He brought to life the words and wisdom of our ancestors that otherwise might have passed into oblivion but for his persistence in collecting the stories and his ability to transcribe, translate and publish the oral traditions of our ancestors,” Worl wrote.
Richard Dauenhauer worked for the institute in the 1980s and 1990s before becoming the University of Alaska Southeast president’s professor of Alaska Native languages. He served as the state’s poet laureate between 1981 and 1985.
Lance Twitchell, who heads the UAS Native languages and culture program, said the Dauenhauers’ materials are used to teach in the program. Twitchell said he was able to tell Richard Dauenhauer a month ago that the work he did changed his life, making him aware of what he wanted to do.
“A bunch of us are trying to pick up these pieces and stand in these monumental footprints, to figure out how we can also be these movers and shakers,” Twitchell said.
Richard Dauenhauer was born in 1942 in Syracuse, New York, and moved to Alaska in the late 1960s. He earned degrees in Russian, Slavic and German languages.
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