Language loss getting notice in Alaska communities

The Alaska House on Monday passed a concurrent resolution that would urge Gov. Bill Walker to declare a state of "linguistic emergency" for Native languages.

HCR 19 passed by 34-4 and will be taken up by the Senate for consideration. If adopted there, it would encourage state agencies, the Legislature, Alaska Native organizations and others to prioritize and strengthen policies aimed at promoting the continued use of Alaska Native languages.

The state has already been making steps in a more supportive direction, creating the Alaska Native Language Preservation and Advisory Council in 2012 and two years later making 20 indigenous languages official to the state.

Much more needs to be done to prevent most of those languages from disappearing from use over the next century, however. In its biennial report to Walker this year, the ANLPAC warned that every one of those 20 languages has seen a decline in recent decades in the number of people speaking them. Left unchecked, all are likely to go extinct or else dormant by 2100.

Promoting fluency among younger, English-speaking Alaskans and normalizing these languages in communities where they are traditionally spoken could help stave off this future, and the report encourages the state to take a more proactive role in promoting Native languages in its schools and colleges. The Legislature's recognition of a linguistic emergency in the making reflects the council's interpretation of the situation.

As this view gains wider confirmation statewide, for the past two years Wrangell students at the middle and high schools have been able to begin learning Tlingit. Tlingit as a language has been among those in Alaska seeing declines. ANLPAC reported only about 2,000 speakers lived in the state in 1980, and that perhaps only 50 or 60 fluent speakers of it remain today.

Director of the Indian Education Program in Wrangell Public Schools, Lu Knapp explained the language program came about after three middle school students interviewed her for a citizenship project for another class. During their conversation talk turned to the Tlingit language.

"They were interested in the language classes," she recalled.

Knapp got the support of the secondary schools principal and superintendent, and was able to fit two hours of teaching a day into her program's budget.

She approached Virginia Oliver, an educator with the local Johnson-O'Malley program, about putting together a curriculum. Aimed at younger children, JOM provides cultural background and activities along with some Tlingit vocabulary.

Vocabulary, however, is not quite the same as fluency in the language, and the opportunity to train up some speakers among Wrangell residents has been a longstanding goal. The public school setting would also be a sort of reversal of policy, one which for several generations had repressed and discouraged use of indigenous languages by students in favor of English.

"It was an exciting thing that happened for us," said Knapp. "We're striving for that, to have that in our school. That's been our goal since the very beginning."

Oliver was keen to participate. While her grandparents and mother had been Tlingit speakers, her own interest began at the University of Alaska Southeast. Language courses sponsored by Sealaska Corporation had caught her interest, and she began learning.

When Oliver returned to Wrangell after graduation in 1995 she began working with JOM. At first she knew some basic songs in Tlingit, such as the instructive "Body Part Song."

"That was the beginning of it," she said. Oliver has since participated in immersion workshops and courses, building her knowledge of the language over the years. Still, she does not consider herself fluent, but rather a heritage speaker of Tlingit.

Oliver explained the Tlingit language has four dialects, the Tongass, Southern, Traditional and Northern. In the Petersburg, Wrangell and Kake areas, Traditional Tlingit was spoken. It was this she and Knapp would try to teach their students as they developed a curriculum for Tlingit I, and introductory class.

It began during the 2016-17 school year, and students focused on learning as many of the language's verbs and nouns as possible. A modest goal of 50 had been set at the beginning of the year, but Oliver said her students had surpassed that by hundreds.

Traditionally an oratorical language rather than a written one, Oliver noted Tlingit can be daunting in appearance to approach with its assignment of consonants and numerous diacritical marks. But with a little encouragement at first, her students have gotten past appearances.

"It doesn't scare them anymore," she said. "We've been trying to flood them with as much as they would look at every single day."

Knapp explained that Tlingit I had introduced students to the language's building blocks, and for returning students this year Tlingit II has been showing them how to piece those together into sentences. Students are encouraged to speak with one another, and in the classroom they collaborate with their teachers on translating different sentences into Tlingit.

Knapp said the program is trying to build up to an intermediate-level class, one where the conversations come more naturally. Oliver explained the key is to eventually get students to switch off their English "filter," and begin seeing and thinking of things in Tlingit.

One way educators have been encouraging learning outside of the classroom is, like so much else, through the use of technology. Tribal organizations and independent instructors have been taking to phone apps, online study videos, music and even video games to reach prospective speakers of all ages. Even in her classroom, Oliver encouraged students to practice their vocabulary using Tlingit apps developed by Sealaska.

With the recent House resolution, Knapp was hopeful greater support for learning Native languages will come of it. In particular, getting the resources to teach more classes and to a younger age level would be desirable.

Sponsoring HCR 19, Rep. Dan Ortiz (I-District 36) said the resolution called upon Walker's administration to address the issue, putting together a plan to counteract the loss of the land's languages and cultures.

"I strongly believe that a linguistic emergency declaration is warranted because of the predictions that many of Alaska's languages will become extinct by the end of the century. That's unacceptable, and we should dedicate time and resources to make sure that does not happen," he commented.