Photo by Alaska-in-Pictures.com

20th Birthday of the Exxon Valdez Lie

“Gail, Please! Stick your hand in it!”
 
The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.
 
“Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR DAMN HAND IN IT!”
 
She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village’s fishing ground. Gail’s hand came up dripping with black, sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez.
 
It was already two years after the spill and Exxon had crowed that Mother Nature had happily cleaned up their stinking oil mess for them. It was a lie. But the media wouldn’t question the bald-faced bullshit. And who the hell was going to investigate Exxon’s claim way out in some godforsaken Native village in the Prince William Sound?
 
So I convinced the Natives to fly the lazy-ass reporters out to Sleepy Bay on rented float planes to see the oil that Exxon said wasn’t there.
 
The reporters looked, but didn’t see it, because it was three inches under their feet, under the shingle rock of the icy beach. Gail pulled out her hand and now the whole place smelled like a gas station. The network crews wanted to puke.
 
And now, with their eyes open, they saw the oil, the vile feces-colored smear across the glaciated ridge faces, the poisonous “bathtub ring” that ran for miles and miles at the high tide level. And it’s still there. Less for sure. But twenty years later, IT’S STILL THERE, GODDAMMIT. And I want YOU, dear reader, to stick your hand in it. I want YOU, President Obama, to stick your hand in it before you blithely fulfill your Palin-esque campaign promise for a little more offshore drilling.
 
***
Tuesday marks the 20th Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez grounding and the smearing of 1,200 miles of Alaska’s coastline with its oil.

Oil still being cleaned up seven years after the spill (James McAlpine) James Macalpine
 
It also marks the 20th Anniversary of a lie. Lots of lies: catalogued in a four-volume investigation of the disaster; four volumes you’ll never see. I wrote that report, with my team of investigators working with the Natives preparing fraud and racketeering charges against Exxon. You’ll never see the report because Exxon lawyers threatened the Natives, “Mention the f-word [fraud] and you’ll never get a dime” of compensation to clean up the villages. The Natives agreed to drop the fraud charge — and Exxon stiffed them on the money. You’re surprised, right?
 
***
Doubtless, for the 20th Anniversary of the Great Spill, the media will schlep out that old story that the tanker ran aground because its captain was drunk at the wheel. Bullshit. Yes, the captain was “three sheets to the wind” — but sleeping it off below-decks. The ship was in the hands of the third mate who was driving blind. That is, the Exxon Valdez’ Raycas radar system was turned off; turned off because it was busted and had been busted since its maiden voyage. Exxon didn’t want to spend the cash to fix it. So the man at the helm, electronically blindfolded, drove it up onto the reef.
 
So why the story of the drunken skipper? Because it lets Exxon off the hook: Calling it a case of “drunk driving” turns the disaster into a case of human error, not corporate penny-pinching
 
Indeed, the “human error” tale was the hook used by the Bush-stacked Supreme Court to slash the punitive damages awarded against Exxon by 90%, from $5 billion, to half a billion for 30,000 Natives and fishermen. Chief Justice John Roberts erased almost all of the payment due with the la-dee-dah comment, “What more can a corporation do?”
 
Well, here’s what they could have done: Besides fix the radar, Exxon could have set out equipment to contain the spill. Containing a spill is actually quite simple. Stick a rubber skirt around the oil slick and suck it back up. The law requires it and Exxon promised it.
 
So, when the tanker hit, where was the rubber skirt and where was the sucker? Answer: The rubber skirt, called “boom” — was a fiction. Exxon promised to have it sitting right there near the Native village at Bligh Reef. The oil company fulfilled that promised the cheap way: they lied.
 
And the lie was engineered at the very top. After the spill, we got our hands on a series of memos describing a secret meeting of chief executives of Exxon and its oil company partners, including ARCO, a unit of British Petroleum. In a meeting of these oil chieftains held in April 1988, ten months before the spill, Exxon rejected a plea from T.L. Polasek, the Vice-President of its Alaska shipping operations, to provide the oil spill containment equipment required by law. Polasek warned the CEOs it was “not possible” to contain a spill in the mid-Sound without the emergency set-up.
 
Exxon angrily vetoed ARCO’s suggestion that the oil companies supply the rubber skirts and other materiel that would have prevented the spill from spreading, virtually eliminating the spill’s damage.
 
