Project Jukebox

Digital Branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Oral History Program

Kenneth Frank

Kenneth Frank

Kenneth Frank is a Gwich'in "young elder" who was raised in Venetie, Alaska and also lived in Arctic Village, Alaska for many years. He grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle based on hunting, fishing and trapping and speaking his Native Gwich'in language. Kenneth is an indigenous scholar who is devoted to the preservation of his culture and language, and ensuring that knowledge is passed on to the younger generation. He has donated historic photographs from his family's collection to the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives at Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), and was interviewed, along with his wife Caroline, by Bill Burke, a Research Technician for UAF's Oral History Program, on September 21, 2000 to identity some of these photographs. Kenneth and Caroline chose 16 photographs and briefly talked about them both in Gwich'in and in English. Kenneth continues to work closely with elders, youth, and scholars to document Gwich'in history and discuss climate change and its effects on their subsistence lifestyle and communities. He is also co-author with Craig Mishler of Dinjii Vadzaih Dhidlit: The Man Who Became a Caribou, a bilingual volume based on a series of oral interviews with Gwich'in elders living in rural northeast Alaska and the Yukon Territory (2019),