What do you think?
Rate this book
Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest
"Nelson spent a year among the Koyukon people of western Alaska, studyingtheir intimate relationship with animals and the land. His chronicle ofthat visit represents a thorough and elegant account of the mysticalconnection between Native Americans and the natural world."— Outside"This admirable reflection on the natural history of the Koyukon Riverdrainage in Alaska is founded on knowledge the author gained as a studentof the Koyukon culture, indigenous to that region. He presents theseAthapascan views of the land—principally of its animals and Koyukonrelationships with those creatures—together with a measured account of hisown experiences and doubts. . . . For someone in search of a nativeAmerican expression of 'ecology' and natural history, I can think of nobetter place to begin than with this work."—Barry Lopez, Orion NatureQuarterly"Far from being a romantic attempt to pass on the spiritual lore of NativeAmericans for a quick fix by others, this is a very serious ethnographicstudy of some Alaskan Indians in the Northern Forest area. . . . He haspainstakingly regarded their views of earth, sky, water, mammals and everycreeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. He does admire their love ofnature and spirit. Those who see the world through his eyes using theireyes will likely come away with new respect for the boreal forest and thosewho live with it and in it, not against it."— The Christian Century"In Make Prayers to the Raven Nelson reveals to us the Koyukonbeliefs and attitudes toward the fauna that surround them in their forestedhabitat close to the lower Yukon. . . . Nelson's presentation also givesrich insights into the Koyukon subsistence cycle through the year and intothe hardships of life in this northern region. The book is written withboth brain and heart. . . . This book represents a never beforehas the integration of American Indians with their environment been so wellspelled out."—Ake Hultkrantz, Journal of Forest History
308 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
32 people are currently reading
768 people want to read
About the author
Richard K. Nelson
19 books30 followersRichard K. Nelson (born 1941) was a cultural anthropologist and writer whose work has focused primarily on the indigenous cultures of Alaska and, more generally, the relationships between people and nature. He was the host to a public radio series called Encounters aired nationally.
Richard K. Nelson, known to his many friends in community of environmental writers as “Nels,” died on November 4, 2019, having asked that he spend his final minutes, after being taken off of life support, listening to the recorded sound of ravens. For those familiar with Nels’s life and work, such a request was fully in keeping with his tremendous passion for the natural world, especially for animals, and most especially for ravens and other animals he knew well from many decades of living in Sitka, Alaska. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, on December 1, 1941, Nels earned his B.S. and M.S. in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nels first began to live among the Eskimo hunting communities in Alaska as a master’s student at Wisconsin in 1964, eventually producing the book Hunters of the Northern Ice (1969). He later published such works as Shadow of the Hunter: Stories of Eskimo Life (1980) and Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (1983). from his memoriam by Scott Slovic.
Richard K. Nelson, known to his many friends in community of environmental writers as “Nels,” died on November 4, 2019, having asked that he spend his final minutes, after being taken off of life support, listening to the recorded sound of ravens. For those familiar with Nels’s life and work, such a request was fully in keeping with his tremendous passion for the natural world, especially for animals, and most especially for ravens and other animals he knew well from many decades of living in Sitka, Alaska. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, on December 1, 1941, Nels earned his B.S. and M.S. in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nels first began to live among the Eskimo hunting communities in Alaska as a master’s student at Wisconsin in 1964, eventually producing the book Hunters of the Northern Ice (1969). He later published such works as Shadow of the Hunter: Stories of Eskimo Life (1980) and Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest (1983). from his memoriam by Scott Slovic.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 25, 2015
In 1976 and 1977, anthropologist Richard Nelson lived with the Koyukon people of northwestern Alaska. Their vast forested homeland is in the region where the Koyukuk River feeds into the Yukon River. They are Athapaskan people, and they live inland from the Inupiaq Eskimos, who inhabit the coastal region to the west.
When Russian explorers found the Koyukon in 1838, they already had tobacco, iron pots, and other stuff, acquired via trade with Eskimos. They had already been hammered by smallpox. In 1898, they experienced a sudden infestation of gold prospectors; luckily, their streams were gold-free. Unluckily, the gold rush ended their isolation from white society. Swarms of missionaries and educators buzzed around the forest, determined to help the ignorant heathens rise out of barbarism, and experience the miracles of civilization and damnation.
When Nelson arrived in 1976, they were no longer nomadic. About 2,000 Koyukon lived in eleven villages. They travelled by snowmobile, hunted with rifles, and worshipped a Jewish guru. Most of those under 30 spoke only English, and some were not fond of anthropologists. Nelson spent a lot of time with the elders, who had been raised in the old ways. Then he wrote an important book, Make Prayers to the Raven. (In their stories, the creator was Raven.)
The Koyukon were the opposite of vegans. About 90 percent of their diet was animal foods. The bears, moose, geese, and salmon they ate came from the surrounding area, and were killed, butchered, and cooked by close friends and family. Their survival depended on the wildlife. They were extremely careful to take only what they needed, and to waste nothing.
Their wilderness was the opposite of big box grocery outlets that have an endless supply of fizzy sugar drinks, frozen pizza, and corn chips. A year of abundant salmon might be followed by a meager year. During Nelson’s visit, there were plenty moose and caribou, animals that had been scarce 30 years earlier. The Koyukon had to pay close attention to the land, and continually fine-tune their relationship to it. When times were lean, people starved — prior to the adaptation of rifles. Now, they also had dependable access to the mysterious industrial substances that white folks referred to as “food.”
Traditional Koyukon society needed nothing from the outside world. Their relationship to the ecosystem was one of absolute reverence and respect. They were not masters or managers, they were simply members of the family of life. The humble status of humans is evident in a frequently quoted phrase: “Every animal knows way more than you do.”
Nelson said it like this: “Traditional Koyukon people live in a world that watches, in a forest of eyes. A person moving through nature — however wild, remote, even desolate the place may be — is never truly alone. The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified. They feel. They can be offended. And they must, at every moment, be treated with proper respect. All things in nature have a special kind of life, something unknown to contemporary Euro-Americans, something powerful.”
