DDRIG: Illiamna Yup'ik Geographic Knowledge and Sense of Place in Southwest Alaska

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This project will document traditional knowledge of Yup'ik place names in the Iliamna region of Southwest Alaska. Recent attention to indigenous place names in Alaska has profound implications for our understanding of the relationships between humans and their environment. Just as the Athabaskan place name Denali reflects an Alaska Native perspective on the land, the thousands of Iliamna Yup'ik place names provide insight into land use, migration, and conservation in a critical geographic area. The Iliamna region lies at a crossroads between the core Yup'ik speaking area in the Kuskokwim River drainage and the more peripheral Bristol Bay and Alaska Peninsula regions. It is here that Yup'ik speakers are in contact with speakers of the very different Dena'ina Athabaskan language. The Iliamna region is also rich in natural resources, including fisheries and minerals. Documentation of traditional knowledge of the environment will thus not only help to understand the history of Yup'ik peoples in this region, it will also inform future resource policy in Alaska. This project is extremely urgent, as the Iliamna dialect of Yup'ik is critically endangered. The oral narratives and place name maps recorded by this project will serve as an enduring record for future generations of local residents of the Iliamna Lake area and other scholars. The co-PI has a well-developed working relationship with the Iliamna Lake communities, and the collaborative approach ensures the success of the planned research. The goal of this research is to explore Yup'ik peoples' ways of using landscape and interactions with the land by analyzing Iliamna Yup'ik place names within oral narratives as they relate to sense of place. Place names reflect human interaction with the landscape, both mythically through creation stories and prosaically through individual and collective experiences of and observations on the land. People share place names and useful information about the environment with others when traveling, harvesting resources, and trading goods with neighboring groups. Using a community-based participatory research method, this project will develop a typology categorizing Yup'ik place names and oral narratives in cultural and physical meanings. Methodology will include participant observation, key respondent interviews, and mapping exercises in the Iliamna communities Newhalen, Iliamna, Kokhanok, and Igiugig. Fieldwork will be conducted during all seasons in order to better capture the seasonal nature of Yup'ik land use. During the fieldwork local Tribal/Village Council members and Yup'ik speaking Elders will participate in the research and formulate additional research questions from a local perspective. The results of the research will serve as the basis for the co-PI's University of Alaska Fairbanks Ph.D. dissertation. More broadly, this project will serve as a model both for documentation of Iliamna Yup'ik place names and oral narratives, and documentation of Iliamna Yup'ik geographic knowledge and environmental changes. The documentation of local geographic knowledge will be useful to linguists, anthropologists, Yup'ik educators, geographers, other scholars in a variety of disciplines and state and federal land use managers.