Yéil Kundayaayí, Adventures of Raven, edited by Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, Will Geiger, and Jeff Leer, brings together fifty stories that reveal Raven’s wit and world-shaping power. Known in Tlingit as Yéil, Raven is a legendary cultural hero, world-maker, and trickster figure among the Tlingit of Southeast Alaska. Stories of Raven, often termed the Raven cycle, comprise a master narrative of creation and evolution that is virtually unmatched in world literature.
The fifth volume in the Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature series copublished with Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI), this book presents the adventures of Raven in the original language transcribed directly from recordings of Tlingit storytellers and accompanied by facing English translations.
Below, SHI shares more about the making of the book and the lasting importance of Raven stories to readers across the Northwest Coast and beyond.
Given the many Raven stories—and the many variations of each—what guided the decisions about which versions to include in this volume? Were there any challenges or principles that shaped how the stories were organized?
The initial selection of stories included many more narratives than those that appear in this book. One major challenge was the need to be able to bind the stories into a book. There simply was not enough space to include the entire original selection of stories. Another challenge was the amount of time required to prepare the stories for publication. It takes many hours for a recording of Tlingit storytelling to be completely and properly transcribed and translated with minimal errors. The linguists work slowly through the recording to transcribe the words as accurately as possible. They often debate with one another until finally agreeing on the correct spelling and grammatical form. For particularly difficult words and phrases they consult with fluent elders in person and over the phone. Writing notes to the stories describing issues of grammar and cultural context adds further time. So, due to the needs of space in the book and time to give the stories a high-quality treatment, we made the decision to reduce the number of stories by approximately half.
This book has prioritized the recordings in which several stories are told in a connected sequence or “cycle.” This seemed like a good way of showcasing the fact that many of the Raven stories are not regarded as isolated incidents but belong to a large complex of interconnected events. The storytellers depict Raven moving from one major action to another and another and so on. Having several examples of extended cycles of Raven stories together in the book also shows an important feature of Raven stories as a genre and artform. Raven’s adventures do not belong to a fixed and universally recognized sequence and for this reason the storytellers do not all tell their stories in the same order. Part of their craft as individual artists is to deliver the stories in an order that they deem appropriate.
Within the context of nearly two and a half centuries of writing about Raven, this book sheds new light on both the character Raven and the art of Tlingit storytelling.
The major ways the stories are grouped in the book are by the storyteller and the date of recording. The stories are presented in seven major sections, one for each of the featured storytellers. The stories that were recorded at the earliest date, of Frank Italio in 1952, come first. Those that were recorded most recently, of Katherine Mills in 1989, come last. Giving each storyteller their own section helps readers develop a familiarity with their individual style and approach to the stories. Arranging the texts chronologically reflects the order in which the tellings took place through history between 1952 and 1989.
As two of the coeditors Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer point out in the preface, this volume is “nothing new, yet everything new.” How is that idea reflected in the goals of the book?
The context of this statement is the written history surrounding the Tlingit character Raven. People have been writing about Raven since the late 1700s. Since that time, many accounts of his identity and adventures have been published in Russian, German, and English. It is in this sense that a book about Raven is “nothing new.” But even with such a long written history, this is the first book to present Tlingit Raven stories as told in the Tlingit language by individual storytellers with facing translations that correspond line-by-line to the original. These are verbatim texts straight from the mouths of Tlingit storytellers. In this way the book is “everything new.” Ironically, this book offers something new to the written tradition surrounding Raven by simply being as literal as possible and writing exactly what the storytellers said. The editors have focused on presenting the stories in a way that reflects the vocabulary, grammar, rhythm, and style of the original oral performances. Within the context of nearly two and a half centuries of writing about Raven, this book sheds new light on both the character Raven and the art of Tlingit storytelling.
[Raven stories] are acoustically and grammatically quite marvelous in the original Tlingit. The editors have attempted to create a translation that emulates these qualities in English.
As an example, certainly the most widely known Raven story is that of Raven stealing the daylight. Versions of it have appeared in many anthropological texts, anthologies of Tlingit oral narratives, children’s books, and so on—but never in Tlingit. The versions presented in this book allow readers to appreciate not only fine details of the story, such as characters’ names and specialized phrases used by Raven and his interlocutors, but features of the form and style of storytelling, such as the pace and rhythm of each telling and the storytellers’ asides and comments on the significance of the overall story or its parts.
The stories of Raven have been told and retold for millennia. Can you speak about the endurance of these narratives and their ongoing importance in contemporary Tlingit life?
Raven stories still fill many of the same needs as they have for millennia. For one, Raven is an important crest image and symbol for one of the two moieties that make up Tlingit society. Many of Raven’s adventures are depicted as crest images on sacred objects that belong to Tlingit clans. Raven’s adventures are depicted visually on objects but are recounted and elaborated in oral narrative. Stories like these help to contextualize and deepen the meaning of the images on many of the most valuable objects held by Tlingit clans today.
The stories also endure for their aesthetic value. People enjoy and appreciate them as language art. In terms of their content, the events in the narratives offer striking images and rich concepts. In terms of their form, the words and sentences are masterfully composed. They are acoustically and grammatically quite marvelous in the original Tlingit. The editors have attempted to create a translation that emulates these qualities in English.
