John Smelcer is a member of Ahtna Native Corporation. Throughout the mid-to-late 1990s, Dr. Smelcer was the tribally-appointed Executive Director of the Ahtna Heritage Foundation. Hailed as "Alaska's modern day Jack London," John Smelcer has published over sixty books, including The Raven and the Totem, his best-selling collection of Alaska Native myths and legends. His writing appears in almost a thousand magazines worldwide. As a boy, John sat around campfires in his Native village listening to elders tell traditional stories like this one.