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Large rivers are by far the most significant bodies of water for the Koyu-kon, whose villages and camp are situated along them, and whose group identity derives from them. The entire Koyukon system of geographic orientation is based on rivers, not on the compass points used by Westerners. The four cardinal directions and modifiers for intermediate points are used mainly with reference to the wind. Direction and distance on land are reckoned by a complex of terms meaning upriver, downriver, toward the river, away from the river, and across the river. Four prefixes measure distance for each term: dodot means nearby downriver, aadot and nodot move farther away downriver, and yoodot is a great distance downriver. Other features are also described by reference to the large rivers-for example, a lake has a shore toward the river, a shore away from the river, and upriver and downriver shores. I was often confused by the Koyukon people's way of orienting themselves by river current, because I was raised to think in terms of cardinal directions. Huslia people talk of going "up” to Fairbanks, for instance, because it is upstream from the mouth of the Koyukuk River. But Fairbanks is southeast of Huslia, so I considered it "over" or "down," certainly not "up." When Koyukon friends visited my home on a long, narrow inlet in southeast Alaska, they were constantly disoriented by the changing tidal current, which made "upstream" become "downstream" every six hours!
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Richard K. Nelson (Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest)