"This volume conveys the history and knowledge of Dene elders. Oral accounts reveal a unique perspective and offer commentary on continuity and change over the past hundred years. These narratives, along with photographs and illustrations, show the history of the region alongside a portrait of the people themselves."--
A Grammar of Upper Tanana, Volume 1 provides a linguistically accurate written record of the endangered Upper Tanana language. Serving as a descriptive grammar of Upper Tanana, the book meticulously details a language that is currently fluently spoken by approximately fifty people in limited parts of Alaska’s eastern interior and Canada’s Yukon Territory. As part of the Dene (Athabascan) language group, Upper Tanana embodies elements of both the Alaskan and Canadian subgroups of Northern Dene. This is the first comprehensive grammatical description of any of the Alaskan Dene languages. With the goal of preserving a language no longer consistently taught to younger generations, Olga Lovick’s foundational study is framed within the traditional form of linguistic theory that allows linguists and nonspecialists alike to study a vulnerable language that exists outside the dominant Indo-European mainstream. This text provides a substantive bulwark to protect a language acutely threatened by near-term extinction. In its expansive detailing of the Upper Tanana language, this volume is methodologically oriented toward structural linguistics through approaches focusing on phonology, lexical classes, and morphology. With attention to both detail and thoroughness, Lovick’s comparative approach provides solid grounding for the future survival of the Upper Tanana language.
The Middle Tanana Valley in Alaska remains one of the most important regions of the continent for archaeological research. In The Gift of the Middle Tanana: Dene Pre-Colonial History in the Alaskan Interior, Gerad Smith explores the history, ethnography, and archaeological record of the Native people in this region during the late Holocene. Smith creates an interpretive framework informed by Alaskan Native traditions, focusing on traditional place names and the deep-play rituals of reciprocity. Smith sets forth the case that the local themes and oral traditions of the potlatch are better understood not as singular ceremonial events but as a mechanism of regional social cohesion that dictated everyday life. The Gift of the Middle Tanana illustrates how the role of reciprocal deep-play shaped a traditional society that has lasted over a thousand years.
Shem Pete (1896–1989), a colorful and brilliant raconteur from Susitna Station, Alaska, left a rich legacy of knowledge about the Upper Cook Inlet Dena’ina world. Shem was one of the most versatile storytellers and historians in twentieth century Alaska, and his lifetime travel map of approximately 13,500 square miles is one of the largest ever documented with this degree of detail anywhere in the world. The first two editions of Shem Pete’s Alaska contributed much to Dena’ina cultural identity and public appreciation of the Dena’ina place names network in Upper Cook Inlet. This new edition adds nearly thirty new place names to its already extensive source material from Shem Pete and more than fifty other contributors, along with many revisions and new annotations. The authors provide synopses of Dena’ina language and culture and summaries of Dena’ina geographic knowledge, and they also discuss their methodology for place name research. Exhaustively refined over more than three decades, Shem Pete’s Alaska will remain the essential reference work on the landscape of the Dena’ina people of Upper Cook Inlet. As a book of ethnogeography, Native language materials, and linguistic scholarship, the extent of its range and influence is unlikely to be surpassed.
Based on over five years of ethnographic research [carried out] in the southwest Yukon, Sovereignty's Entailments is a close ethnographic analysis of everyday practices of state formation in a society whose members do not take for granted the cultural entailments of sovereignty.
Landscape is fundamental to human experience. Yet until recently, the study of landscape has been fragmented among the disciplines. This volume focuses on how landscape is represented in language and thought, and what this reveals about the relationships of people to place and to land. Scientists of various disciplines such as anthropologists, geographers, information scientists, linguists, and philosophers address several questions, including: Are there cross-cultural and cross-linguistic variations in the delimitation, classification, and naming of geographic features? Can alternative world-views and conceptualizations of landscape be used to produce culturally-appropriate Geographic Information Systems (GIS)? Topics included: ontology of landscape; landscape terms and concepts; toponyms; spiritual aspects of land and landscape terms; research methods; ethical dimensions of the research; and its potential value to indigenous communities involved in this type of research.