JUNEAU — Linguists and Native groups from around the state are lining up behind a proposal aimed at preserving and revitalizing Alaska’s 20 Native languages.
Sen. Donald Olson, D-Nome, is recommending that the state create the Alaska Native Language Preservation Council, which would advise the governor on programs and projects that will make the most of resources available to Native groups.
After waiting almost a year, Olson’s bill, SB130, made its way before the State Affairs Committee on Tuesday. Linguists and representatives from various Native groups voiced their support and called for lawmakers to do what they can before time runs out.
Lawrence Kaplan, a native language professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, is one of the measure’s supporters. If the bill passes, he said, it will be important that the council consults with specialists in language revitalization to help them understand techniques that can be used.
“Rebuilding (languages) is an extraordinarily complicated process, but the most important part is getting people to practice their languages,” Kaplan said.
Teaching students from an early age and working fast while elderly native speakers are alive, Kaplan said, is paramount to avoiding extinction of languages, as was the case with Eyak when the last living speaker of that language died.
“This is a good start,” Kaplan said of the bill.
State Affairs Chairman Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, held the bill in committee pending further dialogue with Native groups.
Comments (4)
Add commentPreserving the past and providing for the future
I have spent most of my adult life living, researching and writing about Alaska and its Native people. The various languages of Alaska are indeed treasures because they provide a different picture of life, a way of seeing and categorizing things, of explaining human behavior.
However, forty years ago a principal of a local elementary school explained to me that in his school, the students had only so many hours a day, so many hours a week to learn all the basics they were expected to have as they moved on.
His point was that if they were to spend the time teaching Native languages to elementary students, some other subjects would have to be curtailed.
He went on to say that if we were looking toward the future of the students, perhaps exposing them to modern languages that might help them later in life- Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Russian or English- might be a better investment of time.
And so, I am caught personally in what I think needs to be done. I have great respect for the past and Native languages. But at the same time, with a limited time in school and the classrooms, which is more important- languages from the past or languages for use in the future? I don't have a simple answer.
Forty years ago
Forty years ago my grandmother refused to teach me my native language --Tlingit. When she was growing up in SE Alaska, she was punished for speaking her native language and she did not want me to be hurt like she was hurt. Native children were still being shipped off to boarding schools. Nowadays, native children are disproprotionately represented in foster care and most of them in non-native foster care homes. My native culture is just beginning to be revived and our children need to be given the option to learn their native language. It will instill a sense of pride, culture and a sense of belonging. I had a great aunt that was shipped off to a boarding school in Oregon. I just recently met her daughter, my cousin. Her daughter had done very well and her daughter was a PHD researcher and graduated from a prestigious college. Despite all the successes, I could see a sadness in her eyes from not being connected to her people and family. I felt the same way when I was denied my request to learn my own language. There is nothing more important to a child than pride in their heritage and being connected to their roots.
Homeschool
I am a theatre artist. One might call me a member of a dying breed. When we as an ensemble of artists seek together to resurrect a time or a place or a culture in service of a story, we honor those human beings who survived day to day then as we do now. We honor the past by becoming them in the present, in the presence of witnesses. We live in their walking and in their speaking and in their doing.
The way to keep language alive then is to practice it daily. Merely having respect for it places it in a coffin to be gawked at in a queue. No argument there.
But why should we do so? When it produces no quantifiable result. The modern measuring stick is maddeningly geared towards acquiring skills aimed at an end, a result, efficient progress. A byproduct is a gravitation towards sameness for the sake of ease; maybe belonging. Progress has little room for variation in speed or beauty. So the extremes on the scale begin to drop off the map. The End.
Cheers to the brave souls who continue to learn an art, a skill, a craft or a language out of passion with the reward being pleasure and feet a little more firmly planted. Cheers to a desire to connect to the rhythms and ritual of family and ancestors, the beating of one's own heart. Just as the preparation of an ancient recipe using a favorite food might accomplish, DOING is how we stay connected to one another, to the personal, the individual, to the land and water. By repeating action and sentences we are home.
There needs to be space allowed for these acts of joy, room made for exchange, time set aside for sitting in the evening. Celebrating our variance, our “tribe's” uniqueness. In interaction not just in performance.
All else is a band-aid, until we as a society begin to shift priorities to provide the foundation for each other where we may all begin to rest and slow down long enough to engage in quieter conversation...whatever the language.
Being Tlingit/Tsimshian, I am
Being Tlingit/Tsimshian, I am support of sb130. I don't want to learn spanish, except for a few words, like Taco, Or french, french fries.
I also one of the children that was not taught my language or culture or history. My grandfather told me,"to live in the whiteman's world, we have to learn the whiteman's ways". I never understood why...until I learn the ugly history of the whiteman's encroachment of Alaska after 1867.
I never understood why Alaska History is or wasn't taught in our school system. I would prefer our history, language and culture to be taught by Alaska Native Instructors, notice I didn't say teachers? So the teacher associations don't start whinning that we are not qualified nor have a degree.
It's long over due that Alaska teach our languages, history and culture in our State.