16 Central Islands Province Archives

Going dry and Little Norway

Page 123 of the cultural atlas (Thornton & Martin, 2012) lists 4 alternative translations for Kéex’ (Kake) one of which is going dry, in reference to the vast, prop-mangling shoals of Kéex’ Yík, pass inside Kéex’ (Rocky Pass). The Euro counterpart to Kéex’ in the Central Islands Province is Séet Ká, on the channel (Petersburg, thumbnail on right), exuberantly Viking as proven each spring during the Little Norway Festival—an attempt to violate as many bastions of political correctness as possible in one blowout rendezvous.

The two largest islands of this province suffer from lack of remembered pre-Euro names. Surely they existed, and maybe still survive in the memory of a few elders. In their absence, I regretfully default to “Kupreanof” and “Mitkof,” commemorating a governor and a ship captain in the Russian American colonies. Ecologically, the Central Islands province’s greatest claim to fame is probably Southeast’s most massive expanse of low-lying, poorly drained, unproductive forest and peatland.

Although Petersburg Creek has no known Lingít name, its estuary was home to Aansadaak’w, village before, known today as the off-road settlement of Kupreanof.

In May, 2016, on invitation from the Kupreanof City Council, I spent a week investigating loop trails walkable from this fascinating, dispersed community. Some of my interpretive products can be found in the Trails Guide section of their website. My 20-minute natural history of Kupreanof slideshow is also playable from their site. Thanks to its proximity to Petersburg, Kupreanof may be Southeast’s only ‘remote’ settlement where you can stream video on backcountry trails. So I also created a dozen or so shorter videos that you can watch at interpretive stations, showing, for example, what the spot you’re standing on looks like to an eagle gliding overhead.