(Courtesy of Sealaska Heritage Institute)

Richard L. Dauenhauer (1942-2014) was born in Syracuse, New York and is remembered an American poet and translator who married into, and became an expert on, the Tlingit nation of southeastern Alaska. He married Tlingit poet and scholar Nora Marks Dauenhauer. Richard, who went by Dick, held a B.A. in Russian and Slavic languages from Syracuse University, a M.A. in German from the University of Texas, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin--Madison, with his dissertation titled “Text and Context of Tlingit Oral Tradition.” He studied in Finland under a Fulbright Fellowship in 1966-1967, before coming to Alaska in the late 1960s to teach at Alaska Methodist University.

He was an author and poet and published several volumes of poetry as well as translations of poetry from languages including German, Russian, Finnish, and classical Greek. In 1981, he was named to a four-year term as Poet Laureate of Alaska. In the most recent decades Dauenhauer’s work focused on the Tlingit of Southeast Alaska. He worked for the Sealaska Heritage Institute during the 1980s and 1990s, before moving to University of Alaska Southeast, where he became President's Professor of Alaska Native Languages. The author of numerous articles and book chapters, together the Richard Dauenhauer and his wife Nora Marks Dauenhauer were also the author-editors of the Sealaska Heritage Institute’s highly regarded Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature series, titles which include, Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives (1987), Haa Tuwanáagu Yís, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory (1992), Haa Kusteeyí, Our Culture: Tlingit Life Stories. (1994), and Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká: Russians in Tlingit America, The Battles of Sitka 1802 and 1804 (2008).

Nora Marks Dauenhauer (b. 1927) (Tlingit name is Keixhwnéi) is an American poet, short-story writer, and a scholar of the language and culture of the Tlingit Indians of Southeast Alaska. Nora Marks herself is Tlingit, and was born May 8, 1927, the first of sixteen children of Lukaaxh.ádi clan, Shaka Hít (Canoe Prow House) woman Emma Marks (1913-2006) of Yakutat, Alaska, and Willie Marks (1902-1981), a Chookaneidí clan Tlingit from Douglas, Alaska. Emma's maternal grandfather had been Frank Italio (1870-1956), an informant to the anthropologist Frederica de Laguna whose knowledge was incorporated into De Laguna's 1972 ethnography of the northern Tlingit, Under Mount St. Elias. In circa 1972 Nora was selected and endorsed by Tlingit elders to document the Tlingit culture, and since that time Nora collected recordings and interviewed Tlingit elders. Nora earned a degree in anthropology and, with her husband Richard Dauenhauer, a poet and translator, she has authored numerous articles and also co-edited the Sealaska Heritage Institute's highly regarded four volume Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature series, titles which includes, Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives (1987), Haa Tuwanáagu Yís, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory (1992), Haa Kusteeyí, Our Culture: Tlingit Life Stories. (1994), and Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká: Russians in Tlingit America, The Battles of Sitka 1802 and 1804 (2009). Nora was named the 1980 Humanist of the Year by the Alaska Humanities Forum. Her other awards include the Alaska Governor’s Award for the Arts, an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation, and the 2005 Community Spirit Award from the First People’s Fund.