Nora Marks Dauenhauer

Nora Dauenhauer in 2011.

Nora Marks Dauenhauer (born May 8, 1927) is an American poet and short-story writer and a scholar of the language and traditions of the Tlingit aboriginal nation in Alaska, of which she is a member. She won an American Book Award for Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 And 1804.

Life

Nora Marks was born May 8, 1927, the first of sixteen children of Emma Marks (1913–2006) of Yakutat, Alaska, and Willie Marks (1902–1981), a Tlingit from Hoonah, Alaska. Nora's Tlingit name at birth was Keix̱wnéi. Following her mother in the Tlingit matrilineal system, she is a member of the Raven moiety of the Tlingit nation, of the Lukaax̱.ádi clan, and of the Shaka Hít or Canoe Prow House, from Alsek River. 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.

She earned a degree in anthropology and, with her husband Richard Dauenhauer, a poet and translator, she has co-edited the Sealaska Heritage Foundation's highly regarded Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature series.

Works

• (1983) "Egg Boat." In: Earth Power Coming: Short Fiction in Native American Literature, ed. by Simon J. Ortiz, pp. 155–161. Tsaile: Navajo Community College Press.
• (1986) "Context and Display in Northwest Coast Art." New Scholar, vol. 10, pp. 419–432.
• (1988) The Droning Shaman: Poems by Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Haines: The Black Current Press
• (1990) "The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804, from the Tlingit, Russian, and Other Points of View." In: Russia in North America, ed. by Richard Pierce, pp. 6–24. Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press.
• (with Richard Dauenhauer) (eds.) (1981) "Because We Cherish You ...": Sealaska Elders Speak to the Future. Juneau: Sealaska Heritage Foundation.
• (with Richard Dauenhauer) (eds.) (1987) Haa Shuká, Our Ancestors: Tlingit Oral Narratives. (Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature, vol. 1.) Seattle: University of Washington Press.
• (with Richard Dauenhauer) (eds.) (1990) Haa Tuwanáagu Yís, for Healing Our Spirit: Tlingit Oratory. (Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature, vol. 2.) Seattle: University of Washington Press.
• (with Richard Dauenhauer) (eds.) (1994) Haa Kusteeyí, Our Culture: Tlingit Life Stories. (Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature, vol. 3.) Seattle: University of Washington Press.

See also

• Native American Studies
• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas

Bibliography

• De Laguna, Frederica (1972) Under Mount St. Elias. 3 vols. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.