ALASKA NATIVE WRITERS, STORYTELLERS AND ORATORS

Despite its clunky title, this is quite a tidy little omnibus of poems, oral histories, folk tales, and stories by Native Alaskans, many appearing in their original languages with English translations on facing pages. Filmmaker and fiction-writer Spatz, the founding editor of Alaska Quarterly Review, is to be commended for organizing the work, which includes translations from more than 15 Alaskan languages—many (Tlingit, Haida, and Inupiaq) probably never spoken beyond Alaskan shores. Sociologists and folklorists will be particularly grateful for the bibliography and source notations, and those unfamiliar with Alaskan culture will find in the very extensive commentaries a useful orientation to what remains a largely unknown world. The commentaries and notes, in fact, may prove of greater interest to many than the tales and poems themselves, offering as they do a glimpse into the history of our Last Frontier.