Mapping Traditional Koyukon Place Names along Alaska's Koyukuk River

Why it matters now

Koyukon Athabascan people have lived along the Koyukuk River in Western Interior Alaska for thousands of years, drawing food and cultural resources from the land around them. Recent changes in climate, technology, the resources available and ways of life have altered how the land is used — and how much the Denaakk'e (Koyukon) language is spoken. About 2,300 Koyukon people live today; about 150 still speak the language, the youngest of them in their fifties. The Elders who hold both the language and the knowledge of traditional hunting, fishing and gathering areas are ageing, and the chances to record what they know are shrinking.

Place names that go unrecorded, the project notes, leave the people who own those places and their history invisible; place names are clear evidence of land use and of a Native presence on the land.

What the project set out to do

The project aims to collect, preserve, nurture and pass on Koyukon knowledge of traditional place names and subsistence areas along the Koyukuk River around the villages of Koyukuk, Huslia and Hughes. Place names carry information about navigation, where resources are found, cultural history, land ownership and changes in land use, and archiving them helps hand local and traditional knowledge to the next generations.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) worked with a varied team: the Yukon-Koyukuk School District, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association and knowledge holders from the region.

How it was done

1. Gathering what was already known — hundreds of existing place names from the archives of the Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC), earlier place-name studies and other literature.
2. Visiting the villages — the team met Elders and community members in Huslia, Koyukuk and Hughes to identify and confirm place names on USGS topographic maps, asked what final products the communities wanted, and presented the project to students.
3. Building the database — each name's source, alternate names and spellings, meaning and associated stories were linked to its location in a geospatial database, which was proofed and archived at the ANLC.
4. On the river — Elders, young people and the team travelled the Koyukuk by boat, putting up traditional place-name signs along the way, collecting environmental data, and giving presentations at the community centres of all three villages.

Results

• Interviews with nine Elders in Huslia, three in Koyukuk and two in Hughes.
• A database cataloguing 675 place names and a geodatabase with 366 located names between Koyukuk and Hughes.
• Video and voice recordings of the stories, meanings and pronunciations behind the names.
• Six old and current winter trail systems not previously documented.

Next steps

• Add the traditional names to the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
• Produce a river atlas and other maps for the Koyukuk River region.
• Build an interactive website linking the names to the recorded interviews.
• Bring traditional place-name information into climate-change studies.

Sources

• McCloskey, S., Jones, E., Paskvan, S., Moncrieff, C., Bodony, K., Toohey, R., and Jones, B.M., 2014, Mapping traditional place names along the Koyukuk River—Koyukuk, Huslia, and Hughes, Western Interior Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2014–3105. https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/fs20143105 — its photographs, taken by partner organisations, and its maps on a commercial basemap are not reproduced; rewritten in hubnx's own words.