Mobilizing Tlingit Oral History Archives to Support Place Names Reclamation Initiatives

Presented by Emily Comeau, Tamis Cochrane and Christine Schreyer at the Language Documentation and Archiving Conference, Berlin & Online, 4-6 Sept, 2024 Conserving and maintaining community archives can seem an insurmountable task, especially when this involves converting records that were made using obsolete or obsolescent technology into more modern formats. However, archives can contain vital knowledge that may otherwise be lost or forgotten, including information about history, governance, social norms and values, language, and knowledge of the land – such as place names. Audio recordings of Elders speaking their languages are especially important in communities where there are no longer fluent speakers. Through the TRTFN Oral Histories Project, which has focused on transcribing and translating oral histories recorded from the last several decades, we have uncovered a number of traditional Tlingit place names that, while held in the community’s collective memory, previously had not been documented. Traditional place names often provide detailed information about the relationship between the territory’s original inhabitants, and the resources available in that area. Place names are also important because they often describe the history of ongoing land use, continuing stewardship of the land, and the cultural significance of specific locations. They can also describe migration events, contact and conflict between groups, and the physical features of the landscape – including landforms, flora and fauna, minerals, climate, and how the landscape has changed over time. In this presentation, we will share findings from the TRTFN Oral Histories Project, particularly as they relate to place names and language, and we will discuss how this knowledge is being made accessible to community members through a variety of initiatives, including a digital archive and dictionary, a mobile place names app that can be used out on the land, and an updated web-based map, among other projects. This work illustrates how oral history archives and legacy collections can be vital resources for both language and cultural revitalization and place names reclamation.