| Place names indicate how Indigenous peoples define their interrelationships with the land. This relationship imbues a consciousness of space, genealogy, stories, songs, and ceremonies embedded in oral traditions and oral history. This Yukon-based study was located in Southern Tutchone territory within the community of Burwash Landing and with the Kluane First Nations Elders. It examined Kwaday Kwandur-Long Ago Stories, specifically, oral traditions and place names within Lhu'aan Man Keyi--Big Fish Lake Country. The Southern Tutchone potlatch ceremony continues a Kaajet gift-giving of naming individuals. Using Indigenous qualitative research methods required an examination of the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of oral traditions, Indigenous knowledge, sociolinguistics, and cartography to understand geospatial narratives--Southern Tutchone narratives and songs that locate them to these place names. Narratives allow Elders to speak a past into the present as they share their spatial knowledge.;This research takes the concept of spatiality beyond the physical understandings of cartography through the lens of oral traditions and oral history into the spaces of Elders' collective narrative memory. Oral traditions function as mnemonic maps and talking landscapes that the language trails from place to place. I examined two Southern Tutchone songs in this study: "Jimmie Johnson" and "Little Arm Tatay", to place Kaajet to mapped spaces in time. The research indicates that the land is more than the geographical, physicality of mapped boundaries. It holds memories through narrative forms, including the performances within a place-naming ceremony. Our grandfather, Tsayda Ta, Jimmie Johnson, and grandmother, Ena, Emma Johnson's daughter, Jenny Johnson, whose Southern Tutchone name is K'ama Dzea--Ptarmigan Heart--a landscape feature. This ascribed, place name began a trajectory in this academic research. As a place and a Kaajet name, K'ama Dzea will continue to provide a trail to keep these geospatial memories gifting to future Kaajet and Aguna narratives.;Key Words: oral traditions, oral history, cartography, sociolinguistics, clan genres, geospatial narratives, metaphor, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous languages... |
