The Boy Who Could Not Remember – An Ancient Story of TBI

This essay written by me in 1997 after returning from a trip to Ketchikan, Alaska, is freely adapted from an Alaskan native story.  Credit for recording that story goes to  by Edward L. Keithahn, University of Alaska Press, 1987. The primary change to this story is told as a Tlingit story – the totem builders of Southeast Alaska – rather than as an Eskimo story. (Ketchikan, Alaska is Tlingit country). The TBI components of this story, the boy’s inability to remember the legendary fish’s name, his sudden death after the repeated concussions, are true to the original Eskimo legend.

For the full essay, of The Boy Who Could Not Remember, click here.