Aberle spent three and a half years in the United States Army; most of his time was as a chief clerk in the outpatient psychiatric service performing psychological interviewing and testing for patients in his clinic.

Both Gough and Aberle sought to resolve conflict, and promote social justice and tolerance in various areas of the world.

[6] In the late 1960s to the early 1980s, Aberle supervised many students who completed dissertations and theses that had topics related to Athapaskan speakers.

Aberle had also taken part in several research projects that held relevance to the kinship practices of Proto-Athapaskan speech communities.

Aberle was commonly looked upon as an experienced cultural anthropologist who studied the American Southwest, which is represented by his work The Peyote Religion Among the Navaho.

Aberle examined kinship and religious practices among the Navaho and Proto-Athapaskan speaking communities of Alaska.

We know of no way in which we can rigorously infer the kinds of behavior directly, but it is generally regarded as possible to reconstruct the terminology at least in part.