Salmon streams, herring hotspots, and points, islands and settlements around Southeast Alaska have carried Tlingit names for thousands of years. For dozens of recent ones, a team of culture-bearers and academics have worked both to remember and restore them.<\/p>\n
Those names carry histories and stories. They can inform people about the environment, and animals. And, said Tlingit Clan Conference speaker Thomas Thornton, they can also help inform management decisions, even today.<\/p>\n
Thornton, a former University of Alaska Southeast professor who now is now based at the University of Oxford in England, has authored several books on his research, and spoke at last week\u2019s three-day conference in Juneau about the hundreds of documented place names in Southeast Alaska \u2014 especially around places with both biological and cultural significance, which he called \u201ctoponymic hotspots.\u201d He and Harold Martin, a Raven and T\u2019akdeintaan clan member, documented many of them in a study they later wrote about in their book \u201cHaa Leelk\u2019w Has Aan\u2019 Saaxu: Our Grandparents\u2019 Names on the Land.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times, the knowledge that our people had\u2026 has never really been documented and recognized,\u201d said elder and audience member Paul Marks (Khinkaduneek).<\/p>\n
\u201cPlace names are resonant, resilient, and worthy of respect in all of their individual and collective facets,\u201d Thornton wrote in his presentation. \u201cLet us restore and endow them to their rightful place in understanding and guiding our interactions with Haa Aan\u00ed.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was something many other speakers are working to do, as well. Some are working to restore Tlingit names to the land; others are working simply to recover them.<\/p>\n
Gary Holton of the Alaska Native Place Names Project out of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, noted how people have been \u201cpulling together for a cause\u201d over the last few years.<\/p>\n
The percentage of Alaska Native names approved as \u201cofficial\u201d over the last three decades has been steadily increasing, he said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an involved process finding, verifying, and documenting accurate names, Holton said. Even after in-depth research, he and team members have had to make corrections to their work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think there are well over 50,000 Alaska Native names known or documented in the state of Alaska,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Without a comprehensive list of named features, however, \u201cit\u2019s impossible to know what is and is not named,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of information out there that is just kind of misplaced,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to get it compiled and available.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wayne Howell, an anthropologist recently retired from Glacier Bay, spoke on the names he collected for the area over the years. The bay itself has three Tlingit names, and the \u201cassemblage of names\u201d for the areas around the bay are \u201call applying to the same landscape, but different landscapes,\u201d he said, referencing the advance of the glacier that forced the Huna Tlingit to leave the bay.<\/p>\n
Three names Howell mentioned for Glacier Bay are S\u2019e Shuyee (area at the end of the clay), X\u00e1at T\u00fa (inside of the icebergs,) and S\u00edt\u2019 Eeti Geiyi (bay in place of the glacier) \u2014 all names for Glacier Bay at different times.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a big record of western research to complement the ethnographic record,\u201d he said. \u201cThe two blend together beautifully in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Chookaneidi clan established themselves in Hoonah \u2014 one of the four clans to move there \u2014 they tell of a time summer didn\u2019t happen. Winter followed winter.<\/p>\n
Tree rings tell that story too, Howell said.<\/p>\n
The glaciers weighed down the land, meaning the sea rose higher. The waves destroyed places they hadn\u2019t previously reached. They put silt in salmon streams, and destroyed intertidal zones.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been a time of terrible loss,\u201d Howell said.<\/p>\n
Just the same, the process of naming went on. Names told of historic events, of natural processes. They changed as the landscaped changed.<\/p>\n
Then, in the 20th century, names became more fixed.<\/p>\n
Juneau architect Wayne Jensen, a member of the Alaska Historical Commission, spoke about the process of naming an unnamed geographical feature, or renaming one that\u2019s already been named.<\/p>\n
Renaming, he said, can be difficult, in part for safety \u2014 first responders that may need to access a certain area should know the same name for a place as the person in need of rescue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a reluctance to change an established name unless it is derogatory, duplicative, or causing confusion,\u201d he said. \u201cThe proposer must demonstrate a compelling reason to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
The locally used name is \u201cthe single, best reason to name a feature,\u201d he said. Just the same, most proposals the committee receives are commemorative \u2014 to name a place after people or events \u2014 which is not usual in the Tlingit naming tradition, according to Thornton and Martin\u2019s book.<\/p>\n
Though many are working to restore Native names, not everyone wants them publicized.<\/p>\n
When he and Martin were collecting place names, they had to be careful to follow a protocol, Thornton said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of them said it (finding names) was important, but there were some issues with documentation,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of the communities saw these names as clan properties, or intellectual property.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other times, it was the stories behind the names that were the intellectual property of the tribe, and clans later asked that names be removed from maps, which was also an important part of the process, Thornton said.<\/p>\n
Regardless of whether they\u2019re remembered, written down, or official, many names still live in the landscape. Howell told the story of how one feature on the Alsek River was named for a story in which Raven is trapped inside a whale. When he\u2019s done fighting his way out, his beak is covered in fat, and he has to wipe it off.<\/p>\n
Howell was floating down the Alsek when he saw what must be that place, he said \u2014 a deep \u201cv\u201d in the stone above the river, big enough for Raven\u2019s enormous beak, and stones falling down from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of different things in our culture that are still around today, that are still happening,\u201d culture-bearer Fred White said in reference to this story. The rocks from that place, he said, \u201cwill fall down all around you and never hit you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can go to these place-name maps and you can do this kind of exercise over and over and over again\u2026 just think of the educational potential,\u201d Howell said.<\/p>\n
Elder Marie Olson spoke on her project documenting more than 50 place names in Juneau with elder Cecelia Kunz.<\/p>\n
One of the first they documented was D\u2019zantiki Heeni, the Tlingit name for Gold Creek. \u201cD\u2019zantiki Heeni,\u201d as many in Juneau now know, means \u201cwhere the flounder congregate at the mouth of the creek\u201d and is now the name of one of Juneau\u2019s two middle schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was my mentor, and I learned so much more than the language. I learned the culture,\u201d Olson said of Kunz, who is now deceased.<\/p>\n
Thornton also spoke about Kunz, who was their main source for place names in Juneau. They took her on a boat around Indian Point, and that process helped her remember and name some other sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne thing I remember very powerfully is she cried, because nobody else knew these names,\u201d Thornton said. \u201cShe felt like somebody else should still remember them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNames really inspire our people,\u201d said speaker Kenneth Grant of Hoonah. \u201cI see all of us as the wolf crying from hunger for knowledge of our ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.<\/p>\n
For an article about Thornton and Martin\u2019s 2012 book, \u201cHaa Leelk\u2019w Has Aan\u2019 Saaxu: Our Grandparents\u2019 Names on the Land\u201d go here: http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/art\/2012-04-19\/new-kind-atlas-southeast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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