What Is Alaskan
Suppose you lived in California and read a headline in the Los Angeles Times outdoor section: “Californian Offshore Fishing Improves.”
What would a Utah deer hunter think if the Salt Lake Tribune used “Utahn Deer” in their hunting report?
An eastern outdoor editor is not likely to write about “New Yorker” trout fishing any more than the L.A. Timeswill use Califorian fishing, or the Salt Lake Tribunewill refer to Utahn deer.
Pick up any Alaska newspaper or almost any publication with a reference to Alaska’s outdoors, its wildlife, or its fish and you will read “Alaskan” this and “Alaskan” that. It is not an Alaskan trout anymore than it is a Califorian trout. I wish the purveyors of printed material would stop misusing Alaskan. An Alaskan is a person. Alaskan is not a trout, a moose, a trip, or even an adventure.
Alaskan has been used incorrectly for so long by so many that it has nearly become acceptable. Politicians claim to preserve the Alaskan experience. Teachers and preachers promote the error. Pick up any Alaska magazine and you can hardly read a page where the error is not perpetuated. Writers write and editors continue to permit the error. You can even witness this abuse in the names of shops and stores.
Take the name of your home state or region, make it a person and see how silly it sounds when you talk about pheasant hunting or bass fishing. An “New Englander Trout Counts Down” headline would incite a million letters to the editor, yet a misused “Alaskan Moose” headline goes unnoticed.
An Alaskan is attacked by an Alaskan brown bear while fishing for Alaskan salmon on a remote Alaskan river. An editor would never permit: A Texan is gored by a Texan wild boar while hunting Texan white tail deer on a remote Texan ranch. It’s impossible to conceive reading about an Arizonan being injured in a boating accident on an Arizonan river while on an Arizonan adventure. Yet, readers are continually subjected to Alaskan abuse.
The correct usage of Alaskan is on the endangered list. Even Webster occasionally misuses it. When defining Malamute: A breed of powerful, heavy-coated, deep chested dogs of Alaskan origin. Since an Alaskan is a person what is Webster saying about the linage of these sled dogs? Another version refers to the Eskimo people who breed Malemutes as Alaskan. Yet, it says the dog is “bred in Alaska.”
This is one Alaskan who knows the difference. I’m going on a number of Alaska hunting trips this fall. I’ll seek Alaska caribou and Alaska moose. I’ll fly out in an Alaska floatplane, land on an Alaska lake, pitch my tent on Alaska soil, and watch an Alaska sun set and an Alaska moon rise. I’ll take photographs and write about my Alaska adventure.
For certain, I’m not going to shoot an Alaskan moose or caribou. It won’t be an Alaskan sunset I watch and it won’t be an Alaskan moon rising over the Alaskan Range.
You can bet your poke we never even considered calling our TV show, radio program, or magazine Alaskan Outdoors.
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