Ahtna and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve: An Ethnographic Overview and Assessment

Simeone, William; Miller, Odin

An ethnographic overview and assessment (EO&A) is a cultural anthropological study that aims to document traditional associations between distinct cultural communities and landscapes, places or resources. Within the national park system in Alaska, EO&As are commonly conducted when it is believed or determined that Alaska Native groups, or other contemporary cultural groups, have customary and traditional use patterns or other ties to resources within a national park. The goal of a project is not only to document these patterns of resource use, but more generally, to document natural and cultural features of the park area that hold meaning for the group. To complete this process, researchers synthesize existing ethnographic information on the group and its use of and ties to the park. This is then used to identify data gaps that may need to be addressed in future research. Tis overview of Alaska Native history and culture in the Ahtna Region of eastern interior Alaska focuses on the Ahtna communities associated with Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. These communities include Mendaesde (Mentasta), Tsis Tl’edze’ Caegge (Cheesh’na or Chistochina), Ggax Kuna’ (Gakona), C’uul C’ena (Gulkana), Tezdlen Cae’e (Tazlina), Tl’aticae’e (Kluti Kaah or Copper Center), and Tsedi Na’ (Chitina). Yidateni Na’ (Cantwell) is an Ahtna community on western edge of the Ahtna homeland more closely connected to Denali National Park and Preserve. We use existing ethnographic and historical sources (and some information from our own fieldwork) to describe Ahtna culture as it existed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. We also examine the longstanding relationships of Ahtna to lands in and near the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, primarily in the northern part of the Copper River Basin. A primary target audience for this EO&A is staff at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, who may not have specialized training in anthropology, but who want to learn more about Ahtna, their culture and recent history. Such knowledge has multiple purposes: It can help inform park planning and cultural and natural resource management decision-making and can help to strengthen government-to-government relationships between the park and Ahtna communities. It can also facilitate development of interpretive materials for use in educating the public and orienting new employees to the cultural context of the park. Equally importantly, we hope that some Ahtna will fnd this report to be a useful companion to Simeone’s (2018) Ahtna: Netseh Dae’ Tkughit’e’ “Before Us, It Was Like Tis” – an ethnographic and historical overview commissioned by Ahtna, Inc. and completed with intensive input from a panel of Ahtna culture-bearers. While this present volume directly parallels Simeone (2018) in many places,1 it also draws from new sources of data (e.g., a more thorough review of de Laguna and McClellan’s fieldnotes) and includes a detailed overview of Ahtna sites in and near the park (Chapter 8). Other important audiences are researchers, park visitors, and the general public who are interested in learning more about the Ahtna and their deep roots in what is now Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.