{"id":27566,"date":"2015-10-12T18:33:36","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T01:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/govt-recognizes-rivers-native-names\/"},"modified":"2015-10-12T18:33:36","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T01:33:36","slug":"govt-recognizes-rivers-native-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/govt-recognizes-rivers-native-names\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov’t recognizes river’s Native names"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 <\/strong>The federal government will now recognize a major river system in Alaska by its two native names.<\/p>\n

The Interior Alaska river currently known as Chandalar will now be called Teedriinjik River and Ch\u2019idriinjik River, thanks to a September decision by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, reported the Alaska Dispatch News.<\/p>\n

Teedriinjik means \u201cshimmering river\u201d and applies to the main stream and its northern tributary. Ch\u2019idriinjik means \u201cheart river\u201d and is associated with another tributary of the same river system.<\/p>\n

Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich\u2019in Tribal Government former Second Chief Edward Alexander submitted an application to the board last year asking for the river to be known by the names local Athabascan people have used for more than a thousand years.<\/p>\n

Officially recognizing those names would \u201chelp revitalize Gwich\u2019in culture and language,\u201d Alexander wrote.<\/p>\n

The Alaska Historical Commission, however, was opposed to the change. In a 6-1 vote last November, commission members rejected the change, citing the difficult pronunciations and a lack of evidence for widespread use.<\/p>\n

Commissioner Michael Hawfield voted with the majority and said the board supports using Native place names \u201cwhen it makes sense\u201d\u2014 but, according to Hawfield, in this case it didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just too big a change for a large number of Alaskans who are not indigenous,\u201d said Hawfield, who represents the Alaska Historical Society on the commission. \u201cIt might cause all sorts of unwanted pushback as being too politically correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

The U.S. Board of Geographic Names normally has a \u201cconservative\u201d approach to name changes to avoid confusion but supports proposed names with widespread local use, said senior staffer Jennifer Runyon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is somewhat unusual for the U.S. board to go against the state names authority\u2019s decision,\u201d she said. \u201cBut the U.S. board found the argument for the change more convincing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teedriinjik and Ch\u2019idriinjik are just the latest Native Alaska place names to be officially recognized.<\/p>\n

The Wade Hampton Census Area, named after a slaveholding Civil War general, became the Kusilvak Census Area in July. And in August, the President Barack Obama administration announced that Mount McKinley would return to its Koyukon Athabascan name of Denali.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ANCHORAGE \u2014 The federal government will now recognize a major river system in Alaska by its two native names. The Interior Alaska river currently known as Chandalar will now be called Teedriinjik River and Ch\u2019idriinjik River, thanks to a September decision by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, reported the Alaska Dispatch News<\/a>. Teedriinjik means […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-27566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=27566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}