Deg'xit'an Forest

Deg’xit’an Forest takes its name from the Deg Xitʼan, an Athabaskan people of Alaska whose homeland is organized around rivers. Their communities are recorded at Anvik on the Anvik River, Shageluk on the Innoko River, and Holy Cross on the lower Yukon. In such a northern forest country, waterways serve as the clearest corridors through a broad landscape of woodland, wetland, and seasonal ground.

Settlement along these rivers keeps the forest from appearing as an undifferentiated emptiness: the land is a network of fishing places, travel routes, and communities linked to nearby Athabaskan and Yupik neighbours. The Deg Xitʼan are members of the federally recognized Alaska Native tribes of Anvik Village, Shageluk Native Village, and Holy Cross Village. Their trails also shaped later movement. The routes that preceded the Iditarod Trail included Native paths used by the Dena’ina, Deg Hitʼan, and Iñupiaq.

That history makes the forest a corridor as well as a habitat. Travel followed rivers and established overland lines, connecting communities while accommodating the constraints of cold, water, and distance. The landscape associated with the Deg Xitʼan is therefore best understood through the places its people know and the routes that join them.