Dene (Athabaskan) Languages

Dinjii Zhuh K’yàa Yahdii / Yahdii in the Native Tradition: A Gwich’in (Dene) Star Chart is a product of more than a decade of research with Gwich’in traditional knowledge bearers and the first-ever star chart for a Northern Dene language. As a whole-sky constellation, the chart depicts the spirit of the ancient Gwich’in Traveler-Transformer figure, Ch’iteehàawkaii, arched over Earth as a teacher, protector, ally, and the embodiment of the world who continues to travel overhead on his snow-packed Milky Way trail.

A 27 x 39 inch poster printed on glossy cardstock. Copies available at the Alaska Native Language Center:
https://epay.alaska.edu/C21563_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=5956&SINGLESTORE=true

This version 4.3 will be the final version for this biblography, a project that was begun in 1993 by Greg Dixon. We have intentionally excluded all potential references for the year 2017. This version is about 29 pages longer and has about 211 entries added since the previous version 3.1 of 2012. Aaron Leggett has added over fifty sources many being rare items from newpapers and magazines. Also many corrections and additions were made to entries in earlier versions.

Thanadelthur is historically known as a Dene woman from the Lake Athabasca-Great Slave Lake territory. In today’s society she is recognized as Chipewyan, however this term was used differently during the initial years of the fur trade. The Cree captured Thanadelthur in the year of 1713 and she was imprisoned for a year until her dramatic escape along with another Chipewyan woman (Abel, 8). Thanadelthur was the only survivor, though she would soon cross paths with the Hudson’s Bay Company Factory Post that was administrated by James Knight. As a result, Thanadelthur started working with James Knight and it had mutually benefited them both. The young Dene woman sought to find her long-lost family and James Knight was in need of a translator that would be able to assist him in creating peaceful trading relations between the Cree.

In this ethnography of Navajo (Diné) popular music culture, Kristina M. Jacobsen examines questions of Indigenous identity and performance by focusing on the surprising and vibrant Navajo country music scene. Through multiple first-person accounts, Jacobsen illuminates country music’s connections to the Indigenous politics of language and belonging, examining through the lens of music both the politics of difference and many internal distinctions Diné make among themselves and their fellow Navajo citizens.

As the second largest tribe in the United States, the Navajo have often been portrayed as a singular and monolithic entity. Using her experience as a singer, lap steel player, and Navajo language learner, Jacobsen challenges this notion, showing the ways Navajos distinguish themselves from one another through musical taste, linguistic abilities, geographic location, physical appearance, degree of Navajo or Indian blood, and class affiliations. By linking cultural anthropology to ethnomusicology, linguistic anthropology, and critical Indigenous studies, Jacobsen shows how Navajo poetics and politics offer important insights into the politics of Indigeneity in Native North America, highlighting the complex ways that identities are negotiated in multiple, often contradictory, spheres.

Concepts of archaeology, ethnology, linguistics, environmental change, genetics, radiocarbon dates, mapping, herd-following, migratory caribou, bison and pronghorn and their hunters, and the need to move south, form the basis of the Navajo-Apache descending from the Canadian Chipewyan.

The purpose of this study is to compile an accessible geodatabase which brings together all the known Alaskan Athabascan (Dene) place names data research. Place name research and inventory is never complete; constraints include the ever-increasing loss of direct knowledge as more elders pass away; fading memories, and proper interpretation of geographic knowledge. Despite this, an ever-increasing body of knowledge has been, and continues to be compiled.

This website projects over 12,000 indigenous place names in the Athabascan language family on an interactive web map. Access is restricted to researchers. Please contact Smith to request access to the atlas.

https://sites.google.com/a/alaska.edu/denemapped/

10 monolingual interviews and two texts collected by the author from Dene Elders from Dillon about cultural loss and survival in the 20th century. Mirrored Dene-English texts followed by interlinear translation distinguishing 'live' morphology from morphological idioms. Historical introduction and 90-page morphological sketch. 535 pages.