Why Do We Live Here? Contents in Early 2013, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation Journal-Style Retrospective Comple- Why Do We Live Here?
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Investigating Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Áak’w and T’aakú Aaní Richard Carstensen Discovery Southeast for Goldbelt Heritage Foundation & UAS School of Education A high school course Feb—May, 2013 update, 2020 Why do we live here? Contents In early 2013, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation journal-style retrospective comple- Why do we live here? ......................................... 3 Preface (GHF), asked if I was interested in a class on Investigat- ments her outlines and materials A windy walk ..................................................................3 ing Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) for Juneau with some highlights of one of Kaxdigoowu Héen historical series ...........................5 the most memorable educational Gunalchéesh! ................................................................6 high school students. I fondly remembered the GHF Evolution of the TEK class ............................................6 summer academy in 2010, and our course manual What endeavors of my career. Part 1 ● Investigating TEK ............................. 6 would Raven see? (http://www.goldbeltheritage.org/). Etymology of " village" .................................................7 One of our longer-term goals in 2010 had been to extend Preface 2020 With luxury The hunt for t’óok’ .........................................................7 those learning opportunities—piloted in summer immer- of hindsight, one of the more Framing the question: needs and setting ....................13 sion courses—to the rest of the school year. Now, with important parts of this manual Goon héen: springfed stream ........................................14 support from UAS School of Education, these objectives was initially relegated to Appendix Haa atxaayí: our food ....................................................15 were in sight. status: the philosophy and future GIS: mapping Lingít Aaní ...............................................18 Especially exciting was the essential question for this of place names throughout LingÍt Part 2 ● Kwáans .............................................. 22 course—“Why do we live here?” This theme was select- AanÍ. Appendix 4) Naming Kwáan range .................................................................22 ed by Dionne Cadiente-Laiti (GHF), Barbara Cadiente- our home and Appendix 5) US Food and geography ....................................................25 Nelson (JSD), and Kate Jensen, Education & Curriculum Board on Geographic Names described a process Part 3 ● Village location factors .................... 27 Specialist (9-12) for GHF, who taught and coordinated and political arena that has since gained momentum Why we camp here .......................................................31 the course. Their idea was to investigate—with guidance and recognition I could not have thought possible in PRIMARY SITING FACTORS: ....................................33 from elders, culture-bearers, scientists and naturalists— 2013. 1) Level, well-drained, diggable .................................33 the potential factors for choosing winter village sites and This pair of essays deserves to be a standalone pdf. Archaeology on the water bed ....................................35 summer resource camps. I'm updating them in summer 2020. Since they're still Examples in photos & LiDAR ......................................36 I’ve explored the Southeast woods and waters for embedded in this GHF manual, I will sweep through Antiquity of gardening .................................................38 38 years. Goldbelt Heritage's essential question has 2) Yakwdeiyí, canoe beach .........................................39 and make a few minor changes to it as well. Both become, increasingly, a personal quest for me. How did 3) Reliable water .........................................................43 pdfs—the larger whydowelivehere.pdf and the compo- LiDAR for Aanchgaltsóow ...........................................44 people use this country? How has that use evolved (or nent placenames essay—will continue to be download- 4) Southerly sun .........................................................46 devolved) over time? What do the ancestors—and their able from JuneauNature. 5) Viewshed & defensible topography ....................49 light-footed traces on raised beaches, salt lagoons, and SECONDARY SITING FACTORS ...............................51 pitch trees—teach us about sustainable lifeways? 6) Away from bear hotspots ......................................51 Still more ‘essential’ are questions about the future. If 7) Holding lagoons ......................................................53 they could speak, what story and practise would those Appendices: ...................................................... 