Craig Mishler has been doing ethnographic field work in Alaska since 1972. He received his doctorate in folklore and anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. Craig made a career as an historian with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and later as a subsistence resource specialist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Division of Subsistence where he did extensive field work in Kodiak. Later, he was a research professor at the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is also the author, co-author, or editor of ten books, including Dinjii Vadzaih Dhidlit: The Man Who Became a Caribou, published with Kenneth Frank in 2020 by the IPI Press.
