FAIRBANKS — Neal Charlie Sr., a Native leader and Minto elder who worked to document the village’s traditional language, died Saturday of complications from pneumonia. He was 91.

Charlie was considered a go-to authority for insight into Alaska Athabascan customs and the Lower Tanana language, family and friends said Monday. His input was sought on a range of projects, from cross-cultural education to language instruction, they said.

“He was a very well-regarded, very-well respected elder,” said Jerry Isaac, president of Tanana Chiefs Conference. He said Charlie’s strong individual values and spiritual leadership helped encourage regional cooperation across Interior communities.

“He knew more than all of us elders,” his widow, Geraldine Charlie, said. “He had that much knowledge and wisdom.”

Geraldine Charlie said her husband was skilled at a range of crafts and made sleds, fish wheels, traps and other machines. He served as Minto’s chief in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the flood-prone village sat on the banks of the Tanana River. According to a “Citizens of the Year” award the couple received last year from Doyon Ltd., Charlie “prayed for a move” that eventually brought the village to its present site on a hillside 50 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

Charlie was born at Minto village’s original site, to Moses and Bessie Charlie. Some records spell his name Neil, but he went by Neal, his son, Neal Charlie Jr., said.

After fourth grade, he had to quit school, as did others his age, because the one-room schoolhouse needed space for incoming students, Geraldine Charlie said.

The couple married in 1947, and he did work for the state railroad while raising the family on a “strong” subsistence lifestyle that included trapping, hunting, fishing and time at summer camp picking berries and growing vegetables. She said most of the couple’s 10 children were born at home — Minto was host to “very good midwives.”

“In the old days, you had to learn stories by listening, by accepting it. The old people would tell you stories and tell it to you again,” Charlie told the Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative’s newsletter Sharing Our Pathways in 2002. “You should remember those things … (now) there are too many books and computers that think for you.”

The Charlies were among a handful of elders working with researchers to document the endangered Lower Tanana dialect and its traditional songs. The work started a half-century ago with translation by Michael Krauss, a University of Alaska Fairbanks linguist. Different dialects of the language, one of 11 in the Alaska Athabascan family, were spoken across the Tanana River drainage. Speakers who grew up with Lower Tanana as their first language can be found only in the 250-person village of Minto.

“We will all miss Neal greatly, not only for his deep cultural knowledge, but for his generosity as a teacher and his dedication to preserving the Lower Tanana language,” said Siri Tuttle, a linguist at UAF’s Alaska Native Language Center.

Doyon also recognized the couple’s help in establishing the Effie Kokrine Charter School in Fairbanks and starting the Rural Human Services program at UAF.

Later in life, Geraldine Charlie said, her husband grew more interested in teaching the language. A child’s simple request for help with a word made him very happy, she said. He pushed Native youths to avoid drugs and alcohol. He could -slip just the right dose of humor into a serious message, said Bertina Titus, Charlie’s oldest granddaughter.

“He could always throw that little joke in there that could capture the moment,” she said. “Not everyone has that. He did.”