Dena'ina

Background

James Kari, a linguist, assembled more than 1,650 of the names that these five groups gave to the features of the ground within 100 to 200 miles of the summit of Denali. Park managers use where those names sit to map where each group lived and travelled. The Dena'ina are a Northern Athabascan people, and NPS counts them with the Koyukon, the Lower Tanana, the Upper Kuskokwim and the Western Ahtna among the five Athabascan peoples whose homeland includes Denali National Park and Preserve. On the south side of the Alaska Range a Dena'ina band called the Susitnuht'ana used an area extending north from the mouth of the Susitna River to the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. A second park account records the Dena'ina as the Athabascan people of the Lake Clark region, where they have lived for thousands of years, and says the salmon, caribou, moose and edible plants of that country still support the people who harvest them.

Parks on its homelands

Denali National Park and Preserve

On the south side of the Alaska Range, a Dena'ina band called the Susitnuht'ana, or Susitna River people, used ground running north from the mouth of the Susitna River to the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains. The Denali area carries more than 1,650 Athabascan place names within 100 to 200 miles of the summit, and NPS uses where those names sit to map where each group lived and travelled. Source

Lake Clark National Park and Preserve

Qizhjeh Vena, a place where people gather lake, is the Dena'ina name for Lake Clark, and the first people came to the region more than 10,000 years ago for the salmon, caribou, moose, and edible plants. Kijik, the English spelling of Qizhjeh, was one of Alaska's longest year-round villages and stood there for nearly 900 years, until a flu and measles epidemic in 1902 killed many of the people who lived in it. Source

Affiliations

• Tanana Chiefs Conference

  A regional consortium rather than a Dena'ina government, the Tanana Chiefs Conference is an Alaska Native non-profit corporation organized as Dena' Nena' Henash. It has 42 members, including 39 villages and 37 federally recognized tribes, and covers 235,000 square miles of interior Alaska. Its region is divided into six subregions, Yukon Koyukuk, Yukon Tanana, Lower Yukon, Upper Kuskokwim, Yukon Flats and Upper Tanana.

  https://www.tananachiefs.org/about/

Sources

• https://www.nps.gov/articles/aps-v5-i1-c15.htm
• https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/people-of-lake-clark.htm

Checked September 2026.

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