The Koyukon were not exotic freaks. Their worldview and spirituality had much in common with all other cultures that thrived in the long era before the domestication fad. They were perfectly wild and free — healthy, happy, intelligent, normal human beings. Most modern people go to their graves without ever experiencing the magnificent beauty and power of the living world — the joy and wonder of the gift of life, the awe of being fully present in a sacred reality. Most of them live and die in monotonous manmade habitats, having established no spiritual connection to life.
Nelson was born in Madison, Wisconsin. His father was employed by the state. Their middle class life provided food, clothing, and shelter. A large portion of his childhood was spent in institutions of education — indoors — digesting, memorizing, and regurgitating words and numbers. At that time, Madison was a disaster of concrete, traffic, and hordes of strangers. Decades earlier, the forest and wildlife had been devoured by the metastasizing city. So, as a young animal, Nelson was raised in devastating poverty, like most modern kids, isolated from wildness and freedom.
Anyway, something cool happened. In 1973, Nelson hooked up with the University of Alaska and began spending time with Native Americans. He arrived with his Euro-American cultural programming, and its wacky anthropocentric model of the natural world. He had zero doubt that his perception of reality was correct and proper; it was absolute truth.
Then, he hung out with the Koyukon, and this blew his belief system completely out of the water. They were intelligent people, and they saw the world in a very different way. This made his Ph.D. mind whirl and spin. “My Koyukon teachers had learned through their own traditions about dimensions in nature that I, as a Euro-American, had either not learned to perceive or had been explicitly taught do not exist.”
In less than 200 years, the white wizards of Wisconsin have transformed a healthy wilderness into a hideous nightmare called Madison. It never occurred to them to adapt to the ecosystem, live with great respect and mindfulness, and preserve its health for future generations. The Koyukon, on the other hand, have inhabited their forest for thousands of years, and it doesn’t look much different from how they found it. They know every place in their forest as well as you know your kitchen. Every location is rich with stories and spirits.
The Egyptians built huge pyramids, enduring monuments to their civilized megalomania, built by legions of miserable slaves. The Koyukon have achieved something far more impressive. “This legacy is the vast land itself, enduring and essentially unchanged despite having supported human life for countless centuries.”
Nelson’s book is a reflection of their culture. He presents separate chapters to describe the physical realm and climate, insects and amphibians, fishes, birds, small mammals, predators, and large animals. Eighteen pages are devoted to their relationship with bears, and birds get 43 pages. The core of their culture is their relationships with the non-human relatives that share their land, and the need to nurture these relationships with absolute respect. Nature always punishes acts of disrespect with bad luck, illness, or death — to the offender, or to a family member.
The good news here is that it’s not impossible for a highly educated adult to override their toxic cultural programming and experience the beauty and power of creation. Most never do. The important message of this book is that we are absolutely lost, but there are paths that are not lost, healthy paths. Our cage is not locked, and it’s so much nicer outside. It’s alive!
When Russian explorers found the Koyukon in 1838, they already had tobacco, iron pots, and other stuff, acquired via trade with Eskimos. They had already been hammered by smallpox. In 1898, they experienced a sudden infestation of gold prospectors; luckily, their streams were gold-free. Unluckily, the gold rush ended their isolation from white society. Swarms of missionaries and educators buzzed around the forest, determined to help the ignorant heathens rise out of barbarism, and experience the miracles of civilization and damnation.
When Nelson arrived in 1976, they were no longer nomadic. About 2,000 Koyukon lived in eleven villages. They travelled by snowmobile, hunted with rifles, and worshipped a Jewish guru. Most of those under 30 spoke only English, and some were not fond of anthropologists. Nelson spent a lot of time with the elders, who had been raised in the old ways. Then he wrote an important book, Make Prayers to the Raven. (In their stories, the creator was Raven.)
The Koyukon were the opposite of vegans. About 90 percent of their diet was animal foods. The bears, moose, geese, and salmon they ate came from the surrounding area, and were killed, butchered, and cooked by close friends and family. Their survival depended on the wildlife. They were extremely careful to take only what they needed, and to waste nothing.
Their wilderness was the opposite of big box grocery outlets that have an endless supply of fizzy sugar drinks, frozen pizza, and corn chips. A year of abundant salmon might be followed by a meager year. During Nelson’s visit, there were plenty moose and caribou, animals that had been scarce 30 years earlier. The Koyukon had to pay close attention to the land, and continually fine-tune their relationship to it. When times were lean, people starved — prior to the adaptation of rifles. Now, they also had dependable access to the mysterious industrial substances that white folks referred to as “food.”
Traditional Koyukon society needed nothing from the outside world. Their relationship to the ecosystem was one of absolute reverence and respect. They were not masters or managers, they were simply members of the family of life. The humble status of humans is evident in a frequently quoted phrase: “Every animal knows way more than you do.”
Nelson said it like this: “Traditional Koyukon people live in a world that watches, in a forest of eyes. A person moving through nature — however wild, remote, even desolate the place may be — is never truly alone. The surroundings are aware, sensate, personified. They feel. They can be offended. And they must, at every moment, be treated with proper respect. All things in nature have a special kind of life, something unknown to contemporary Euro-Americans, something powerful.”
The Koyukon were not exotic freaks. Their worldview and spirituality had much in common with all other cultures that thrived in the long era before the domestication fad. They were perfectly wild and free — healthy, happy, intelligent, normal human beings. Most modern people go to their graves without ever experiencing the magnificent beauty and power of the living world — the joy and wonder of the gift of life, the awe of being fully present in a sacred reality. Most of them live and die in monotonous manmade habitats, having established no spiritual connection to life.
