Today on Access Utah, we remember acclaimed folklorist Barre Toelken. Our guests include Randy Williams, folklore curator and oral history specialist with the Special Collections and Archives at the Merrill-Cazier Library, USU Assistant Professor of English Lynne McNeill, and Barre's daughter Kazuko Toelken.
Barre Toelken was born in 1935 to a musical family in Enfield, Mass., a town now replaced by a reservoir that serves nearby Boston. He died Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, in Logan at age 83. He spent nearly 20 years at Utah State University as a professor of English and a folklorist, eventually retiring in 2003. Toelken spent more than 40 years collecting Navajo stories — many of them sacred — and building tight relationships with Native American families.
