Lingı́t Yoo X̲ 'atángi

This paper will summarize and advance upon the work that has been done, recognizing the prehistoric depth of the Na-Dene languages in Alaska. It is published as a white paper to allow subsequent updates as more data is added. It is intended to be responsive to any peerreviews sent to the author as well. The paper presents the Alaska Traditional Dene place name

Handbook of North American Indians, 1981

Arctic Biodiversity Trends: Selected indicators of change

Language not only communicates, it defines culture, nature, history, humanity, and ancestry. The indigenous languages of the Arctic have been formed and shaped in close contact with their environment. They are a valuable source of information and a wealth of knowledge on human interactions with nature is encoded in these languages. If a language is lost, a world is lost. This deep knowledge and inter-connectedness is expressed in Arctic song, subsistence practices, and other cultural expressions but especially in place names across the Arctic. Place names of the indigenous peoples reflect subsistence practices, stories, dwelling sites, spawning sites, migratory routes of animals, and links to the sacred realms of the indigenous peoples of the north.

Landscape in Language, ed. by D.M. Mark, A.G. Turk, N. Burenhult and D. Stea, 225-37, 2011

This paper further explores the non-universality of landscape terms by focusing on one particular landscape, the Yukon Intermontane Plateau of western Alaska. This region serves as the boundary between two great language families of North America, Athabaskan and Eskimo, and thus offers a unique laboratory in which to examine the extent to which cultural factors in two genetically unrelated languages influence the categorization of a single, fixed landscape. Drawing on published lexical sources, unpublished place name documentation, and firsthand interviews with Native speakers, the results presented here demonstrate that, while Athabaskan and Eskimo speakers may occupy the same landscape, their respective languages conceptualize that landscape in different ways.

In: Arctic Human Development Report. Akureyri: Stefansson Arctic Institute: pp. 45-68.

This module prepares students for BCS321 where the history of peoples and cultures in the circumpolar world is studied in depth, and for BCS 322 which studies the cultures and futures of northern peoples.

The Tlingit language has experienced a rapid decline in speakers over the past hundred years. This paper explores the factors contributing to language loss—in particular the impacts of Native American genocide by the U.S. Governments—and makes recommendations on the next steps to create a Tlingit Language Movement to reverse language shift.

2015

Module 4: Peoples and Cultures of the Circumpolar World This module prepares students for BCS321 where the history of peoples and cultures in the circumpolar world is studied in depth, and for BCS 322 which studies the cultures and futures of northern peoples. Overview Peoples and Cultures of the Circumpolar World surveys the origins and environments for peoples and cultures in the Arctic, with an emphasis on the first peoples and long-term settlers in the circumpolar world. It discusses traditional subsistence economies of the taiga, tundra, and coast, and adaptations to ecological and historical change, followed by a discussion of the settlement and colonization of the circumpolar world by outsiders. Using a variety of definitions, it catalogs the indigenous peoples of the North, making clear distinctions between settlement patterns in the Old World and in the New World., concluding with a discussion of who is a "northerner" in today's globalizing world. At the end of the module is a section for guided research into northern peoples and cultures today.