In 1975, TIingit Elder Charlie Joseph Sr. began working with the newly formed Alaska Native Brotherhood Education Program, today known as the Sitka Native Education Program. “Isabella Brady was the director of the Program and she got us interested in recording place names around Sitka. We would pack up and travel around in the Program’s van as Charlie pointed out various locations and told us their names in Tlingit,” explains Ethel Makinen, a fluent Tlingit speaker and the Naa Tlaa (clan mother) of the Sitka L’uknax.ádi.

This experience sparked an interest in Charlie Joseph, Isabella Brady and the Program’s cultural instructors to record all the Tlingit names that Mr. Joseph could recall onto maps and audiotapes. “We were just learning how to spell our language, so this was difficult! Charlie was very patient with us and was always willing to share his knowledge with us so that we could pass it on to the children,” Vida Davis, a fluent Tlingit speaker of lnupiaq heritage, adds. 

While pointing out and naming places around Sitka or on the project maps, Charlie named and identified old Tlingit villages, campsites, shorelines, islands, bays, etc. Often, Charlie was able to add which clans and individuals used these areas for putting up food and trapping or would break into a Tlingit song or traditional story, all captured and preserved by the Sitka Native Education Program. And Charlie would tell jokes . . . there is much laughter captured on the tapes of the project as well. In the end, Mr. Joseph shared nearly 400 traditional Tlingit names for geographic features within the Sheet’Ka Kwáan’s territory!

In I 993, and then again in I 998 the Sitka Tribe supported resumption of the project by local elders. Ethel, Herman Kitka Sr., and Mark Jacobs Jr. spent the summer of I 998 reviewing the placement of all the names on seven new nautical charts. When either of the gentlemen conducting this peer review would add a new name or definition or history of a name these additions would be noted and credit given in the project booklet that is being compiled~ After Ethel and Vida had carefully gone over the recordings made by Mr. Joseph in light of additions made by Herman and Mark the maps were brought out at a Sitka Tribal Cultural Committee meeting on October 29, 1 998. Since this time these charts have proudly hung upstairs at the Sitka Tribal offices.

In 1999, Sitka Tribe partnered with the Southeast Native Subsistence Commission (SENSC) to collect additional place names and cultural information associated with named sites. The information was put into a computer database and mapped using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Ethel Makinen and Vida Davis served as Local Research Coordinators for this project with assistance from STA and SENSC staff. This phase of the project also brought in information from other sources, including Herman Kitka’s previous work with Thomas Thornton (1 997), name lists by Governor James Brady and Louis Shotridge, and ethnographic research by John Swanton (1 908, 1 909), George T. Emmons (n.d. 91 6], 1 990), Walter Goldschmidt and Theodore Haas (1 998 Frederica de Laguna (1 960, 1 972), Ronald Olson (1 967), and others. In addition to the Local Research Coordinators and STA and SNEP staff who have contributed to the long term effort of documenting Native place names, SENSC would especially like to thank the Sitka Elders who contributed substantial time and effort to the project, and also Jeff Leer of the Alaska Native Language Center, who provided linguistic consultation. For more information on the SENSC Regional Place Names Project, please contact SENSC at 320 West Willoughby Avenue, Juneau, AK 99801.

The Sitka Tribe of Alaska thanks local businesses Old Harbor Books and Straiger Engineering for their donations to this project. For financial assistance the Tribe recognizes the Environmental Protection Agency, the Administration for Native Americans and the National Park Service. Technical assistance was graciously provided by the SENSC project coordinators and Map Alaska. And, finally to Isabella, Ethel, Vida, Roberta, Herman, Mark, Charlie Joseph and all our Elders—thank you for thinking of our children.Gunalchéesh!

Original Lingit Place Names Shared by Charlie Joseph, Sr., I 979
Lingit Place Names Recorded and Mapped by Sitka Native Education Program:
Isabella Brady, Ethel Makinen, Roberta David, Vida Davis, Anne Johnson and Nellie Lord, I 979 

Materials Translated, Transcribed and Recorded by Ethel Makinen and Vida Davis, I 993, 1998-2001
Project Review and Collaboration: Herman Kltka, Sr. and Mark Jacobs, Jr. I 998-2001
Project Coordination for the Sitka Tribe: Terry Pegues I 993 and Robi Craig I 998-2001
Project Support, Sitka Tribal Education and Training Program: Roxanne Houston 2000.2001 

SENSC Local Research Coordinators: Ethel Makinen and Vida Davis
GIS Map Production: Robi Craig (STA) and Matt Ganley (Map-Alaska)
SENSC Project Coordination: Thomas F. Thornton and Harold P. Martin 

©Sitka Tribe of Alaska, 465 Katlian St., Sitka, AK 99835, 2001
Please do not copy or distribute without permission