These scenes of the people of Fort Yukon, Alaska, meeting an arriving sternwheeler were filmed by Dr. Grafton Burke in about 1930. Grafton and Clara Burke, an Episcopal missionary couple, oversaw St. Stephen's Mission and hospital -- later named Hudson Stuck Memorial Hospital -- at Fort Yukon in interior Alaska for three decades until Dr. Burke died in 1938 (B&W/Silent/16mm film).
The recently published book "Hospital and Haven: The Life and Work of Grafton and Clara Burke in Northern Alaska" by Mary F. Ehrlander and Hild M. Peters tells the story of the Burkes and their lives among the Gwich’in peoples of northern Alaska. Ehrlander is a professor emeritus of History and Arctic and Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Peters holds an MA in Arctic and Northern Studies from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
This film clip is from AAF-23404 of the Grafton Burke Collection held by the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives Department in the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. For more information please contact the Alaska Film Archives.
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