Deg Hitʼan (also Deg Xitʼan, Deg Hitan, Degexitʼan, Kaiyuhkhotana, russian: Дег-хитан) is a group of

Athabaskan Athabaskan (also spelled ''Athabascan'', ''Athapaskan'' or ''Athapascan'', and also known as Dene) is a large family of indigenous languages of North America, located in western North America in three areal language groups: Northern, Pacific C ...

peoples in

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

. Their native language is called

Deg Xinag Deg Xinag (Deg Hitan) is a Northern Athabaskan language spoken by the Deg Hitʼan peoples of the GASH region. The GASH region consists of the villages of Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross along the lower Yukon River The Yukon River ( ...

. They reside in Alaska along the

Anvik River The Anvik River() is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. It flows southeast from the Nulato Hills to its mouth on the larger river north of Anvik. The annual production of summer chum salmon along the Anvik River is tho ...

in Anvik, along the

Innoko River The Innoko River (; (Deg Xinag: ''Yooniq'') is a tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. It flows north from its origin south of Cloudy Mountain in the Kuskokwim Mountains and then southwest to meet the larger river across from ...

in Shageluk, and at Holy Cross along the lower

Yukon River The Yukon River (Gwichʼin language, Gwich'in: ''Ųųg Han'' or ''Yuk Han'', Central Alaskan Yup'ik language, Yup'ik: ''Kuigpak'', Inupiaq language, Inupiaq: ''Kuukpak'', Deg Xinag language, Deg Xinag: ''Yeqin'', Hän language, Hän: ''Tth'echù' ...

. The Deg Hitʼan are members of the federally recognized

Alaska Native Alaska Natives (also known as Alaskan Natives, Native Alaskans, Indigenous Alaskans, Aboriginal Alaskans or First Alaskans) are the indigenous peoples of Alaska and include Iñupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a numbe ...

tribes of Anvik Village, Shageluk Native Village, and

Holy Cross Village Sacred describes something that is dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity; is considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspires awe or Reverence (emotion), reverence among believers. The property is often asc ...

. The Iditarod Trail's antecedents were the native trails of the Dena'ina and Deg Hitʼan Athabaskan Indians and the Inupiaq Eskimos. Their neighbors are other Athabaskan-speaking and Yupik Eskimo peoples: Yup'ik (west and south),

Holikachuk Holikachuk (also Innoko, Organized Village of Grayling, Innoka-khotana, Tlëgon-khotana) are a Yupikized Alaska Native Athabaskan people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group to western Alaska. Their native territory includes the ...

(north), Upper Kuskokwim (north and east), and Dena'ina (south).

Name

The autonyms used by this group of Athabaskan people are: Deg Xitʼan (local people) and Deg Xinag (local language).Beth R. Leonard 2007
Deg Xinag oral traditions: reconnecting indigenous language and. education through traditional narratives
/ref> Sometimes the ''Deg Xitʼan'' or ''Deg Hitʼan'' is used for the language in English. There is no contrast between /χ/ and /h/ in the verb prefixes of Deg Xinag, and acoustic evidence indicates that the normative pronunciation in that context is �rather than Sharon Hargus 2009
Vowel quality and duration in Yukon Deg Xinag
/ref> The most common older name is Ingalik (from Yup'ik ''Ingqiliq'' «traditionally

; now also any other

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

», literally «having louse's eggs» < ''ingqiq'' «nit, louse nit, egg of

louse Louse ( : lice) is the common name for any member of the clade Phthiraptera, which contains nearly 5,000 species of wingless parasitic insects. Phthiraptera has variously been recognized as an order, infraorder, or a parvorder, as a result o ...

» + a

postbase In linguistics, a postbase is a special kind of grammatical suffixing morpheme that is suffixed to a base. It is mostly found in Eskimo–Aleut languages and Formosan Languages. Postbases differ from most other affixes in that they usually carry a m ...

''-liq'' «one who is V; one who Vs; one having V; one similar to N»Jacobson, Steven A. (compiler) 2012
Yup'ik Eskimo Dictionary, 2nd edition
/ref>) and its derivatives are offensive to the Deg Hitʼan. In the old literature, the name ''Anvik-Shageluk Ingalik'' (also ''Kuskokwim Ingalik'' and ''Yukon Ingalik'') is used for Deg Hitʼan, and the name ''McGrath Ingalik'' is used for Upper Kuskokwim people.

References

{{Alaska-stub