Sekani

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Sikanni is the name of an Athabaskan First Nations people and language in the northern interior of British Columbia. Their territory includes the Finlay and Parsnip River drainages of the Rocky Mountain Trench. The neighbors of the Sekani are the Babine, Dakelh, Dunneza (Beaver), Slavey, Kaska, and Tahltan, all Athabaskan peoples, to the north and west. To the south their neighbours are the Kinbasket and Secwepemc (Shuswap) peoples, who are Plains and Interior Salish peoples, respectively. In the past few centuries they have also had extensive contact with the Plains Cree, and were formerly in the upper North Thompson valley, until driven out by the grandfather of the famous Chief Nicola.

Contents 1 Culture 2 Language 2.1 Sounds 2.1.1 Consonants 2.1.2 Vowels 3 Synonymy 4 Ethnologue/ISO/DIS 639-3 Code 5 External links 6 Bibliography

[edit] Culture

[edit] Language

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Consonants

Sekani has 33 consonants:

		Bilabial	Alveolar		Post- Alveolar	Velar		Glottal
			central	lateral		plain	labial
Stop	unaspirated	p	t			k	kʷ
	aspirated	(pʰ)	tʰ			kʰ	kʷʰ
	ejective		tʼ			kʼ	kʼʷ	ʔ
Affricate	unaspirated		ʦ	tɬ	ʧ
	aspirated		ʦʰ	tɬʰ	ʧʰ
	ejective		ʦʼ	tɬʼ	ʧʼ
Nasal		m	n
Fricative- Approximant*	voiceless		s	ɬ	ç	x	xʷ	h
	voiced		z	l	j	ɣ	w

• *Sekani, like other Athabaskan languages, does not contrast fricatives with approximants.

[edit] Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e	ə	o
Low		a

[edit] Synonymy

Sekani people call themselves [tsek'ene] or [tθek'ene] depending on dialect, both meaning "people on the rocks". "Sekani" is an anglicization of this term. Other forms occasionally found, especially in older sources, are Secunnie, Siccanie, Sikani, and the French Sékanais.

[edit] Ethnologue/ISO/DIS 639-3 Code

SEK

[edit] External links

• Sekani entry on First Nations Languages of British Columbia site
• Bibliography of Sekani Linguistics
• Map of Northwest Coast First Nations (including Sekani)
• Ethnologue entry

[edit] Bibliography

• Hargus, Sharon. (1988). The lexical phonology of Sekani. Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Garland Publishers. ISBN.
• Mithun, Marianne. (1999). The languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN (hbk); ISBN-X.
• Lanoue, Guy. (1992). Brothers. The Politics of Violence among the Sekani of northern British Columbia. Oxford: Berg Publishers Ltd.