Regulations state that no tanker may leave the Alaska port of Valdez without the “sucker” equipment, called a “containment barge,” at the ready. Exxon signed off on the barge’s readiness. But, that night twenty years ago, the barge was in dry-dock with its pumps locked up under arctic ice. By the time it arrived at the tanker, half a day after the spill, the oil was well along its thousand-mile killing path.
 
Natives watched as the now-unstoppable oil overwhelmed their islands. Eyak Native elder Henry Makarka saw an otter rip out its own eyes burning from oil residue. Henry, pointing down a waterside dead-zone, told me, in a mix of Alutiiq and English, “If I had a machine gun, I’d shoot every one of those white sons-of-bitches.”
 
***
 
Exxon promised — promised — to pay the Natives and other fisherman for all their losses. The Chief of the Natives at Nanwalek lost his boat to bankruptcy. His village, like other villages, Native and non-Native, decayed into alcoholism. The Mayor of fishing port Cordova killed himself, citing Exxon in his suicide note.
 
On the island village of Chenega, Gail Evanoff’s uncle Paul Kompkoff was hungry. Until the spill, he had lived on seal meat, razor clams and salmon Chenegans would catch, and on deer they hunted. The clams and salmon were declared deadly and the deer, not able to read the government warning signs, ate the poisoned vegetation and died.
 
The President of Exxon, Lee Raymond, helicoptered into Chenega for a photo op. He promised to compensate the Natives and all fishermen for their losses, and Exxon would thoroughly clean the beaches.
 
Uncle Paul told the Exxon chief of his hunger. The oil company, sensing PR disaster, shipped in seal meat to the isolated village. The cans were marked, “NOT FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION.” Uncle Paul said, “Zoo food.”
 
Paul didn’t want a seal in a can. He wanted a boat to go fishing, to bring the village back to life.
 
Two years after the spill, Otto Harrison, General Manager of Exxon USA, told Evanoff and me to forget about a fishing boat for Uncle Paul. Exxon was immortal and Natives were not. The company would litigate for 20 years.
 
They did. Only now, two decades on, Exxon has finally begun its payout of the court award — but only ten cents on the dollar. And Uncle Paul’s boat? No matter. Paul’s dead. So are a third of the fishermen owed the money.

Lee Raymond, President of Exxon at the time of the spill — and its President when the company made the secret decision to do without oil spill equipment, retired in April 2006. The company awarded him a $400 million retirement bonus, more than double the bonuses received by all AIG executives combined.
 
***
 
Gail’s oily hand never made it to national television. The networks were distracted with another oil story.
 
After sailing back to Chenega from Sleepy Bay, I sat with Uncle Paul, watching the smart bombs explode over Baghdad. Gulf War I had begun.
 
Uncle Paul was silent a long time. The generals on CNN pointed to the burning oil fields near Basra. Paul said, “I guess were all some kind of Native now.”

************
For SuicideGirls.com
Greg Palast investigated fraud and racketeering claims for the Chugach Natives of Alaska. Now a journalist whose work appears on BBC Television Newsnight, Palast is the author of the New York Times bestselling books The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. Visit GregPalast.com for more.
 
Check out the YouTube clip of Greg Palast on Air America’s ‘Ring of Fire’ with Mike Papantonio on the Exxon Valdez and on the death of investigative reporting in America.  Listen in this weekend on your Air America station.

And get ready:  This Friday – the launch of GREG PALAST INVESTIGATES – On the Trail with investigative reporter Palast – with three of his latest ass-kicking BBC Television reports.
 
Palast is looking for co-producers for the film’s DVD release.  Support the team behind the work that the Chicago Tribune calls, “Stories so relevant, they threaten to alter history.” Pre-order the DVD today.

Palast is a Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow for investigative reporting.

More Alaska photos by James Macalpine for the Palast Investigative Fund, a 501c3 not-for-profit educational foundation, can be found at the original post at GregPalast.com.    

http://www.gregpalast.com

Today I want to share a very good general resource I found las week: the Alaska Native Collections site, by the Smithsonian institute. Despite its name, the site includes information about Alaska but also about Russia or other polar contruies. The site is not only beautifully designed but also packed with a lot of maps, photographies and information, allowing the visitor to learn about the arctic cultures easily. If you just want to learn a few basics, you can do a quick reading, if you want to deep more, you just need to open the “Read more” sections.

