Crooked on the Stretcher Board

Craig Mishler has been doing ethnographic field work in Alaska since 1972. He received his doctorate in folklore and anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. Craig made a career as an historian with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and later as a subsistence resource specialist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Subsistence where he did extensive field work in Kodiak. Later, he was a research professor at the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is also the author, co-author, or editor of ten books, including Dinjii Vadzaih Dhidlit: The Man Who Became a Caribou, published with Kenneth Frank in 2020 by the IPI Press.

Kenneth Drizhuu Frank is an indigenous Gwich’in elder, storyteller, and traditional drummer from Venetie and Arctic Village, Alaska. A former staff member at the Effie Kokrines School in Fairbanks, Kenneth teaches the Gwich'in language and is currently engaged in mentoring his daughter Crystal. Kenneth is fully fluent and literate in his native language, doing workshops and culture camps on traditional games, skin drums, subsistence harvesting methods, traditional tools, and handicrafts.