Friday, October 06, 2006

Name that Athabascan Village

We flew over this village on a detection flight last week. It lies at the latitude/longitude of 66.15N/145.48W. It's first inhabitants were called the Dendu Gwich'in, who were annihilated by scarlet fever in the 1880's. It now has an Athabascan popluation of 28 and relies heavily on its small dirt runway for outside supplies and transportation.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

given that birch creek is the only village of the six that doesnt show up on google earth and that the population is so small..and that none of the lattitude/longitudes of the other five villages match your information....my vote is birch creek....but which ever village it is ...my hats go off to them .....gotta love your neighbors....

extremely interesting....
and what an extreme...i am here googling information and the 28 residents of birch creek are more than likely not...something very unsettling about that....

JT and the Boys said...

Birch Creek is correct Ginny. I made it a bit too easy didn't I? Just started reading an interesting book called Shadows on the Koyukuk that give's an autobiographical account of life in one of these tiny villages in the early 1900's... the stories have been very interesting so far.