Nelson was born in Madison, Wisconsin. His father was employed by the state. Their middle class life provided food, clothing, and shelter. A large portion of his childhood was spent in institutions of education — indoors — digesting, memorizing, and regurgitating words and numbers. At that time, Madison was a disaster of concrete, traffic, and hordes of strangers. Decades earlier, the forest and wildlife had been devoured by the metastasizing city. So, as a young animal, Nelson was raised in devastating poverty, like most modern kids, isolated from wildness and freedom.
Anyway, something cool happened. In 1973, Nelson hooked up with the University of Alaska and began spending time with Native Americans. He arrived with his Euro-American cultural programming, and its wacky anthropocentric model of the natural world. He had zero doubt that his perception of reality was correct and proper; it was absolute truth.
Then, he hung out with the Koyukon, and this blew his belief system completely out of the water. They were intelligent people, and they saw the world in a very different way. This made his Ph.D. mind whirl and spin. “My Koyukon teachers had learned through their own traditions about dimensions in nature that I, as a Euro-American, had either not learned to perceive or had been explicitly taught do not exist.”
In less than 200 years, the white wizards of Wisconsin have transformed a healthy wilderness into a hideous nightmare called Madison. It never occurred to them to adapt to the ecosystem, live with great respect and mindfulness, and preserve its health for future generations. The Koyukon, on the other hand, have inhabited their forest for thousands of years, and it doesn’t look much different from how they found it. They know every place in their forest as well as you know your kitchen. Every location is rich with stories and spirits.
The Egyptians built huge pyramids, enduring monuments to their civilized megalomania, built by legions of miserable slaves. The Koyukon have achieved something far more impressive. “This legacy is the vast land itself, enduring and essentially unchanged despite having supported human life for countless centuries.”
Nelson’s book is a reflection of their culture. He presents separate chapters to describe the physical realm and climate, insects and amphibians, fishes, birds, small mammals, predators, and large animals. Eighteen pages are devoted to their relationship with bears, and birds get 43 pages. The core of their culture is their relationships with the non-human relatives that share their land, and the need to nurture these relationships with absolute respect. Nature always punishes acts of disrespect with bad luck, illness, or death — to the offender, or to a family member.
The good news here is that it’s not impossible for a highly educated adult to override their toxic cultural programming and experience the beauty and power of creation. Most never do. The important message of this book is that we are absolutely lost, but there are paths that are not lost, healthy paths. Our cage is not locked, and it’s so much nicer outside. It’s alive!
September 24, 2016
This detailed anthropological study from 1977 of the Koyukon people of the central Alaskan boreal forest provides an introduction to their view of the natural world and its inhabitants as an interconnected whole and of lives ruled by traditions and taboos dating from shamanic times but losing their hold on many younger people. It's very detailed, plant by plant, insect by insect, bird by bird, animal by animal, etc., but there is a cumulative effect and the author was also recording this information as a teaching aid for future generations of Koyukon who were becoming more and more Westernized. Overall, not an easy or quick read but one that leaves you with a concrete picture of subsistence life in the subarctic forests.
I perceived a male emphasis to the information - not strange considering that that was probably what interested him and what people felt comfortable revealing to him - so most information relates to hunting and fishing. Also, one thinks of indigenous contact with Europeans solely as a catastrophe, but the introduction of the rifle has made a huge positive difference, largely eliminating starvation which had not been uncommon. As one Koyukon said: "Some of these young kids, one time they asked Chief Henry [over 100 in the 1970s] if it wouldn't be better if the white man never came around here in the first place. He looked at them, and all he said was, 'Did you ever have to keep alive by eating ptarmigan droppings?'"
I perceived a male emphasis to the information - not strange considering that that was probably what interested him and what people felt comfortable revealing to him - so most information relates to hunting and fishing. Also, one thinks of indigenous contact with Europeans solely as a catastrophe, but the introduction of the rifle has made a huge positive difference, largely eliminating starvation which had not been uncommon. As one Koyukon said: "Some of these young kids, one time they asked Chief Henry [over 100 in the 1970s] if it wouldn't be better if the white man never came around here in the first place. He looked at them, and all he said was, 'Did you ever have to keep alive by eating ptarmigan droppings?'"
February 11, 2023
"And we might also give thought to the legacy that they have created, by which the people continue to live today. What is this legacy? We often remember ancient or traditional cultures for the monuments they have left behind--the megaliths of Stonehenge, the temples of Bangkok, the pyramids of Teotihuacán, the great ruins of Machu Picchu. People like the Koyukon have created no such monuments, but they have left something that may be unique- greater and more significant as a human achievement. This legacy is the vast land itself, enduring and essentially unchanged despite having supported human life for countless centuries. Koyukon people and their ancestors, bound to a strict code of morality governing their behavior toward nature, have been the land's stewards and caretakers. Only because they have nurtured it so well does this great legacy of land exist today. Here, perhaps, is the greatest wisdom in a world that Raven made.”
Nelson’s The Island Within is one of my most beloved books, and I hadn’t realized he died in 2019, so I decided to seek out some other of his books, and this one was fascinating, if a little repetitive, a gorgeous portrait of a culture in Alaska that has been able to accept Christianity and blend it with their beliefs, and stay true to their own worldview. It was so lovingly, thoroughly and professionally done, it made me so happy to think of a different worldview, or lifeway, and however briefly, in that worldview. I am grateful for this chance, and hope they continue to thrive 50 years later.
The first and most basic purpose of this book is to present a detailed account of Koyukon knowledge, belief, and behavior concerned with the natural world. This is an ethnographic study in the strict sense of the word descriptive portrayal of Koyukon culture and custom. My personal goal, here as elsewhere, is to create an accurate, sensitive description of a human lifeway. A second purpose is to compile a natural history, a systematic assemblage of descriptive information about a particular environment. It is intended as a “guidebook" to the boreal forest, derived from traditional knowledge of the Koyukon Indians. As a native natural history, it stands outside the established realm of Western science, though it has been organized and filtered through a Western mind. Biologists, naturalists, and environmental scientists will find here an alternative view on the nature of nature, together with a different concept of humanity's proper role in the environment.
