RESPECT the land. And RESPECT the water. The land, it’s like part of us. You need to treat it right. You don’t just kill animals. You only kill what you need and show your RESPECT. You don’t even tease a moose. We have a lot of stories about that: RESPECT the Land kids teased a moose and the game all went away. [It’s all about] RESPECT. - It’s Like Part of Us Thousands of caribou used to come here... they stopped because people mistreated them... A Traditional Use Study of Inland Dena’ina Ties to the Chulitna River & Sixmile Lake Animals, you have to take care of them. If you don’t treat them right, they will go away from you. They give themselves to you [willingly], but they watch. Basins, Lake Clark National Park They watch how they are treated, and if you don’t treat them right they will go. and Preserve - Gladys Evanoff Douglas Deur, Ph.D. | Karen Evanoff | Jamie Hebert - 2018 - This research was performed under a Cooperative Agreement between the USDI National Park Service’s Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and the Department of Anthropology, Portland State University, under Cooperative Agreement No. P11AC90967, Task Agreement No. P13AC01460. Table of Contents Introduction . 1 Plant Harvesting in the Study Area . 186 • Modern Traditional Crafts, Native Materials, . 200 The Physical Setting . 10 • and Gathering Places . 200 • Special Harvesting Landscapes: Chulitna River Gravel Bars . 203 Inland Dena’ina Land & History: A Brief Introduction . 19 • Inland Dena’ina after Russian Contact. .22 Revisiting Land and Resource Use within a Cultural Context . 205 • Historical Change in Inland Dena’ina Settlement. .27 • TEK and Resiliency in a Dynamic Environment . 206 • Changes in Inland Dena’ina Transportation . .35 • Elders, Knowledge, Land, and Survival. 209 • The Modern Village of Nuvendaltun (Nondalton) . .38 • Healing Lands, Healing Resources . 213 • Other Traditionally Associated Villages . .44 • Hek’dichen Hdakaq’: Lime Village . 44 • K’qizaghtetnu: Stony River . 45 Conclusions: Cultural Values, Landscapes, and Survival in the Dena’ina Homeland . 217 • Nila Vena: Iliamna. .46 • Nughil Hdakaq’: Newhalen. .46 Appendix One: Preliminary Overview of Compliance Implications . 221 • Hduvunu Hkaytaghi’u: Pedro Bay . .46 • National Historic Preservation Act (Sections 106 and 110). .222 • American Indian Religious Freedom Act and Executive Order 13007 . .225 Travel, Trails, & Traces on the Land: Fundamentals of the Inland Dena’ina Cultural Landscape. .48 • Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act . 226 • The Cultural Uses & Meanings of Trails. 51 • Executive Order 12898 . 227 • Culturally Modified Trees Within the . .58 • (Environmental Justice). 228 • The Vegetation of Campsites . 69 • Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. 228 Burials, Sacred Sites, & Other Places of Unique Importance . .72 Appendix Two: Future Needs & Recommendations . .230 • Sacred Places . 75 Sources . 235 Natural Resource Harvests in the Study Area: Key Themes . 79 • Interviewees Mentioned in the Text . .235 • The Ethics of Taking: Dena’ina Perspectives on Hunting and Other Resource Harvests . 80 • Interviewee Codes . .236 • Demonstrating Respect Toward Game Species. .80 • Bibliography . 237 • Balance and Redistribution within the Dena’ina Community . 111 • Traditional Choreographies of Inland Dena’ina Subsistence . 114 Notes. .248 • Traditional Land & Resource Tenure . 120 Hunting & Trapping in the Study Area: Key Species, Landscapes, & Knowledge . 126 • Inland Dena’ina Big Game Hunting . 129 • Moose Hunting in the Study Area. .129 • Caribou Hunting Within the Study Area . 137 • Trapping for Beaver, Ground Squirrel, and other Animals . .140 • Beaver Trapping & Hunting on the Chulitna . 143 • Ground Squirrel & Other Species at Groundhog Mountain . 146 • The Hunting & Trapping of Other Small Animals . 149 • Other Species Commonly Hunted in the Study Area . 151 • Black and Brown Bear . 151 Fishing & Fish Camps. 157 • Salmon Fishing in Inland Dena’ina Tradition . 157 • Fish Camp, Salmon, and the Endurance of Dena’ina Culture . 164 • Freshwater Fish . 175 iii iv while we focus somewhat on NPS lands, we also include traditional activities on tribal, corporation, state, or other federal Introduction lands potentially relevant to Native uses of the core area. For countless generations, Lake Clark has been home to the inland Dena’ina people. This unique and vast fresh-water lake complex sits at the intersection of sprawling tundra, taiga, and jagged cordillera, dotted with villages. Here, village All of these entities—tribal corporation, state, federal—effect the traditional homelands of the inland Dena’ina, including life has been sustained by herds of caribou, shorelines populated by moose and beaver, vast runs of salmon ascending lands in or immediately upstream from Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Yet documentation of potential effects of 3 from Bristol Bay, and other natural assets. But the area’s uniqueness extends beyond its abundant natural resources. their decisions on cultural sites and processes remains thin. Also unique is the National Park Service (NPS) unit that has occupied the region known as Lake Clark National Park and The NPS has long recognized that by law inland Dena’ina cultural sites and place-based values and activities warrant Preserve (LACL) in recent decades. documentation and special management.4 But discussion of the management responsibilities of park staff and of Initially created in 1978 under Presidential Proclamation 4622, the park came under the mandate of the NPS to manage potential compliance responsibilities remain tentative without data on the nature and distribution of these sites, park lands and resources for the benefit of human communities with ancient connections to the area. Management of activities, and values. So to remedy the situation, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve cooperated with the Nondalton the park by NPS came with instructions to not only protect the integrity of caribou herds, salmon runs, and other natural Tribal Council (NTC) in documenting lands and resources of cultural significance within the Chulitna River Basin and resources, but also the living culture of Dena’ina people. According to the terms of that order, Native culture and Native downstream, including the southern end of Lake Clark and Sixmile Lake. The NPS initiated this study with the recognition peoples’ subsistence traditions were worthy of documentation and protection by the NPS. The order states: that park staff were being asked to document or report National Register properties throughout this area, but without sufficient information to do so. In many respects, the study covers the Interior Dena’ina cultural landscape—involving both the meaning of the landscape The continued existence of this culture, which depends on subsistence to Dena’ina people and their interactions with this core part of their traditional homeland, as well as the physical traces (often very subtle) the community has left on the landscape. We discuss places with unique cultural and historical “ hunting, and its availability for study, enhances the historic and significance to Interior Dena’ina people within the study area—places associated with historical events and people, scientific values of the natural objects protected herein because of with ceremonial traditions, and with enduring crafts. Similarly, we document places and resources associated with the ongoing interaction of the subsistence hunting is a value to be teaching cultural knowledge, with healing, and with “storied landscapes.”This document brings together diverse types of information, organized in a manner that will assist all parties in assessing the cultural meaning and value of landscapes protected and will continue under the administration of in the southwestern corner of LACL.5 Certain patterns are clear in the data. Interviewees attest to the deep cultural and the monument.” social significance of fish camps, but also beaver camps and other subsistence stations within the study area—not only as places of resource procurement, but as hubs of cultural activity and the intergenerational transmission of core cultural knowledge. (Some, but not all, of these camps are included on maps within this report.) Many other aspects of Dena’ina culture are sustained by these places, such as traditional craft skills, knowledge of cold weather survival.