John Barre Toelken was an award-winning American folklorist, noted for his study of Native American material and oral traditions.
10 Facts About Barre Toelken
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Barre Toelken was born in Enfield, Massachusetts, to parents John and Sylvia Toelken.
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Barre Toelken began to attend the Utah State University in 1953, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in English.
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Barre Toelken began his teaching career at the University of Oregon in 1966.
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Barre Toelken returned to Utah State in 1985: there he would serve as the director of the Folklore Program and co-director of the Fife Folklore Conference.
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Barre Toelken was known for his research into Navajo folklore, namely with the Yellowman family.
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Decades later, Barre Toelken destroyed most of the physical records originating from his work with the Yellowman family, choosing to leave a set of cassette tapes with members of the family, not within an archive.
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Barre Toelken received four of the association's major awards: the Americo Paredes Prize and the Chicago Folklore Prize, both in 2007, followed by the Kenneth Goldstein Award for Lifetime Academic Leadership and the Lifetime Scholarly Achievement Award, in 2011 and 2016, respectively.
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Barre Toelken served on the boards of a number of organisations, including the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Arts Folklife Program, the Western Folklife Center, Utah Arts Council, and the International Ballad Commission.
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Barre Toelken died in Logan, Utah, on November 9,2018, aged 83.