The Koyukon Indians inhabit a huge expanse of wild country in northwestern interior Alaska, extending well to the north and south of the Arctic Circle. Their name derives from the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers, along which their villages and camps are situated. In their own language they are called Tl'eeyagga Hut'aaninh, a general term that includes other Athapaskan peoples as well. But with characteristic politeness they are willing to accept a name that outsiders can pronounce.
The Koyukon language belongs to a widespread family called Athapaskan, spoken by native people scattered throughout northwestern North America and in pockets as far south as California and Arizona. The northern Athapaskans include groups whose names seem appropriate to the forested subarctic wildlands in which they live the Chipewyan, Dogrib, Slave; Yellowknife, Hare, and others in Canada; the Koyukon, Ingalik, Holikachuk, Tanacross, upper Kuskokwim, upper Tanana, Tanana, Kutchin, Tanaina, Ahtna, and Han in Alaska.
The Koyukuk River bends along the village's west edge, and because the bank is carved away each spring the newer houses are built well back from it. A sharp-eyed observer will notice that Huslia is situated on a low sand ridge, which runs eastward for more than fifty miles across the flats. In Koyukon, the place is called Tsaatiyhdinaadakk' onh dinh, “where the forest fire burned the hill to the river."
The subarctic forests where the Koyukon live are very near the poleward margin of human habitation. Here the earth's surface is tilted so it receives only a quarter of the solar energy absorbed by tropical regions. This limited energy intake means austerity for all living things, including humans; and for a large part of the year it means cold. Winter holds absolute sway in Koyukon territory for about seven months of the year, with temperatures dropping as low as -50°, -60°, even - 70° (F). To one who has not experienced it, this cold is beyond imagining; but to the Koyukon it is an ordinary aspect of the world that must be met through adaptation and understanding.
Sky: yo
Sun: so, gha'olee
Sunshine: hak'idee'onh
Moon: dolt'olee
Moonlight: k'idolt'al
Full moon: kk' aanok'inaalyonh
Star: doon'
Twinkling stars: doon' na'alts' eeyh liyaah
Meteor: doon’ tsona
North wind: yoonhlits'in'
South wind: yoodots'in'
East wind: yooneets'in'
West wind: yoonhlinhts'in'
Storm: taalts'iyh
Fog: okk
Misty rain: okk kona'
Rain: konh
Pouring rain: nokonh dila
Hail: k'inloo
Thunderstorm: yok'i dok'idaadli d'ee
Thunderclap: hunk'iltuyd
Lightning: huditiltik
Rainbow: naaggadla dik'inaald'oonh, niltin ggaabeela
Snow: tseetl, noodaagha
Deep snow: tseetl nikoh
Falling snow: alyot
Blowing snow: yol yil taalts'iyh
Snow on the ground: noodaagha
Mountain: dlil
In the Distant Time, The Raven, incarnated as a young man, had paddled his canoe across a great body of water to ask a woman to marry him. She refused to be his wife, so he made her sink into the mud and disappear; and then he began paddling back home. The woman's mother kept two brown bears, and in her anger she told them to drown the young man. They dug furiously at the lake's edge, making huge waves everywhere on the water. But Raven calmed a narrow path before him and paddled on. Eventually he became exhausted, so he threw a harpoon that struck the crest of a wave. At that moment he fainted from the intensity of his concentration, and when he awoke a forested land had replaced the water. He saw that the first wave his harpoon struck had become a small mountain. Then it had glanced off, eventually striking a huge wave that solidified into another mountain- the one now called Deenaalee, or Mount McKinley. [Paraphrased from Jetté 1908:312-13]
Of all the elements of physical terrain, none is more important for the Koyukon than water, none more constantly a part of their consciousness. Although they are an inland people, their lives are dominated by water and the habitats it creates. Water shapes and modifies the land, presents avenues or barricades for travel, supports a wide assortment of plant and animal communities, and both threatens and sustains human life.
Large rivers are by far the most significant bodies of water for the Koyu-kon, whose villages and camp are situated along them, and whose group identity derives from them. The entire Koyukon system of geographic orientation is based on rivers, not on the compass points used by Westerners. The four cardinal directions and modifiers for intermediate points are used mainly with reference to the wind. Direction and distance on land are reckoned by a complex of terms meaning upriver, downriver, toward the river, away from the river, and across the river. Four prefixes measure distance for each term: dodot means nearby downriver, aadot and nodot move farther away downriver, and yoodot is a great distance downriver. Other features are also described by reference to the large rivers-for example, a lake has a shore toward the river, a shore away from the river, and upriver and downriver shores. I was often confused by the Koyukon people's way of orienting themselves by river current, because I was raised to think in terms of cardinal directions. Huslia people talk of going "up” to Fairbanks, for instance, because it is upstream from the mouth of the Koyukuk River. But Fairbanks is southeast of Huslia, so I considered it "over" or "down," certainly not "up." When Koyukon friends visited my home on a long, narrow inlet in southeast Alaska, they were constantly disoriented by the changing tidal current, which made "upstream" become "downstream" every six hours!
Wait, I see something: It sounds like a lullaby is being sung to children in the other world.
Answer: The sound of a swiftly moving current.
Thunderstorms are another common weather phenomenon in Koyukon country. They brood darkly beneath towering cumulus formations on hot summer afternoons, moving slowly across the land. Koyukon people fear the sudden violence of lightning and the crashing noise, and they advise taking shelter and avoiding open water when thunderstorms threaten. When a tree is split or someone is knocked down, they say it is caused by the thunder striking. Thunderstorms are transformations of a human spirit from the Distant Time, and because they have awareness they can be influenced. In years past people would paint a red circle on a canoe paddle and wave it toward the west as the dark clouds came near. At the same time they shouted: "Go out to the coast, where they will enjoy having you!" Apparently "they" refers to the Eskimos.
