This is Dena’ina ełnena.



In recent years, more and more events and rally open with a land recognition. A land recognition, or territory acknowledgement, is a statement that recognizes the indigenous people who have been dispossessed of their land by settler-colonial nations.

In Alaska, 1/7 of the population is Alaska Native or Native American. Native people and culture are integrated into the general population. It is crucial that indigenous peoples’ claim to the land is recognized, as their rights to land and livelihood has been degraded for centuries.

Prior to colonization, indigenous people did not “own” the land. Property was not a concept. The land did not belong to the people – people belonged to the land. People stewarded the land, and its bounty was shared by all.

Land recognition is one of the first steps of the larger process of decolonization. But it is not enough to simply state who lived on the land first; land recognitions must also recognize the broken treaties, the fact that indigenous people were dispossessed and evicted from their land, and that the settler-colonial system continues to oppress indigenous people to this day, by depriving them of their health and wellbeing, culture and traditions.

Settlers must recognize that they are guests on indigenous land, and that they are not entitled to its governance.

Scope of Project

In this volume, there are two maps.

The first is the Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Alaska, published by the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This map is so familiar to me, as it is posted at all levels of educational institutions throughout Alaska. There are high resolutions available online, where you can see the indigenous place names for most major communities within Alaska. It is important to note that the delineation between regions is not a strict border. I was inspired by the ANLC map to create my own version, featuring place names within southcentral Alaska, which is the second map shown.

Southcentral Alaska is home to more than half of Alaska’s population, and is the most densely populated region of Alaska. This map features the Anchorage Bowl and the southern half of the Matanuska-Susitna River valleys. It is within the traditional territory of the Dena’ina people, and Ahtna people have also lived in the area, and they frequently intermingled. The Dena’ina and the Ahtna people are Dene (Athabascan) people, and are related to other Dene peoples within Alaska, Canada, along the Pacific coast, as well as the Navajo and Apache nations.

Shem Pete’s Alaska: The Territory of the Upper Inlet Dena’ina, James Kari’s seminal work about Dene place names, was invaluable in the creation of my map. The man interviewed by James Kari, Shem Pete (1896-1989), was an intrepid traveler who had a vast repository of knowledge about Dena’ina place names. In his work, there is a wealth of stories and legends. For Alaskans, it is a must-read.

Where there is only one place name present, it is in Dena’ina only; where there are two places names, it is in both Dena’ina and Ahtna. I decided to insert recorded Ahtna place names when they were present, to recognize the fact that this is a traditionally bilingual region. Dene people in this area were versed in both languages as they traveled, traded, and intermarried, and in the later colonial period, Native people here frequently spoke four or more languages: Dena’ina, Ahtna, Russian, and English.

I am someone who is descended from settlers. The purpose of this volume is to convey and amplify what I have learned from my Native friends and colleagues to the public at large. My goal is that settlers in Alaska will become more comfortable using longstanding indigenous places names, instead of marking familiar geographical features with colonial names. Captain Cook does not need the attention that he receives.

I encourage my readers to engage with the indigenous peoples of the land that they are living on.