Background
Soboleff was born in Killisnoo, Alaska, on November 14, 1908, to a Tlingit mother and a Russian father. Soboleff was born into the Tlingit clan Kha"jaq"tii, meaning One Slain in Battle. His mother, Anna Hunter, who had been orphaned in nearby Sitka, had canoed to Killisnoo with her brother to stay with their aunt.
His father, Alexander "Sasha" Soboleff, resided in Killisnoo with his parents and three brothers.
His father, Alexander, died when Walter was twelve years old and his mother remarried.
Education
He first attended a United States. Government School in Tenakee before enrolling at the Sheldon Jackson School boarding school in Sitka when he was five years old.
Career
Walter Soboleff"s paternal grandfather, was a Russian Orthodox minister named Ivan Soboleff, who moved to Killisnoo from San Francisco during the 1890s. He was raised in Tenakee. He began working as a Tlingit language interpreter for doctors at ten years old during the height of the 1918 flu pandemic in Southeast Alaska.
Soboleff was hired for his first job at the Hood Bay fish cannery when he was a freshman at Sheldon Jackson High School in 1925.
He earned 25 cents an hour at the cannery. In 1925, Soboleff sailed from Sitka to Seattle aboard the Admiral Lincolnshire steamship.
He then hitchhiked from Seattle to enroll at college at Oregon Agricultural College, which is now known by its present-day name, Oregon State University. However, he was only able to stay at Oregon Agricultural College for one semester due to the financial pressures of the Great Depression.
He hitchhiked back to Seattle, where he stayed at a Young Men’s Christian Association in the city until he could return to his studies.
He completed a bachelor"s degree at the University of Dubuque in 1937 in education. Soboleff went on to earn a master"s degree in divinity, also from the University of Dubuque, in 1940. Soboleff returned to Sitka, Alaska, during the summer of 1940, where he initially worked in cold storage or seine fishing.
Walter and Genevieve had four children - Janet, Sasha, Walter Junior. and Ross.
He also began broadcasting radio news in the Tlingit language. He also became a Tlingit and Native Alaskan advocate for cultural education, human rights and rights of indigenous people in Alaska.
Walter Soboleff died at his home in Juneau, Alaska, on May 22, 2011, at the age of 102, of complications from bone cancer and prostate cancer. Atkinson died in April 2008.
