Nora Marks Dauenhauer is an American poet and short-story writer and a scholar of the language and traditions of the Tlingit aboriginal nation in Alaska, of which she is a member.
Background
Nora Marks was born May 8, 1927, the first of sixteen children of Emma Marks (1913–2006) of Yakutat, Alaska, and Willie Marks (1902–1981), a Tlingit from Hoonah, Alaska. Following her mother in the Tlingit matrilineal system, she is a member of the Raven moiety of the Tlingit nation, of the Lukaax̱.ádi clan, and of the Shaka Hít or Canoe Prow House, from Alsek River.
Career
Nora"s Tlingit name at birth was Keix̱wnéi. 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 Saint Elias.