Oscar Kawagley

Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, best known as Oscar Kawagley and born November 8, 1934, in Bethel, Alaska, was a Yup'ik anthropologist, teacher, and actor celebrated for bridging indigenous Yupiaq worldviews with Western education.

Orphaned young, he was raised by his grandmother Matilda Oscar in traditional fish camps along the Kuskokwim River, becoming the first Yupiaq to graduate high school in Bethel before earning a B.Ed. and M.Ed. from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1958 and 1968, an Ed.S. superintendent certification there in 1987, and a Ph.D. in social and educational studies from the University of British Columbia.

Full Name	Oscar Kawagley
Other Name	Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley
Gender	Male
Occupation	Actor/Teacher/Anthropologist
Date of Birth	08-November-1934 (76 years)
Birth Year	1934
Birth Location	Bethel, Alaska, U.S.
Death Time	27-April-2011
Death Location	Fairbanks, Alaska, U.S.

Serving as a U.S. Army Medical Service Corps lieutenant prior to his degrees, he pioneered as Alaska's first Yupiaq teacher in K-12 schools and led the Calista Corporation as president from 1977 to 1981.

Oscar Kawagley joined the University of Alaska Fairbanks as assistant professor in 1986, teaching cross-cultural studies and education as associate professor until his death, while co-directing the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative and Alaska Native Knowledge Network to integrate Yupiaq knowledge into curricula.

His seminal 1995 book A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit advanced ethnoecology by introducing "indigenous methodology," reconciling native spiritual ecology with Western science, complemented by co-authored works like Alaska Native Education: Views from Within (2010) and extensive articles on Yup'ik ways of knowing, native science, and cultural revitalization.

He received the National Indian Education Association Lifetime Achievement Award, American Educational Research Association Outstanding Scholarship Award, Alaska Governor's Award for the Arts and Humanities, and others.

He appeared in films like Salmonberries (1991) as Butch, Northern Exposure (1991), and voiced elderly Denahi and the Inuit narrator in Disney's Brother Bear (2003).

Married first to Dolores Kawagley and later to Anna Northway, he had four children—Sherry L. Colley, Sandra L. Haviland, Oscar K. Kawagley, and Tamaree D. Kawagley—10 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren as of 2011. He died of renal cancer on April 24, 2011, in Fairbanks at age 76, with his ashes scattered.