Photos: Remembering Katie John

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Katie John pulling roots with her great-granddaughter.

Ahtna Athabascan elder and Alaska icon Katie John passed away early Friday morning at Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. The Mentasta Lake elder was 97 years old.

She was the main plaintiff in a 1985 lawsuit that led to stronger subsistence fishing and hunting rights for Alaska Natives. John sued the state after being denied access to a fishing camp, located inside Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, which had last been used by her tribe some 20 years earlier, before 1964, when the state of Alaska closed off subsistence fishing there.

She prevailed in federal court in 1994, and the decision has survived many legal challenges since then. The effects of the case still resonate in Alaska.

John was also an admired and active culture-bearer, helping create an alphabet for the Ahtna language and teaching the dialect to school kids, starting in Mentasta Lake in the 1970s.

She received an honorary doctorate degree in law from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2011, for her work on the 1985 lawsuit and her life-long advocacy for Alaska Native rights and culture.

Read more: Ahtna elder Katie John, Alaskan icon, passes