Dr. Joan Tenenbaum’s book review will concentrate on her book, Dena’ina Sukdu’a: Traditional Stories of the Tanaina Athabaskans. In the early 1970s, as part of her doctoral research documenting the Dena’ina language, an endangered indigenous language, Joan recorded ancient traditional stories that had never been written in the Dena’ina language! In the tiny Alaskan village, everyone had told her their language could not be written, and she set out to show them it could. The stories encompass a variety of traditional genres and later were published in a beautiful book by the Alaska Native Language Center. Joan’s talk will go beyond a book review, it will be the lively and exciting story of how the research came to be, how she found her way in the community, and how she changed along the way. 
