Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan or Athapaskan) is the name of a large group of distantly related Native American peoples, also known as the Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes, and of their language family.
Eyak and Athabaskan form a language group called Eyak-Athabascan. Tlingit is said to be related to this group to form the language family called Na-Dené by linguists. Haida was once thought to have been a member of the Na-Dené language family, but most linguists dispute this today.
The word itself does not come from any Athabaskan language; it is an anglicized version of the Cree Indian name for Lake Athabasca in Canada. Athabaskan languages are spoken throughout the interior of Alaska and the interior of northwestern Canada. There are Athabaskan people in northern California and southern Oregon. The Navajo and the various Apache people of the southwest also speak Athabaskan languages.
Language groups
Below is a list of all of the Athabaskan languages and their geographic locations. The Apachean or Southern Athabaskan languages are spoken in the American Southwest, Texas, Oklahoma, and Canada:
In this, the Southwestern Athapaskans adapted well to the Pueblan practice of disposing of their dead in disused rooms within a pueblan complex, for the action was basically the same and only the dwelling type was different.
The Northern Athapaskan groups believed that the evil aspect of the soul was particularly dangerous to close relatives, and that the dead come back to life at midnight on the fourth day after their death (Rooth 1971: 140).
The Athapaskan avoidance of the dead stems from a fear of ghosts, which are beyond the control of the living (Kluckhohn and Leighton 1946: 126).
Athapaskan society is well known for its potlatch, a ceremony which honors the connection between ancestors and the living.
The Athapaskan territory covers a huge expanse of coniferous boreal forest stretching across interior Alaska, parts of the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories of Canada, and down across the Arctic Circle into British Columbia.
In Athapaskanmythology, the raven is central to their beliefs about the origins of the world.
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