Negotiating the languages of landscape: place naming and language shift in an Inupiaq community

Abstract

This thesis examines the correlations between language shift, language death, and cultural change through the use of place names in White Mountain, Alaska. Traditionally Inupiaq place names have served as descriptive tools for navigating the landscape and as memory markers for oral histories, taboos, and places of harvest. Local Inupiaq place names have been inscribed in social memory for generations and, according to Inupiaq elders in White Mountain, none are without significance. As English replaces the Inupiaq language, these traditional place names fall out of use, as well as the local histories and other information associated with them. English place names used today continue to inscribe information into the land, but of a different sort. This thesis finds that cultural change and cultural resiliency can be clearly observed through and are related to language shift in White Mountain. Included in this thesis are listings and maps of traditional Inupiaq place names from White Mountain, Alaska.