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Kenaitze talks historic winter homes

A small scale model of a Nicił, a type of winter home used by the Dena’ina people before modern times.
Hunter Morrison
/
KDLL
A small scale model of a Nicił, a type of winter home used by the Dena’ina people before modern times.

The Nichił is a type of winter home used by the Dena’ina people before modern times. Made primarily from spruce logs, these open concept homes were built into the ground, with a fireplace in the center for heating and cooking.

“These houses were for your family and extended family,” said Robert Bearheart, lead cultural coordinator of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. “You’d have your aunts, grandparents, uncles, their children, things like that all in these houses. That made it so it was like a small community.”

During a presentation about the Nichił at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center on Wednesday, Bearheart said up to 15 people would live in these homes at a time. Family members would sleep on platforms – unmarried men would sleep separately from the married men, women and children. Some homes also had add-ons, like a sauna or Elders room.

Homes like these date back to at least 1000 AD, and Bearheart says some Dena’ina people continued using them until the 1920s. He says large divots in the earth made to build the homes can still be found around the Kenai Peninsula.

“It's pretty easy to go into the woods, especially in Cooper Landing area where there’s such a dense population of Dena’ina people, and see what a house pit would have looked like,” Bearheart said.

Wednesday’s presentation included a small-scale model of what a Nichił would have looked like. The dozen attendees of the presentation had the opportunity to see it up close and ask questions.

Andy Rush, of England, was on vacation and happened to stumble upon the presentation. He says he’s always been interested in learning about how people before us lived, and sees a lot of parallels between Dena’ina people and his English ancestors.

“The Anglo-Saxons, the part of England I’m from, they used flint tools, which is exactly the same thing for spears, for knives, for cutting, for everything," Rush said. "4,400 miles in a straight line, we used essentially the same equipment.”

Michael Bernard is the cultural resource supervisor of the Kenaitze Indian Tribe. He says presentations like these are important to preserving Dena’ina culture sites.

“The main focus in my department is to educate the public, and let them know what they’re finding in the woods is sometimes not just a hole," Bernard said. "It could’ve been somebody’s home at some point or food storage.”

Bernard says a house pit attributed to one of these winter homes can be found at the tribe’s K’beq’ Cultural Heritage Interpretive Site near Cooper Landing. The site is only open in the summer.

Hunter Morrison is a news reporter at KDLL
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