For seven months each year, the subarctic environment is transformed by a gift (or perhaps some would say a curse) of the weather. This, of course, is snow. By midwinter the land is covered by soft powder lying two to six feet deep in the forest, hardened to dunelike drifts on the broad lakes and rivers, creating a nivean world of its own. The coming of snow is forecast by many signs… When the sky is bright orange at sunrise there will be snow, "usually two mornings later." Perhaps the best sign of snow is a moondog, a luminous circle around a bright winter moon. When the Koyukon speak of it, they say, "the moon pulls his (parka] ruff around his face," as if he is telling them that snow is coming soon.
The culture of Athapaskan people like the Koyukon is highly adapted to the environment that snow creates. Their elegant and refined snowshoes are perhaps the most tangible expression of this, but there are others as well-more subtle but equally impressive. I have seen a man follow a bear's tracks made in frozen moss, then covered by two feet of undisturbed snow that showed faint but somehow perceptible irregularities in its surface. Knowledge of snow is also reflected in the elaboration of terms for its varieties and conditions.
They perceive artistic elegance in the form of the land and living things, much the same as in our Western tradition. This sensitivity toward natural design is quite outside the pragmatism that might dominate the lives of people subsisting directly from wild resources. Koyukon people often comment that a day or a scene is particularly beautiful, and they are attentive to fleeting moments mountains outlined against the sky, reflections on still water, a bird's song in the quietness. In their language, words like nizoonh ("pretty") or hutaadla'o ("beautiful) communicate these feelings. This is not a new way of seeing, as the ancient riddles and the statements of elders indicate.
Newcomers to the north country are sometimes amazed to find that forests exist here, for they expect endless barren lands of rock, ice, and snow. This feeling may not diminish with time after experiencing the intensity and duration of winter, the existence of a fairly dense, diversified forest becomes even more impressive. Home is in the forest for the Koyukon.
I have often thought this while traveling with my dogs through the silent, snow-laden trees: All the plants are dormant here for more than seven months each year. It is only the four or five months of warmth - -that quick flourish of growth that allows them to live at all. And because the animals could not exist without plants, they are equally beholden to summer. So whatever inhabits the subarctic winter lives on borrowed time, or more accurately borrowed energy, that carries it across the abyss of winter. [Huslia journal, February 1977]
TO the cold eye of statistics, plants may seem to have little direct importance in the economies of subarctic people like the Koyukon. It is reasonable to estimate that plant foods have never composed over 10 percent of the overall diet though this could vary sharply from time to time. By this measure, few people in the world are less dependent on plants for food. But vegetation provides the Koyukon with the essential materials for housing, heating, and manufacture of equipment. When these uses are considered, few people anywhere depend more completely on plants for their survival, especially since the absolute imperative for hear can be met here only by burning wood.
The eagles are rare indeed in Koyukon country, if my own experience serves as judgment. Only occasionally is one sighted in the distance, making broad, easy sweeps and circles on its great wings. Like the hawks, these birds receive little attention from the Koyukon, an interesting contrast to their strong emotional and symbolic meanings in our own and many native American cultures. The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaëtos) and bald eagle (Haliacetus leucocephalus) are both named tilila, and old individuals of either species are called k'iyona'.
Eagles are not eaten or used, but there is no taboo on killing them should someone have a reason. For example, an old shaman had killed one and skinned it, then stretched the skin and kept it on a wall of his house. Perhaps he did this because the eagle is known as a great animal through its exploits in stories of the Distant Time, when it performed feats of extraordinary strength.
The Koyukon homeland is not a wilderness, nor has it been for millennia. This apparently untrodden forest and tundra country is thoroughly known by a people whose entire lives and cultural ancestry are inextricably associated with it. The lakes, hills, river bends, sloughs, and creeks are named and imbued with personal or cultural meanings. Indeed, to the Koyukon these lands are no more a wilderness than are farmlands to a farmer or streets to a city dweller. At best we can call them a wildland.
The fact that Westerners identify this remote country as wilderness reflects their inability to conceive of occupying and utilizing an environment without fundamentally altering its natural state. But the Koyukon people and their ancestors have done precisely this over a protracted span of time. From this standpoint, they have made a highly effective adjustment to living as members of an ecosystem, pursuing a form of adaptation that fosters the successful coexistence of humanity and nature within a single community.
Almost every day had moments and experiences that seemed profound to me. My senses could scarcely contain the beauty around me. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by my feelings for this place and people, and I wish for a way to possess them in words or pictures. But neither will do, and the most I can hope for is a memory that is burned forever into the core of my mind.
Nelson’s The Island Within is one of my most beloved books, and I hadn’t realized he died in 2019, so I decided to seek out some other of his books, and this one was fascinating, if a little repetitive, a gorgeous portrait of a culture in Alaska that has been able to accept Christianity and blend it with their beliefs, and stay true to their own worldview. It was so lovingly, thoroughly and professionally done, it made me so happy to think of a different worldview, or lifeway, and however briefly, in that worldview. I am grateful for this chance, and hope they continue to thrive 50 years later.
The first and most basic purpose of this book is to present a detailed account of Koyukon knowledge, belief, and behavior concerned with the natural world. This is an ethnographic study in the strict sense of the word descriptive portrayal of Koyukon culture and custom. My personal goal, here as elsewhere, is to create an accurate, sensitive description of a human lifeway. A second purpose is to compile a natural history, a systematic assemblage of descriptive information about a particular environment. It is intended as a “guidebook" to the boreal forest, derived from traditional knowledge of the Koyukon Indians. As a native natural history, it stands outside the established realm of Western science, though it has been organized and filtered through a Western mind. Biologists, naturalists, and environmental scientists will find here an alternative view on the nature of nature, together with a different concept of humanity's proper role in the environment.
The Koyukon Indians inhabit a huge expanse of wild country in northwestern interior Alaska, extending well to the north and south of the Arctic Circle. Their name derives from the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers, along which their villages and camps are situated. In their own language they are called Tl'eeyagga Hut'aaninh, a general term that includes other Athapaskan peoples as well. But with characteristic politeness they are willing to accept a name that outsiders can pronounce.
