Tales from the Dena

"This is a book that can be appreciated on many levels: as an important archive of Native American oral literature; as a set of stories that can be enjoyed by a wide range of readers; as a source of ethnographic insight into the Dena people of interior Alaska; and as a culturally specific manifestation of the universal human desire to explain the world and provide it with moral and narrative drama." - Pacific Northwest Quarterly "My favorite book of the year is a handsome volume called Tales from the Dena. ... [This] is a brilliant and important new book." - Anchorage Daily News "A thoroughly enjoyable and very valuable contribution to the literature on Atha-baskans, particularly their oral literature... The stories themselves can continue to delight young and old alike from almost any culture." - Arctic "This handsome, appealing volume...is at present the most easily accessible collection of stories from the Dena. It includes raven myths, a cycle about an apparent culture hero's adventures on the Yukon, and humorous animal tales." - Choice "Frederica de Laguna, one of the few anthropologists still alive who was trained by Franz Boas himself, is an icon among ethnographers who worked in northwestern North America... [Tales from the Dena] is a superbly edited and produced collection, and is a tribute to the well-rounded and intense training in ethnographic recording which de Laguna and others of her generation had received." - Anthropos