Through the Sharing Knowledge project, members of Indigenous communities from across Alaska and northeast Siberia are working with the Smithsonian Institution and the Anchorage Museum to interpret the materials, techniques, cultural meanings, history, and artistry represented by objects in the western arctic and subarctic collections of the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. The Arctic Studies Center, which organized and implemented the project, is a special research program within the Department of Anthropology, NMNH, with offices in Washington and at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska.

The goals of Sharing Knowledge are to make the Smithsonian collections accessible to all and to support cross-cultural learning among Indigenous home communities, in schools, and around the world. Interest in the extraordinary arts and cultural heritage of the North is truly global in scope. Participants in this project are Elders, scholars, artists, and teachers who invite all to explore, learn, and appreciate.

The combined holdings of NMNH and NMAI are vast—more than 30,000 items from Alaska and northeast Siberia, most collected between the mid-19th century and the mid-20th century. The great majority has never been published, exhibited, or seen by contemporary residents of source communities in the North. Collaborative study of these collections for Sharing Knowledge began in 2001-2005, with a series of trips to the museums in Washington by more than forty Elders and regional representatives. This documentation process will continue as many more objects are brought from Washington to new Smithsonian exhibition galleries and Arctic Studies Center facilities at the Anchorage Museum, starting in 2010. Through its alliance with the Arctic Studies Center (since 1993) and its planned physical expansion to house these programs and collections, the Anchorage Museum has become an important Smithsonian partner in fostering the collaborative work of museums and Native communities.

Object records on this site include edited transcripts of museum discussions as well as summaries drawn from history, anthropology, and recorded oral tradition. The Cultures section includes regional introductions and information about contributors. The Resources section offers reading materials, web links, and a curriculum guide with lesson plans designed for middle and high school students.

The Sharing Knowledge site reflects the current state of an on-going project, with inevitable gaps and uneven representation of the different cultural regions. It will grow over time as more information is recorded and new contributors can be brought into the discussion. Please watch the site for continually updated materials and features.

Photography (C) Larry McNeil

As I mentioned this place has tones and tones of info about the cultures and the people, so it seems an unforgetable place to ask for help whenever I can manage to do the big trip!

Michael E. Krauss (born 1934) is a linguist who has worked extensively on the Na-Dené language family, especially on proto-Athabaskan, pre-proto-Athabaskan, the Eyak language, which became extinct in January 2008, and also numerous other Athabaskan and Eskimo-Aleut languages.

With his 1991 address to the Linguistic Society of America, Krauss was among the first to create an awareness of the global problem of endangered languages. He has since worked to encourage the documentation and re-vitalization of endangered languages across the world.

Krauss, professor emeritus, joined the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1960 and served as director of the Alaska Native Language Center from its inception in 1972 until his retirement in June 2000. He remains active in efforts to document Alaska’s Native languages and encouraged awareness of the global problem of endangered languages.

Krauss’ largest contribution to language documentation is his work on Eyak, conducted through much of the 1960s. Eyak was then already the most endangered of the Alaskan languages, and Krauss’ work is all the more notable considering that it represents what today might be considered salvage linguistics. While some Eyak data had been previously available, they were overlooked by previous scholars, including Edward Sapir. However, Eyak proved to be a crucial missing link for historical linguistics, being equally closely related to neighboring Ahtna and to distant Navajo. With good Eyak data it became possible to establish the existence of the Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit language family, though phonological evidence for links to Haida remained at the time elusive. Further, the system of vowel modifications present in Eyak inspired Krauss’ theory of Athabaskan tonogenesis, whereby tone develops from vowel constriction.

Font: Wikipedia

Few months ago I promised to deepen in the Alaska Native Languages Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. So did I, and I listed all the languages they describe ont heir site:

Aleut: Unangax^ (Aleut) is one branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. Its territory in Alaska encompasses the Aleutian Islands, the Pribilof Islands, and the Alaska Peninsula west of Stepovak Bay. Unangax^ is a single language divided at Atka Island into the Eastern and the Western dialects. Of a population of about 2,200 Unangax^, about 300 speak the language. This language was formerly called Aleut, a general term for introduced by Russian explorers and fur traders to refer to Native Alaskan of the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and Prince William Sound (see the section on the Alutiiq language). The term Unangax^ means ‘person’ and probably derives from the root una, which refers to the seaside. The plural form ‘people’ is pronounced Unangas in the western dialect and Unangan in the eastern dialect, and these terms are also sometimes used to refer to the language. The indigenous term for the language is Unangam