The Koyukon language belongs to a widespread family called Athapaskan, spoken by native people scattered throughout northwestern North America and in pockets as far south as California and Arizona. The northern Athapaskans include groups whose names seem appropriate to the forested subarctic wildlands in which they live the Chipewyan, Dogrib, Slave; Yellowknife, Hare, and others in Canada; the Koyukon, Ingalik, Holikachuk, Tanacross, upper Kuskokwim, upper Tanana, Tanana, Kutchin, Tanaina, Ahtna, and Han in Alaska.
The Koyukuk River bends along the village's west edge, and because the bank is carved away each spring the newer houses are built well back from it. A sharp-eyed observer will notice that Huslia is situated on a low sand ridge, which runs eastward for more than fifty miles across the flats. In Koyukon, the place is called Tsaatiyhdinaadakk' onh dinh, “where the forest fire burned the hill to the river."
The subarctic forests where the Koyukon live are very near the poleward margin of human habitation. Here the earth's surface is tilted so it receives only a quarter of the solar energy absorbed by tropical regions. This limited energy intake means austerity for all living things, including humans; and for a large part of the year it means cold. Winter holds absolute sway in Koyukon territory for about seven months of the year, with temperatures dropping as low as -50°, -60°, even - 70° (F). To one who has not experienced it, this cold is beyond imagining; but to the Koyukon it is an ordinary aspect of the world that must be met through adaptation and understanding.
Sky: yo
Sun: so, gha'olee
Sunshine: hak'idee'onh
Moon: dolt'olee
Moonlight: k'idolt'al
Full moon: kk' aanok'inaalyonh
Star: doon'
Twinkling stars: doon' na'alts' eeyh liyaah
Meteor: doon’ tsona
North wind: yoonhlits'in'
South wind: yoodots'in'
East wind: yooneets'in'
West wind: yoonhlinhts'in'
Storm: taalts'iyh
Fog: okk
Misty rain: okk kona'
Rain: konh
Pouring rain: nokonh dila
Hail: k'inloo
Thunderstorm: yok'i dok'idaadli d'ee
Thunderclap: hunk'iltuyd
Lightning: huditiltik
Rainbow: naaggadla dik'inaald'oonh, niltin ggaabeela
Snow: tseetl, noodaagha
Deep snow: tseetl nikoh
Falling snow: alyot
Blowing snow: yol yil taalts'iyh
Snow on the ground: noodaagha
Mountain: dlil
In the Distant Time, The Raven, incarnated as a young man, had paddled his canoe across a great body of water to ask a woman to marry him. She refused to be his wife, so he made her sink into the mud and disappear; and then he began paddling back home. The woman's mother kept two brown bears, and in her anger she told them to drown the young man. They dug furiously at the lake's edge, making huge waves everywhere on the water. But Raven calmed a narrow path before him and paddled on. Eventually he became exhausted, so he threw a harpoon that struck the crest of a wave. At that moment he fainted from the intensity of his concentration, and when he awoke a forested land had replaced the water. He saw that the first wave his harpoon struck had become a small mountain. Then it had glanced off, eventually striking a huge wave that solidified into another mountain- the one now called Deenaalee, or Mount McKinley. [Paraphrased from Jetté 1908:312-13]
Of all the elements of physical terrain, none is more important for the Koyukon than water, none more constantly a part of their consciousness. Although they are an inland people, their lives are dominated by water and the habitats it creates. Water shapes and modifies the land, presents avenues or barricades for travel, supports a wide assortment of plant and animal communities, and both threatens and sustains human life.
Large rivers are by far the most significant bodies of water for the Koyu-kon, whose villages and camp are situated along them, and whose group identity derives from them. The entire Koyukon system of geographic orientation is based on rivers, not on the compass points used by Westerners. The four cardinal directions and modifiers for intermediate points are used mainly with reference to the wind. Direction and distance on land are reckoned by a complex of terms meaning upriver, downriver, toward the river, away from the river, and across the river. Four prefixes measure distance for each term: dodot means nearby downriver, aadot and nodot move farther away downriver, and yoodot is a great distance downriver. Other features are also described by reference to the large rivers-for example, a lake has a shore toward the river, a shore away from the river, and upriver and downriver shores. I was often confused by the Koyukon people's way of orienting themselves by river current, because I was raised to think in terms of cardinal directions. Huslia people talk of going "up” to Fairbanks, for instance, because it is upstream from the mouth of the Koyukuk River. But Fairbanks is southeast of Huslia, so I considered it "over" or "down," certainly not "up." When Koyukon friends visited my home on a long, narrow inlet in southeast Alaska, they were constantly disoriented by the changing tidal current, which made "upstream" become "downstream" every six hours!
Wait, I see something: It sounds like a lullaby is being sung to children in the other world.
Answer: The sound of a swiftly moving current.
Thunderstorms are another common weather phenomenon in Koyukon country. They brood darkly beneath towering cumulus formations on hot summer afternoons, moving slowly across the land. Koyukon people fear the sudden violence of lightning and the crashing noise, and they advise taking shelter and avoiding open water when thunderstorms threaten. When a tree is split or someone is knocked down, they say it is caused by the thunder striking. Thunderstorms are transformations of a human spirit from the Distant Time, and because they have awareness they can be influenced. In years past people would paint a red circle on a canoe paddle and wave it toward the west as the dark clouds came near. At the same time they shouted: "Go out to the coast, where they will enjoy having you!" Apparently "they" refers to the Eskimos.
For seven months each year, the subarctic environment is transformed by a gift (or perhaps some would say a curse) of the weather. This, of course, is snow. By midwinter the land is covered by soft powder lying two to six feet deep in the forest, hardened to dunelike drifts on the broad lakes and rivers, creating a nivean world of its own. The coming of snow is forecast by many signs… When the sky is bright orange at sunrise there will be snow, "usually two mornings later." Perhaps the best sign of snow is a moondog, a luminous circle around a bright winter moon. When the Koyukon speak of it, they say, "the moon pulls his (parka] ruff around his face," as if he is telling them that snow is coming soon.