55 ancestors prescribe, for the challenging centuries to 1) The village cycle ......................................................55 come? 2) Words pertaining to environment .........................56 Kate Jensen’s curriculum for the course Why do 3) Words for living places ............................................57 we live here? is at http://www.goldbeltheritage.org/. My naturalist, Discovery Southeast 4) Naming our home ..................................................58 5) US Board on Geographic Names .........................60 References ........................................................ 63 Cover: Oblique view north over Tsaa T’ei Héen estuary, site of Áak’w Kwáan village. ● Inset: Student Elia Krumm studies aerial 3D image of our field trip location in an ‘old-fashioned’ 35-mm slide viewer. 2 • Why do we live here? www.goldbeltheritagefoundation.org • 2020 Why do we live here? A windy walk On February 14th, 2013, in wind and sideways sleet, a dozen high school students crossed the footbridge over Mendenhall River, en route to Kaxdigoowu Héen, going back clear water (Montana Creek)—a perfect day to think about the Little Ice Age. I’d asked Liana Wallace, L’eeneidí, to join us, to help students see past steel bridges, asphalt bike trails, 50-year-old second growth, and Discovery Southeast's bullet-proof trailhead interpretive signs, 1 to a time when ancestors gleaned everything needed for human sustenance and comfort from the spectacular Neoglacial landscape of Áak’w Aaní. We gingerly slithered over compacted ice slicks on the trail, Liana Wallace, Áak’w Kwáan, L’eeneidí, Yaxte in several places finding it safer to bushwack alongside that Hít, at mouth of Kaxdigoowu Héen, describing the open, unforeseen skating rink through fringing, trackless forest. ~600-year-old fish trap here, and the L’eeneidí shaman/stream-steward whose cabin stood nearby. Our destination was one of the oldest known cultural landmarks in Áak’w Aaní, the site where a skillfully-woven fish trap was excavated from irony, anaerobic mud in 1991. It had probably told about complexities of exavation and preservation of this historic discovery—the first been buried in one of the sudden outbursts of sediment for basketry-style fish trap recovered by archaeologists on the Northwest Coast. which Kaxdigoowu Héen is still notorious. Certainly the basket Much has been written about the trap, its construction style, and the many challenges in wasn’t willfully abandoned; this was a painstakingly constructed restoration. 3 Less is known about the environment in which the trap was once used (Why work of art. they lived there!). To re-imagine the setting, I called Greg Chaney, a geomorphologist who Huddling hunch-shouldered on the gravel bar at the Kaxdi- participated in the excavation. The basket was buried in sediment so fine that centuries goowu Héen—Mendenhall confluence, 2 we listened as Liana passed with no decomposition. Upon exposure to the withering air, lashings of 2-stranded 1 Designed by Discovery Southeast on contract with CBJ Parks & Rec. See also rope, incorporating some kind of animal hair, turned to mush in a few days. Carstensen (2013). 2 Aerial view is in Appendix 4: Naming our home. 3 The most detailed account is Carrlee (2009). 3 • Why do we live here? www.goldbeltheritagefoundation.org • 2020 In the mid-1700s, rather than coniferous forest, Mendenhall Valley probably looked more like this scene on Chilkat River, summer, 2013. This cottonwood-willow-alder fringe occu- pies a slightly-raised channel-margin levee, caused by spillover deposition during frequent floods: the valley is considered by hydrologists to be aggrading. Overbank flooding no longer occurs in lower Mendenhall Valley due to channel incision. Hydrologically, the flood- plain has shifted to a degrading phase. Left: 1910 map Chaney said the broader context of today’s confluence includes cross-bedded alluvium, indicating shows west- a dynamic, advancing bar, and layers of large, coarse gravel. Montana Creek has been considered ward migration of Mendenhall ‘flashy’ by hydrologists such as my mentor Dan Bishop, who attributed much of that dynamism to River that the steep-walled, unstable valley of what we call McGinnis Creek4 in the headwaters. These walls undermined of crumbly slate avalanche routinely, hurling slugs of channel-plugging sediment far downstream. the site of a cabin marked by Adolph Knopf, USGS. On Knopf’s survey, miner’s cabins were almost always connected to dashed Imagining the incident that buried our fish trap about 600 years ago, I remembered camping on lines indicating trails or primitive roads. None led to this cabin a small Xutsnoowú (Admiralty) creek—maybe half the volume of Kaxdigoowu Héen—during a (red square) downstream