Culturally Modified Trees in the Dena'ina Cultural Landscape

This topped tree marks a popular game lookout for Dena'ina hunters.

Portland State University/Doug Deur

The vast Dena'ina homeland includes a network of rivers and freshwater lakes, tundra, mountain ranges, and boreal forest of white birch, black spruce, and white spruce. Subsistence remains a strong tradition and today families sustain themselves by harvesting caribou, moose, beaver, salmon, berries, and many other plants and animals. To successfully hunt and gather, people travel long distances and linger at seasonal camps. To mark navigational cues and important locations in the landscape, trees are often used as sign posts or markers.

Culturally modified trees are those that have been marked in some way to indicate a location or landmark or show signs of harvest. Culturally modified trees are important to Indigenous peoples worldwide for specific cultural, dietary, spiritual, or navigational purposes. This ethnographic study documents these trees within the Dena'ina cultural landscape within and around what is now Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. Interviews were conducted with Dena'ina individuals about the meaning of these trees and their history. Some of the uses include: blazes for wayfinding or marking trail routes, trimmed trees for shelter or storage, harvested material (such as bark or boughs), and sometimes the tops of trees are cut, often above snow level when boughs are needed or at lookout areas.

As people have long affected the trees in certain ways, guided by the teachings of their culture, so these modified trees have long served as landmarks to travelers, continuing as a key part of living culture today. When tribal members see these tree modifications, they instantly perceive them as physical reminders of enduring Dena’ina cultural values and practices, touched by the ancestors and confirming oral traditions about gentle care for the land.

“Their Markers as they Go”: Modified Trees as Waypoints in the Dena’ina Cultural Landscape, Alaska

Abstract

The Inland Dena’ina, an Athabaskan people of south-central Alaska, produce and value Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) in myriad ways. Ethnographic interviews and field visits conducted with Inland Dena’ina residents of the village of Nondalton, Alaska, reveal the centrality of CMTs in the creation and valuation of an Indigenous cultural landscape. CMTs serve as waypoints along trails, as Dena’ina people travel across vast distances to hunt wide-ranging caribou herds and fish salmon ascending rivers from Bristol Bay. CMTs also provide bark and sap used in Dena’ina material culture and medicines, leaving signature marks upon the spruce, birch, and other trees found in the sprawling taiga forest of the region. Dena’ina travelers value these markers as gifts from their elders and ancestors, helping modern-day people to orient themselves geographically, culturally, and spiritually. Today, with industrial-scale resource extraction proposed for Dena’ina traditional lands, including extensive open-pit mines, there is new urgency in demonstrating the geographical presence and extent of potentially affected Dena’ina people. CMTs have been overlooked in existing literatures in spite of their ubiquity and their cultural importance. Our research draws from the first-hand accounts of Dena’ina elders and survey across the landscapes of the Lake Clark core of the Dena’ina homeland.

Deur, D., K. Evanoff, and J. Hebert. 2020. “Their markers as they go”: Modified trees as waypoints in the Dena’ina cultural landscape, Alaska. Human Ecology 48: 317-333.