The culture of Athapaskan people like the Koyukon is highly adapted to the environment that snow creates. Their elegant and refined snowshoes are perhaps the most tangible expression of this, but there are others as well-more subtle but equally impressive. I have seen a man follow a bear's tracks made in frozen moss, then covered by two feet of undisturbed snow that showed faint but somehow perceptible irregularities in its surface. Knowledge of snow is also reflected in the elaboration of terms for its varieties and conditions.
They perceive artistic elegance in the form of the land and living things, much the same as in our Western tradition. This sensitivity toward natural design is quite outside the pragmatism that might dominate the lives of people subsisting directly from wild resources. Koyukon people often comment that a day or a scene is particularly beautiful, and they are attentive to fleeting moments mountains outlined against the sky, reflections on still water, a bird's song in the quietness. In their language, words like nizoonh ("pretty") or hutaadla'o ("beautiful) communicate these feelings. This is not a new way of seeing, as the ancient riddles and the statements of elders indicate.
Newcomers to the north country are sometimes amazed to find that forests exist here, for they expect endless barren lands of rock, ice, and snow. This feeling may not diminish with time after experiencing the intensity and duration of winter, the existence of a fairly dense, diversified forest becomes even more impressive. Home is in the forest for the Koyukon.
I have often thought this while traveling with my dogs through the silent, snow-laden trees: All the plants are dormant here for more than seven months each year. It is only the four or five months of warmth - -that quick flourish of growth that allows them to live at all. And because the animals could not exist without plants, they are equally beholden to summer. So whatever inhabits the subarctic winter lives on borrowed time, or more accurately borrowed energy, that carries it across the abyss of winter. [Huslia journal, February 1977]
TO the cold eye of statistics, plants may seem to have little direct importance in the economies of subarctic people like the Koyukon. It is reasonable to estimate that plant foods have never composed over 10 percent of the overall diet though this could vary sharply from time to time. By this measure, few people in the world are less dependent on plants for food. But vegetation provides the Koyukon with the essential materials for housing, heating, and manufacture of equipment. When these uses are considered, few people anywhere depend more completely on plants for their survival, especially since the absolute imperative for hear can be met here only by burning wood.
The eagles are rare indeed in Koyukon country, if my own experience serves as judgment. Only occasionally is one sighted in the distance, making broad, easy sweeps and circles on its great wings. Like the hawks, these birds receive little attention from the Koyukon, an interesting contrast to their strong emotional and symbolic meanings in our own and many native American cultures. The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaëtos) and bald eagle (Haliacetus leucocephalus) are both named tilila, and old individuals of either species are called k'iyona'.
Eagles are not eaten or used, but there is no taboo on killing them should someone have a reason. For example, an old shaman had killed one and skinned it, then stretched the skin and kept it on a wall of his house. Perhaps he did this because the eagle is known as a great animal through its exploits in stories of the Distant Time, when it performed feats of extraordinary strength.
The Koyukon homeland is not a wilderness, nor has it been for millennia. This apparently untrodden forest and tundra country is thoroughly known by a people whose entire lives and cultural ancestry are inextricably associated with it. The lakes, hills, river bends, sloughs, and creeks are named and imbued with personal or cultural meanings. Indeed, to the Koyukon these lands are no more a wilderness than are farmlands to a farmer or streets to a city dweller. At best we can call them a wildland.
The fact that Westerners identify this remote country as wilderness reflects their inability to conceive of occupying and utilizing an environment without fundamentally altering its natural state. But the Koyukon people and their ancestors have done precisely this over a protracted span of time. From this standpoint, they have made a highly effective adjustment to living as members of an ecosystem, pursuing a form of adaptation that fosters the successful coexistence of humanity and nature within a single community.
Almost every day had moments and experiences that seemed profound to me. My senses could scarcely contain the beauty around me. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by my feelings for this place and people, and I wish for a way to possess them in words or pictures. But neither will do, and the most I can hope for is a memory that is burned forever into the core of my mind.
November 23, 2013
Incredibly well-done anthropological study of the Koyukon tribe of Alaska; it's very mainstream in the United States these days to consider Native Americans as stewards of the land. Nelson proves it to be the case for the Koyukon people and provides an in-depth ecological and spiritual exploration of their culture to give a good indicator of why this is the case. Sometimes humorous, very enlightening, and written to be accessible to anyone.
July 1, 2020
This is a reprint of a book published in 1983 from a year spent with the Koyukon (who have lived for centuries in Alaska) in the late 70’s. I would have liked to see an Appendix or Addendum on how things have changed since then, because I do wonder if the book is dated a bit. However, it is an interesting look at a group of people and their way of life, including spirituality and ecology, in another recent time of change. Very detailed and an important book.
February 16, 2014
Beautifully written. Important to read! Seeing even a tainted insight into the ways other people view the world is an amazing thing and people need to gain this insight!
August 17, 2018
Dry at times but filled with fascinating observations, reflections and descriptions.
Read
August 21, 2019a very complete and immersive account of Athapascan Koyukon cosmology: their knowledge, worldview, and rules about the appropriate and taboo behaviors toward different animals and plants.
May 27, 2023
Really liked learning about the Koyukon people and their traditional ways of life, particularly the chapters on various animals and their names:
- Green-winged teal: "whips around"
- Great-horned owl: "tells you things"
- Rusty blackbird: "rotten anus"
- Dipper: "your grandmother sank"
- Yellow warbler: "something yellow going around"
I also loved their riddles and how they always start with: "Wait, I see something:" E.g. "We come upstream in red canoes... Answer: the migrating salmon."
I wish Nelson had recounted more personal stories of his time there, would've been a more fun way to learn. But he did have plenty of good observations.
