News Release

Cyrus Harris awarded 2025 the Eileen Devinny Award by National Park Service staff

Cyrus Harris receives the 2025 Eileen Devinny award at the Western Arctic Herd Working Group meeting.

NPS Photo / Emily Creek

News Release Date: December 16, 2025

Contact: Jon Nicholson, 907-412-1434

The Eileen Devinney Award is an award presented annually by Western Arctic National Parklands to a member or group of the Northwest Arctic community. Recipients are recognized for their contribution of service and perpetuation of traditional knowledge in Kobuk Valley National Park, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, and/or Noatak National Preserve. 
 
This award is named after former NPS anthropologist and resource manager, Eileen Devinney, who deeply loved the Northwest Arctic communities. Eileen passed away in 2017 of cancer. Her work in the region championed the recording, preservation, and continuation of traditional knowledge and set the stage for the work we do today. The NPS thanks her family for their blessing in naming this award for her. 
 
In 2025, the award is presented to Cyrus Naungaq Harris of Kotzebue.  Cyrus has served for over a decade on the Cape Krusenstern Subsistence Resource Commission, partnered with the NPS on projects through his role at the Maniilaq Hunter Support Program, and thoughtfully shared his knowledge and perspective with park staff.  Cyrus is also one of our interviewees for our on-going oral history and film about Cape Krusenstern and Sisualik. This is only a small fraction of his contributions to the region as a whole, and to NPS as well. NPS staff were happy to present his plaque while attending the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group meeting in Anchorage. Taikuu, Cyrus, for all your hard work throughout the years—we look forward to seeing you out at Sisualik and Anigaaq. 
 
Previous recipients of the Eileen Devinney Award: 
2024: The late Shield Downey Jr. of Ambler, for his role at Chair of the Kobuk Valley SRC and endless support for cultural resource protection in Kobuk Valley, for his commitment to the Onion Portage archeological site, and his humor. 
 
2023: Hilda Booth, Thurston Booth, Ricky Ashby, and James Adams of Noatak, for their amazing collaboration on fieldwork for the Noatak Placenames project—a project they initiated in 2004 with Eileen Devinney. 

Thank you to all our partners across the region. This is just one small way to say thank you for all the good work we get done together.