Ingalik, AthabascanDeg Xinagalso called Deg Hit’an, formerly Ingalik (pejorative)Athabaskan-speaking North American Indian tribe of interior Alaska, in the basins of the upper Kuskokwim and lower Yukon rivers. Their region is mountainous, with both woodlands and tundra, and is fairly rich in fish, caribou, bear, moose, and other game on which the Ingalik Deg Xinag traditionally subsisted—fish, fresh or dried, being central to their diet. Much of their culture was strongly influenced by Eskimo customs and technology: they wore parkas, trousers, and other Eskimo apparel; built semisubterranean sod houses similar to those of the western Eskimo; Before colonization, Deg Xinag and Eskimo technology were somewhat similar: the Deg Xinag wore parkas and trousers, built semisubterranean sod houses, and used harpoons, spear throwers, and other weapons like those of the Eskimo. They favoured birch canoes over skin-covered boats.The various groups of Ingalik lived in villages, some permanent and some seasonal, such as summer fish camps for one or two families and winter settlements for an entire groupHowever, in most ways the traditional Deg Xinag were more similar to other American Subarctic peoples than to their Eskimo neighbours.

Traditionally, the Deg Xinag lived in villages; permanent winter settlements for a fairly large group were complemented by seasonal fishing and hunting camps that sheltered a few families each. The centre of village life was a large semisubterranean lodge called a kashim, which served primarily as a sweathouse for daily use by the men but which also served as a council chamber, entertainment club, funeral home, religious house for the rituals of medicine men or shamans, and a centre for various other public activities—largely for men only. Women remained in the several family dwellings. The Ingalik . The kashim served many functions, mostly for men, providing a venue for sweat baths, council meetings, entertainment, funerals, and shamanic rituals. Women’s activities tended to take place in family dwellings and in the open air. Deg Xinag people were much given to games and sports, ceremonies, and potlatches, the last being . The latter are gift-giving festivities for marking such events through which the sponsors acquire prestige; potlatches frequently mark life passages such as marriage and death and especially for acquiring prestige.

Although the Ingalik believed in traditional Deg Xinag religion included a creator, in a devil, and in other worlds beyond the living, they were it was more concerned with a kind of supernatural spirit that pervaded all things animate and inanimate in the world. There were several ceremonies, taboos, and superstitions relating to animals and the hunt and to the care of tools and other economic items; as with other societies that practiced animism, the Deg Xinag believed that survival and success required good relations with the things of nature.Only a few hundred Ingalik remain, mostly assimilated to modern Western culture

Early 21st-century population estimates indicated some 150 individuals of Deg Xinag descent.