- Source: George Attla
George Attla (August 8, 1933 – February 15, 2015) was a champion sprint dog musher. Attla won ten Anchorage Fur Rendezvous Championships and eight North American Open championships with a career that spanned from 1958 to 2011. Attla was the subject of a 1993 book titled George Attla: The Legend of the Sled-dog Trail, by Lewis "Lew" Freedman.
In 1974 Attla wrote a book titled Everything I Know About Training and Racing Sled Dogs. Attla died of B-cell lymphoma in February 2015.
Major mushing victories and finishes
Anchorage Fur Rendezvous First place finishes: 1958, 1962, 1968, 1972, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1979, 1981, and 1982.
Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race In 1973 Attla placed fourth in the inaugural Iditarod.
Legacy
On April 25, 1998, the governor of Alaska, Steve Cowper, declared April 29 as George Attla Day.
Attla was the focus of the movie Spirit of the Wind.
He inspired the 2017 single "You Got to Run (Spirit of the Wind)", a collaboration between Buffy Sainte-Marie and Tanya Tagaq.