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James Kari is a linguist and Professor Emeritus with the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), specializing in Athabascan languages of Alaska. In the past thirty-five years he has done extensive linguistic work in many Athabascan languages including Ahtna, Dena'ina, Koyukon, Deg Hit'an, Holikachuk, Lower Tanana, Middle Tanana, Tanacross and Upper Tanana. He was on the faculty of UAF from 1973 to until his retirement in 1997, but continues to work on numerous Alaska Native language projects. He is the author or editor of over 200 publications, including more than 2500 pages of bilingual texts in six Athabascan languages. The Alaska Native Language Archive holds more than 700 items that list Kari as contributor. His special interest is Athabascan ethnogeography, and he has compiled or documented more than 11,000 place names in fourteen Alaska or Canadian Athabascan languages. He worked with Dena'ina writer and ethnographer Peter Kalifornsky on a 1991 compilation of his important creative writings. In 2008 he was the organizer of the Dene–Yeniseian Symposium in Alaska, and he was co-editor of the volume The Dene–Yeniseian Connection published in 2010. In 2009 Alaskan Governor Sean Parnell selected Kari to receive the Governor's Award for the Humanities.