Kutenai

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A First Nations people living around the upper Columbia River in southeastern British Columbia and northwestern Montana ; the language spoken by that people, which is a language isolate
2. An Indigenous nation of the Columbia Plateau region in western Canada and the northern United States ; the unrelated language of that nation, with no known relatives
3. A North American Indigenous group historically based in the Rocky Mountain trench region ; the distinctive isolate language that this group has traditionally spoken

Etymology: The name "Kutenai" is simply another spelling of "Ktunaxa," the self-designation of a people whose homeland straddles the modern border of southeastern British Columbia, northwestern Montana and northern Idaho. The Ktunaxa language is a language isolate, unrelated to its neighbours, which makes the people's name a rare survival of a word with no obvious relatives in the region's other tongues. Because the spelling "Kutenai" follows English conventions, it is the form most often seen in American place names, tribal histories and anthropological writing. The "Ktunaxa" spelling, which the people themselves use, reflects the sounds of their own language more closely. Both forms refer to the same group, and the variant "Kutenai" is typically used when writing in English about the people or their history.