Another important reason these stories endure is their comedic and entertainment value. The situations Raven finds himself in, and how he handles himself in them, are often ridiculous and hilarious. The Dauenhauers noted that when they originally shared transcribed and translated Raven stories with their students and colleagues, readers were hesitant to laugh. Sometimes this was because humor doesn’t always translate very well cross-linguistically or cross-culturally, but often it was because readers were unsure if it was politically correct to laugh at Indigenous narratives. With Raven, laughter is often the most appropriate response. The storytellers themselves at times have to pause and regain their breath because they are laughing so hard at what Raven is up to.
What do you hope educators, students, and general readers take away from experiencing these stories in both Tlingit and English for the first time in this form?
One hope is that readers come away with a deepened appreciation of the character Raven as well as the Tlingit storytelling tradition. Raven is a nuanced and paradoxical figure. His identity, motivations, and significance are hard to pin down. The oral narrative tradition is likewise internally variable and complex. At one level, all of the storytellers in this volume are clearly cut from a similar cloth—they share much in the way of general ideas, formulaic phrases, and manner of delivery. At more granular levels, they each present Raven in a unique light and compose their stories with a signature style. Educators, students, scholars, Tlingit community members, and general readers will all find that when you approach Raven through the lens offered in this book—specific narratives told by specific storytellers—a very nuanced picture develops, not only of the character Raven but also of the oral tradition that has transmitted his adventures for generations. We hope that readers find this richness of the character Raven as well as the storytelling to be both engaging and entertaining.
The book also provides a large and significant new corpus of material for those who are interested in learning to speak the Tlingit language. These stories were originally told aloud and are meant to be read aloud. The book contains several thousand Tlingit sentences. Language learners can practice reading these aloud and studying their grammatical structure to improve their proficiency and understanding. Additionally, for all but only three of the narratives we have the audio files the transcriptions are based on. We would like to eventually make the audio readily accessible (perhaps on the SHI website) for users of the book who would like to follow along and hear how the storytellers sounded. The editors have gone to considerable lengths to describe and explain what they considered to be important grammatical aspects of the sentences in the stories. The notes in the back of the book contain hundreds of line-specific grammatical comments and discussions that should be illuminating to Tlingit language learners.
This volume was a long time in the making. Can you share how the project came together and the process of compiling the stories? What were some milestones and who was involved?
Nora and Richard Dauenhauer’s work on this project goes back to the early 1970s when they were recording Tlingit elders and drafting transcriptions and translations of what they had captured. They recorded many speeches, songs, and stories during this time, including but not limited to Raven stories. In the ’80s as this work continued, they began preparations to publish their first book on Tlingit oral literature. Their original plan was for their first book to be a volume on Raven stories, but in sharing drafts of their translations with colleagues and college students they found that the comedic Raven genre proved to be generally less accessible than the more tragic and serious genres of ancestral narrative and ceremonial oratory.
The Dauenhauers’ work on the Raven stories continued through the ’80s and ’90s, but was not their primary focus. During this period, they completed and published the first three volumes in the Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature series. Also active during this period was Fred White, a contributor to the Raven book and prior volumes, who recorded a lengthy and complex cycle of Raven stories told by his grandfather Frank Dick and drafted an initial transcription and translation.
Richard Dauenhauer was working actively in the ’90s on a massive and comprehensive study of the character Raven. This was intended to serve as the introduction to the Raven book. However, his draft introduction was too lengthy to fit into the book along with the stories and will require a significant amount of editing. We intend to release a minimally edited version of Richard’s study as a standalone publication through SHI’s Box of Knowledge series.
In the 2000s, the Dauenhauers were initially occupied with Volume 4 of the Classics series, Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká, Russians in Tlingit America, on Russian–Tlingit history and military battles, published in 2008. From 2009–2014 Nora and Richard focused on the Raven book along with other younger scholars, including Ishmael Hope, Keri Eggleston, Lance Twitchell, and James Crippen.
In 2014 Richard tragically passed away suddenly and Nora followed in 2017. This was a major loss for the community of Tlingit language and oral-literature scholars and stalled progress on the Raven book. Work continued slowly for several years. Lance Twitchell reviewed a number of the texts with fluent elders George Davis and Marge Dutson during this time. In 2020, Jeff Leer was recruited to the SHI staff to work on the project alongside Will Geiger. Throughout 2020–2024 the two of them worked collaboratively to make the final selection of stories that would be included, edit the transcriptions and translations, revise and expand the notes to the stories, and prepare an editors’ introduction. Throughout this period they consulted fluent Tlingit elders including the late David Katzeek, the late Kenny Grant, Bessie Cooley, Ruth Demmert, Sam Johnston, and Florence Sheakley. In 2025, SHI’s Publications Director Nobu Koch undertook the book’s design and layout with assistance from other members of the Publications team.
About the Contributors to Yéil Kundayaayí, Adventures of Raven
Nora Marks Dauenhauer (1927–2017) and Richard Dauenhauer (1942–2014) published histories and oral literature of the Tlingit people, worked to preserve and teach the Tlingit language, and helped standardize the written form of the language. Jeff Leer is professor emeritus of Alaska Native languages at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Will Geiger is a Tlingit-language researcher and editor at Sealaska Heritage Institute.