Alutiiq: Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) is a Pacific Gulf variety of Yupik Eskimo spoken in two dialects from the Alaska Peninsula to Prince William Sound, including Kodiak Island. Of a total population of about 3,000 Alutiiq people, about 400 still speak the language. Although traditionally the people called themselves Sugpiaq (suk ‘person’ plus -piaq ‘real’), the name Alutiiq was adopted from a Russian plural form of Aleut, which Russian invaders applied to the Native people they encountered from Attu to Kodiak. Closely related to Central Alaskan Yup’ik, the Alutiiq language is divided into the Koniag and the Chugach dialects. Koniag Alutiiq is spoken on the upper part of the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island (and Afognak Island before it was deserted following the 1964 earthquake). Chugach Alutiiq is spoken on the Kenai Peninsula from English Bay and Port Graham to Prince William Sound where it meets Eyak. The first work on Alutiiq literacy was done by Russian Orthodox monks Herman and Gideon and the talented student Chumovitski, although their progress continued only until about 1807 and almost none of their work survives. After that, a few others – notably Tyzhnov, Uchilishchev, and Zyrianov – worked on the language during the Russian period, producing a translation of Matthew, a Catechism, and primer, but they achieved less success than those who worked in Aleut. The first modern linguistic work on Alutiiq was done by Irene Reed in the early 1960s and by Jeff Leer beginning in 1973. Leer has produced both a grammar and a dictionary of Koniag Alutiiq for classroom use.

Ahtna: Ahtna Athabascan is the language of the Copper River and the upper Susitna and Nenana drainages in eight communities. The total population is about is about 500 with perhaps 80 speakers. The first extensive linguistic work on Ahtna was begun in 1973 by James Kari, who published a comprehensive dictionary of the language in 1990.

Central Alaskan Yup’ik: Central Alaskan Yup’ik lies geographically and linguistically between Alutiiq and Siberian Yupik. The use of the apostrophe in Central Alaskan Yup’ik, as opposed to Siberian Yupik, denotes a long p. The word Yup’ik represents not only the language but also the name for the people themselves (yuk ‘person’ plus pik ‘real’.) Central Alaskan Yup’ik is the largest of the state’s Native languages, both in the size of its population and the number of speakers. Of a total population of about 21,000 people, about 10,000 are speakers of the language. Children still grow up speaking Yup’ik as their first language in 17 of 68 Yup’ik villages, those mainly located on the lower Kuskokwim River, on Nelson Island, and along the coast between the Kuskokwim River and Nelson Island. The main dialect is General Central Yup’ik, and the other four dialects are Norton Sound, Hooper Bay-Chevak, Nunivak, and Egegik. In the Hooper Bay-Chevak and Nunivak dialects, the name for the language and the people is “Cup’ik” (pronounced Chup-pik). Early linguistic work in Central Yup’ik was done primarily by Russian Orthodox, then Jesuit Catholic and Moravian missionaries, leading to a modest tradition of literacy used in letter writing. In the 1960s, Irene Reed and others at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks developed a modern writing system for the language, and their work led to the establishment of the state’s first school bilingual programs in four Yup’ik villages in the early 1970s. Since then a wide variety of bilingual materials has been published, as well as Steven Jacobson’s comprehensive dictionary of the language and his complete practical classroom grammar, and story collections and narratives by many others including a full novel by Anna Jacobson.

Deg Xinag: Deg Xinag (also Deg Hit’an; formerly known by the pejorative Ingalik) is the Athabascan language of Shageluk and Anvik and of the Athabascans at Holy Cross below Grayling on the lower Yukon River. Of a total population of about 275 Ingalik people, about 40 speak the language. A collection of traditional folk tales by the elder Belle Deacon was published in 1987, and a literacy manual in 1993.

Dena’ina: Dena’ina (Tanaina) is the Athabascan language of the Cook Inlet area with four dialects on the Kenai Peninsula, Upper Inlet area above Anchorage, and coastal and inland areas of the west side of Cook Inlet. Of the total population of about 900 people, about 75 speak the language. James Kari has done extensive work on the language since 1972, including his edition with Alan Boraas of the collected writings of Peter Kalifornsky in 1991.

