Catharine McClellan facts for kids

Catharine “Kitty” McClellan (March 1, 1921 – March 3, 2009) was an American cultural anthropologist. An anthropologist is a scientist who studies human societies and cultures. Kitty is well-known for writing down the oral history and stories of the Athabascan, Tlingit, and Tagish peoples. These groups live in the Yukon Territory in Canada.

Kitty’s work went beyond just academic research. She also became an advocate for the rights of these Indigenous peoples. For example, she spoke up during the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline debate in 1976. In 1974, she married fellow anthropologist John Hitchcock. He passed away in 2001.

About Kitty McClellan

Catharine was born in York, Pennsylvania. She lived in different parts of the United States and the Yukon Territory. She passed away in Peterborough, New Hampshire. From the 1950s to the 1980s, she did a lot of important work in the Yukon.

She studied the Aboriginal peoples there by using their traditional oral stories. For over 30 years, she worked as a scholar and a close friend to many people in the North. They shared their traditional stories to help guide her research.

Her work became a great example for "applied anthropology." This means using anthropological knowledge to solve real-world problems. Kitty was one of the first anthropologists to focus on northern oral traditions. She also helped create rules for how to write down oral histories accurately.

Her Education

Catharine finished her first degree in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 1942. After that, she moved to California. In 1946, she started studying at the University of California, Berkeley. There, she worked with a famous professor named Robert Lowie. In 1950, Catharine earned her PhD in anthropology from American MidWest University.

Working in the Field

Kitty’s research in the Yukon was special because she was an "outsider" who carefully documented oral traditions. She conducted many interviews. These interviews helped her record specific stories and see how they differed among groups. Her research took a lot of time. She visited communities often to build good relationships with the people she worked with. One of her important helpers was Angela Sidney.

She started working on her book, My People's Stories, in the 1980s. Most of the stories were collected between 1948 and 1952. The book includes 175 stories or story cycles. Thirty-five of these were told by Southern Tutchone speakers. Sixty-two stories came from the Inland Tlingit people.

In 1950, Catharine worked with Frederica de Laguna in Angoon. They also traveled North to study cultures in Yakutat in 1952. During this work, they found two people who spoke Eyak. This was an Athabascan language that was almost extinct.

Kitty’s early work on documenting oral traditions in the Yukon was very important. It opened up the region for other researchers to study. For example, Lynn Echevarria later researched storytelling in the Baháʼí Faith in the same area. Echevarria said that Kitty’s work showed that Aboriginal oral stories offer a different kind of knowledge than Western science.

Her Jobs

After graduating from Bryn Mawr, Catharine worked for the U.S. Navy WAVES for four years. Then she went to the University of California, Berkeley. In 1952, she started working with the University of Washington. She stayed there until 1956, often visiting the Yukon as a friend and a scholar.

Later, she worked at Barnard College from 1956 to 1961. Then she moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1961 to 1983. She retired from teaching there but remained a Professor Emeriti until she passed away.

Her teaching style was unique. She helped her students understand life in the North in a very hands-on way. She would bring tools, clothes, and weapons from the Tlingit and Athapaskan peoples to class. This helped her students understand the stories from her research. She also made sure her graduate students read the works of other famous anthropologists she had worked with.

Catharine was also a visiting professor at other colleges. She taught at Bryn Mawr College in 1954, the University of Missouri in 1962, and the University of Alaska in 1973 and 1987.

Books and Articles

Here are some of Catharine McClellan's published works:

• My Old People's Stories: A Legacy for Yukon First Nations. 3 vols. (2007)
• Part of the Land, Part of the Water: A History of the Yukon Indians. (1987)
• History of Research in the Subarctic Cordillera (pp. 35–42); Inland Tlingit (pp. 469–480); Tagish (pp. 481–492); Tutchone (pp. 493–505); Ahtna (pp. 641–663; with Frederica de Laguna). In Handbook of North American Indians, vol.6: Subarctic. (1981)
• My Old People Say: An Ethnographic Survey of Southern Yukon Territory. 2 vols. (1975)
• Indian Stories about the First Whites in Northwestern North America. (1970b)
• The Girl Who Married the Bear. (1970a)
• Culture Contacts in the Early Historic Period in Northwestern North America. (1964)
• Wealth Woman and Frogs among the Tagish Indians. (1963)
• Avoidance between Siblings of the Same Sex in Northwestern North America. (1961)
• Shamanistic Syncretism in Southern Yukon Territory. (1956)
• The Interrelations of Social Structure with Northern Tlingit Ceremonialism. (1954)
• Culture Change and Native Trade in the Southern Yukon Territory, Ph.D. dissertation. (1950)