Inupiat Naming and Community History: The Tapqaq and Saniniq Coasts near Shishmaref, Alaska

Abstract

Land in the Tapqaq-Saniniq region of northwest Alaskafunctions as a text for Inupiat Eskimo people. Information about place is transmitted orally and includes toponyms, which comprise a critical body of traditional Inupiat knowledge. Patterns associated with place-naming are tied to geography, subsistence hunting and gathering, kinship and social structure, local history, personal experience, and belief. This essay focuses on toponyms as a vehicle of Inupiat ideology, and as cultural artifacts. Toponym types identified include descriptive-geographic toponyms , generic descriptive names, activity toponyms, family texts, creation texts, cautionary toponym-tales, and memory names. Data for this study were collected through standard methods of folklore and cultural geography. The results update many early place-name studies by deepening the definition of what “place” is for the Inupiat, supplying context for toponyms, and amassing considerable data in the form of Native texts.