Eyak: Eyak is not an Athabascan language, but a coordinate sub-branch to Athabascan as a whole in the Athabascan-Eyak branch of the Athabascan-Eyak-Tlingit language family. Eyak was spoken in the 19th century from Yakutat along the southcentral Alaska coast to Eyak at the Copper River delta, but by the 20th century only at Eyak. It is now represented by about 50 people but no surviving fluent speakers.only one remaining speaker, born in 1920 and living in Anchorage. Comprehensive documentation of Eyak has been carried out since the 1960s by Michael Krauss, including his edition of traditional stories, historic accounts, and poetic compositions by Anna Nelson Harry. The name Eyak itself is not an Eyak word but instead derives from the Chugach Eskimo name (Igya’aq) of the Eyak village site near the mouth of Eyak River (Krauss 2006:199). The Chugach word Igya’aq is a general term referring to ‘the outlet of a lake into a river.’
With the passing of Marie Smith Jones (pictured above with linguist Michael Krauss) on January 21, 2008 Eyak became the first Alaska Native language to become extinct in recent history.

Gwich’in: Gwich’in (Kutchin) is the Athabascan language spoken in the northeastern Alaska villages of Arctic Village, Venetie, Fort Yukon, Chalkyitsik, Circle, and Birch Creek, as well as in a wide adjacent area of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory. The Gwich’in population of Alaska is about 1,100, and of that number about 300 are speakers of the language. Gwich’in has had a written literature since the 1870s, when Episcopalian missionaries began extensive work on the language. A modern writing system was designed in the 1960s by Richard Mueller, and many books, including story collections and linguistic material, have been published by Katherine Peter, Jeff Leer, Lillian Garnett, Kathy Sikorski, and others.

Haida: Haida (Xa’ida) is the language of the southern half of Prince of Wales Island in the villages of Hyadaburg, Kasaan, and Craig, as well as a portion of the city of Ketchikan. About 600 Haida people live in Alaska, and about 15 of the most elderly of those speak the language. Haida is considered a linguistic isolate with no proven genetic relationship to any language family. A modern writing system was developed in 1972.

Han: Hän is the Athabascan language spoken in Alaska at the village of Eagle and in the Yukon Territory at Dawson. Of the total Alaskan Hän population of about 50 people, perhaps 12 speak the language. A writing system was established in the 1970s, and considerable documentation has been carried out at the Alaska Native Language Center as well as at the Yukon Native Language Centre in Whitehorse.

Holikachuk: Holikachuk is the Athabascan language of the Innoko River, formerly spoken at the village of Holikachuk, which has moved to Grayling on the lower Yukon River. Holikachuk, which is intermediate between Ingalik and Koyukon, was identified as a separate language in the 1970s. The total population is about 200, and of those perhaps 12 speak the language.

Inupiaq:Inupiaq is spoken throughout much of northern Alaska and is closely related to the Canadian Inuit dialects and the Greenlandic dialects, which may collectively be called “Inuit” or Eastern Eskimo, distinct from Yupik or Western Eskimo. Alaskan Inupiaq includes two major dialect groups ? North Alaskan Inupiaq and Seward Peninsula Inupiaq. North Alaskan Inupiaq comprises the North Slope dialect spoken along the Arctic Coast from Barter Island to Kivalina, and the Malimiut dialect found primarily around Kotzebue Sound and the Kobuk River. Seward Peninsula Inupiaq comprises the Qawiaraq dialect found principally in Teller and in the southern Seward Peninsula and Norton Sound area, and the Bering Strait dialect spoken in the villages surrounding Bering Strait and on the Diomede Islands. Dialect differences involve vocabulary and suffixes (lexicon) as well as sounds (phonology). North Slope and Malimiut are easily mutually intelligible, although there are vocabulary differences (tupiq means ?tent? in North Slope and ?house? in Malimiut; iglu is ?house? in North Slope) and sound differences (?dog? is qimmiq in North Slope and qipmiq in Malimiut). Seward Peninsula and North Alaskan dialects differ significantly from each other, and a fair amount of experience is required for a speaker of one to understand the dialect of the other. The name “Inupiaq,” meaning “real or genuine person” (inuk ?person? plus -piaq ?real, genuine?), is often spelled “Iñupiaq,” particularly in the northern dialects. It can refer to a person of this group (“He is an Inupiaq”) and can also be used as an adjective (“She is an Inupiaq woman”). The plural form of the noun is “Inupiat,” referring to the people collectively (“the Inupiat of the North Slope”). Alaska is home to about 13,500 Inupiat, of whom about 3,000, mostly over age 40, speak the language. The Canadian Inuit population of 31,000 includes about 24,000 speakers. In Greenland, a population of 46,400 includes 46,000 speakers.

