James Kari is an American linguist and Professor Emeritus with the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) specializing in the Dene (a.k.a. Athabascan languages) of Alaska. He served on the faculty of UAF from 1973 to his retirement in 1997.
For more than fifty years Kari has done extensive linguistic work in many Dene languages. These include Ahtna, Dena'ina, Koyukon, Deg Hit'an, Holikachuk, Lower Tanana, Middle Tanana, Tanacross, Upper Tanana, and Babine-Witsuwit'en.
Kari continues to work on numerous Alaska Native language projects. He is the author or editor of more than 200 publications, including more than 4000 pages of bilingual texts in seven Dene languages. He is the most prolific contributor to the Alaska Native Language Archive (with more than 1000 entries as of 2019).
His special interest is Dene ethnogeography. Kari has compiled or documented more than 14,000 place names in fourteen Alaska or Canadian Dene languages. He worked with Dena'ina writer and ethnographer Peter Kalifornsky on a 1991 compilation of his creative writings.
In 2008 he organized the Dene–Yeniseian Symposium in Alaska. He was co-editor of The Dene–Yeniseian Connection, published in 2010.