"Certainty is for those who have learned and believed only one truth. Where I come from, the raven is just a bird... But where I am now, the raven is many other things first... a person and a power, God in a clowns suit, incarnation of a once-omnipotent spirit."
- Green-winged teal: "whips around"
- Great-horned owl: "tells you things"
- Rusty blackbird: "rotten anus"
- Dipper: "your grandmother sank"
- Yellow warbler: "something yellow going around"
I also loved their riddles and how they always start with: "Wait, I see something:" E.g. "We come upstream in red canoes... Answer: the migrating salmon."
I wish Nelson had recounted more personal stories of his time there, would've been a more fun way to learn. But he did have plenty of good observations.
"Certainty is for those who have learned and believed only one truth. Where I come from, the raven is just a bird... But where I am now, the raven is many other things first... a person and a power, God in a clowns suit, incarnation of a once-omnipotent spirit."
July 26, 2023
An amazing undertaking, Make Prayers to the Raven outlines Richard Nelson's experiences living with the Koyukon people of North Central Alaska. I found this book after listening to Nelson's amazing Encounters North podcast. I really enjoyed how Nelson intermingled science and the philosophy of the Koyukon people in this book, which really reflects the way they live their lives, being sustained from the land. Occasionally, sections got a little repetitive, but the book was overall worth it, in that it gave the reader a good feeling of what it was like living as a Koyukon (as much as possible at least without having lived there yourself).
August 8, 2022
There is nothing particularly wrong with this book that led to me putting it aside. I read the initial sections about the Koyukon people and their worldview. I read the section about how they regard plants. I skipped the sections about the various kinds of animals, because I'm just not that into animals. I started to pick up with the concluding sections about conservation practices, etc. But I just couldn't muster the interest to carry on. I think the first parts had sated my curiosity.
December 8, 2020
A detailed and thoughtful description of the koyukon people, their land and their spirituality. Writing style very structured and not narrative so a bit of wading is necessary. But Nelson ties that foundation together and provides an understanding of a people and their home place.
May 13, 2018
Makes you want to head up the Koyukuk River as soon as you can get there.
June 20, 2021
I've been reading so much about the Eeyouch in Quebec I thought I'd do a little reading about a completely different Nation, the Koyukon. As traditional hunter-gatherer societies there were interesting similarities (though obviously important distinctions too).
The Koyukon are a nation of Athabascan/Dené living up in the Alaskan wilderness. Nelson's study is both an ethnography of the Koyukon people and a natural history of the boreal forest as the Koyukon have come to appreciate it culturally, ideologically and practically (the three are basically the same thing in this context).
I really enjoyed learning about a perspective on nature that does not seem alienated at all. Living in subsistence as the Koyukon have for so long, they naturally have an intimate and respectful connection to the land.
Nelson's presentation is informed by his time living among the Koyukon when he was embraced by teachers who helped him understand their ways. Nelson is always humble and cautious, constantly reminding us of his limitations as a settler. He wants to give the reader a realistic impression of Koyukon life and ideology, but he concedes that it is an incomplete one, tainted somewhat by the perceptions of an outsider.
I did find Nelson to be repetitive. For example, there seems to be several sections about the Koyukon ethical belief that the world is "watchful." Despite rehashing some of the same ideas over and over again, I did find Nelson's book very informative and I appreciated the humility with which he approached his subject matter.
The Koyukon are a nation of Athabascan/Dené living up in the Alaskan wilderness. Nelson's study is both an ethnography of the Koyukon people and a natural history of the boreal forest as the Koyukon have come to appreciate it culturally, ideologically and practically (the three are basically the same thing in this context).
I really enjoyed learning about a perspective on nature that does not seem alienated at all. Living in subsistence as the Koyukon have for so long, they naturally have an intimate and respectful connection to the land.
Nelson's presentation is informed by his time living among the Koyukon when he was embraced by teachers who helped him understand their ways. Nelson is always humble and cautious, constantly reminding us of his limitations as a settler. He wants to give the reader a realistic impression of Koyukon life and ideology, but he concedes that it is an incomplete one, tainted somewhat by the perceptions of an outsider.
I did find Nelson to be repetitive. For example, there seems to be several sections about the Koyukon ethical belief that the world is "watchful." Despite rehashing some of the same ideas over and over again, I did find Nelson's book very informative and I appreciated the humility with which he approached his subject matter.
February 13, 2015
An interesting and highly accessible account, albeit through the lens of someone clearly unused to non-Western thinking. This is fair enough - if annoying, especially when broader reading proves some ideas mistaken due to outsider viewpoint - since Nelson used to be dead-set against integration with people he was studying or any hint of "going native".
That he suddenly changed his views out in the wilds of Alaska suggests, entertainingly, that he encountered Raven, who sorted him out.
That he suddenly changed his views out in the wilds of Alaska suggests, entertainingly, that he encountered Raven, who sorted him out.
December 16, 2009
This is such a fascinating book! I had never thought to study the culture of Native Alaskans. This book gave me such a respect for the people of Alaska; their traditions and beliefs. I really enjoyed the bits about the ravens. I'm glad to have learned so much from someone who actually went and lived among the Koyukon people.
June 17, 2010
I actually read this awhile back, but I was listening to public radio in the car the other day and heard the author's excellent radio program called Encounters North. Hearing him reminded me how much I liked his book as well. Richard Nelson is a nature writer and anthropologist. For this book, he spent a year with the Koyukon people and he explains their culture and spiritual beliefs.
October 14, 2012
No offense to any Koyukon's out there, but your history of how life formed doesn't make any sense. I fell asleep too many times while reading this, and Nelson puts no life in his words, though, ironically, life is all he talks about.
Read this for a class, and I hope my professor considers getting films and books of higher value than what he's currently snuggling up to.
Read this for a class, and I hope my professor considers getting films and books of higher value than what he's currently snuggling up to.
January 9, 2011
I had to read this for a university course and didn't enjoy it at all!
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews