June Helm (September 13, 1924 – February 5, 2004) was an American anthropologist, primarily known for her work with the Dene people in the Mackenzie River drainage.
[1] After high school, Helm enrolled in anthropology at the University of Kansas, because of its modest tuition, and there she completed a year of education.
[2] In 1942, her father's machinery repair business experienced a boom, leading to the finances necessary for Helm to transfer to the University of Chicago, her school of choice.
[1] Helm received her PhD in 1958 from the University of Chicago, after completing her dissertation, which was published by the National Museums of Canada in 1961, titled Lynx Point People.
This was Helm's introduction to field work, and the next year, she conducted ethnographic research among the people of the region, for her Masters' thesis.
Helm made great forays in understanding and relating the culture of the northern Athapaskan people, and she disproved hypotheses or discovered errors in the works of Julian Steward and Leslie Spier.
[3] In 1996, Helm was contacted by John Zoe, a Dogrib official, and Thomas Andrews, an archaeologist at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, located in Yellowknife, regarding artifacts which had been taken by a graduate student of the University of Iowa in 1894, Frank Russell.
[2] Helm spent the last few years of her life assembling her notes, photographs and records from her fieldwork, and sent them to Yellowknife, to be available to the Dene people.
[3] Helm served as an adviser to the Indian Brotherhood of the Northwest Territories (now the Dene Nation), assisting them as a consultant in terms of land claims rights and research in the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry.