Every year, AFN honors those who have made outstanding contributions to their families and the Native community.
The Denali Award recognizes the contributions of a non-Native person who has demonstrated strong commitment, dedication, and service to the Alaska Native community and to rural Alaska. This year, the Denali Award is bestowed upon an individual selected by the AFN Board of Directors for exemplary work that has improved the lives of Alaska Native people. The 2026 Denali Award winner is:
- Katie Baldwin Basile, Bethel, Alaska
Read on to learn more about this year’s awardee.
2026 DENALI AWARD WINNER
Katie Baldwin Basile is a photojournalist, documentary photographer and filmmaker with a focus on her home, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of Alaska. Basile’s work has appeared on PBS NewsHour and in The Washington Post Magazine, NPR, and The New York Times. Basile began her career as a teaching artist and has more than a decade of experience collaborating on multimedia stories with rural Alaskan youth.
From Yup’ik kayak building to the high teacher turnover rate, youth-led storytelling continues to expand Basile’s understanding of traditional and contemporary rural Alaska. Basile is a Catchlight Global Fellow, a Creative Capital State of the Art grantee and the corecipient of a National Edward R. Murrow Award for excellence in video through her work at KYUK Public Media. She directed the award-winning short film “To Keep as One” in collaboration with the Newtok Village Council which premiered at the 2020 Big Sky Film Festival. Basile lives in Bethel, Alaska with her husband and two sons.