Nora Dauenhauer in 2011.
Nora Marks Dauenhauer (May 8, 1927 – September 25, 2017) was a Tlingit poet, short-story writer, and Tlingit language scholar from Alaska. 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 16 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 Yakutat Lukaax̱.ádi (sockeye) 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 got married at age 18 to Tony Florendo, and the couple had four children. After her youngest child went to High School, she earned her GED. She then earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Alaska.
In 1973 she married linguist Richard Dauenhauer, who had done his doctoral work on Tlingit language. Over the next 40 years, seperately and together they were highly influential in preserving and teaching the Tlingit language.
She died on September 25, 2017 at the age of 90.
Career
Dauenhauer researched Tlingit language for the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks from 1972 to 1973. There she translated and transcribed works of Tlingit culture into books. Her books include Beginning Tlingit, published in 1976.
When Dauenhauer received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, she and her family moved to Juneau, Alaska, in 1983. There she became a principal researcher in language and cultural studies at the Sealaska Heritage Foundation from 1983-1997. From October 10, 2012, to October 2014 she resided as Alaska States Poet Laureate.
Personal
Dauenhauer lived in Juneau where she wrote, researched, and volunteered at local schools. She had four children, 13 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren.*
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Marks_Dauenhauer
AHAU
Kin 140: Yellow Planetary Sun
I perfect in order to enlighten
Producing life
I seal the matrix of universal life
With the planetary tone of manifestation
I am guided by the power of elegance
I am a polar kin.
I extend the yellow galactic spectrum.
With their capacity for instantaneous transmission, radial plasma also functions as a storage unit, information bank, and telepathic message unit.*
*Star Traveler's 13 Moon Almanac of Synchronicity, Galactic Research Institute, Law of Time Press, Ashland, Oregon, 2017-2018.
The Sacred Tzolk'in
Anahata Chakra (Silio Plasma)
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