Thursday, February 10, 2011

Kwakwaka'wakw



If you put your right index finger on the letter 'k', your left index finger on the letter 'w' and your left middle finger on the letter 'a', and if you then proceed to tap on them more or less randomly, it turns out you might spell the name of a Native group indigenous to British Columbia. The Wikipedia page helpfully notes that in orthography it can be spelt as Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw or Kʷakʷəkəw̓akʷ, but then angrily points out that it's wrong to call them the Kwakiutl, because after all that word is only 75% unpronounceable, and the Kwakwaka'wakw were looking for 100%. To that end, some of the Kwakwaka'wakw nations are called Da'naxda'xw, Kwikwasut'inuxw and Gwat'sinuxw. On the other hand, as they are responsible for the purely rockin' smiling-house illustrated above, they win for awesome.
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