Koyukon: Koyukon occupies the largest territory of any Alaskan Athabascan language. It is spoken in three dialects – Upper, Central, and Lower – in 11 villages along the Koyukuk and middle Yukon rivers. The total current population is about 2,300, of whom about 300 speak the language. The Jesuit Catholic missionary Jules Jette did extensive work on the language from 1899-1927. Since the early 1970s, native Koyukon speaker Eliza Jones has produced much linguistic material for use in schools and by the general public.

Siberian Yupik / St. Lawrence Island Yupik: Siberian Yupik (also St. Lawrence Island Yupik) is spoken in the two St. Lawrence Island villages of Gambell and Savoonga. The language of St. Lawrence Island is nearly identical to the language spoken across the Bering Strait on the tip of the Siberian Chukchi Peninsula. The total Siberian Yupik population in Alaska is about 1,100, and of that number about 1,050 speak the language. Children in both Gambell and Savoonga still learn Siberian Yupik as the first language of the home. Of a population of about 900 Siberian Yupik people in Siberia, there are about 300 speakers, although no children learn it as their first language. Although much linguistic and pedagogical work had been published in Cyrillic on the Siberian side, very little was written for St. Lawrence Island until the 1960s when linguists devised a modern orthography. Researchers at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks revised that orthography in 1971, and since then a wide variety of curriculum materials, including a preliminary dictionary and a practical grammar, have become available for the schools. Siberian Yupik is a distinct language from Central Alaskan Yup’ik. Notice that the former is spelled without an apostrophe.

(Lower) Tanana: Tanana Athabascan is now spoken only at Nenana and Minto on the Tanana River below Fairbanks. The Athabascan population of those two villages is about 380, of whom about 30, the youngest approaching age 60, speak the language. Michael Krauss did the first major linguistic fieldwork on this language beginning in 1961, and this was continued by James Kari. Recent publications in the language include the 1992 edition of stories told by Teddy Charlie as recorded by Krauss in 1961, and a preliminary dictionary compiled by Kari in 1994.

Tanacross Athabascan: Tanacross is the ancestral language of the Mansfield-Ketchumstock and Healy Lake-Jospeph Village bands. It is spoken today at Healy Lake, Dot Lake, and Tanacross on the middle Tanana River. The total population is about 220, of whom about 65 speak the language. A practical alphabet was established in 1973 and a few booklets have been published at the Alaska Native Language Center, but Tanacross remains one of the least documented of Alaska Native languages.

(Upper) Tanana: Upper Tanana Athabascan is spoken mainly in the Alaska villages of Northway, Tetlin, and Tok, but has a small population also across the border in Canada. The Alaskan population is about 300, of whom perhaps 105 speak the language. During the 1960s, Paul Milanowski established a writing system, and he worked with Alfred John to produce several booklets and a school dictionary for use in bilingual programs.

Tlingit: Tlingit (Łingít) is the language of coastal Southeastern Alaska from Yakutat south to Ketchikan. The total Tlingit population in Alaska is about 10,000 in 16 communities with about 500 speakers of the language. Tlingit is one branch of the Athabascan-Eyak-Tlingit language family. A practical writing system was developed in the 1960s, and linguists such as Constance Naish, Gillian Story, Richard and Nora Dauenhauer, and Jeff Leer have documented the language through a number of publications, including a verb dictionary, a noun dictionary, and a collection of ancient legends and traditional stories by Tlingit elder Elizabeth Nyman.

Tsimshian: Tsimshian has been spoken at Metlakatla on Annette Island in the far southeastern corner of Alaska since the people moved there from Canada in 1887 under the leadership of missionary William Duncan. Currently, of the 1,300 Tsimshian people living in Alaska, not more than 70 of the most elderly speak the language. Franz Boas did extensive research on the language in the early 1900s, and in 1977 the Metlakatlans adopted a standard practical orthography for use also by the Canadian Coast Tsimshians.

Tunuu: although the early Russian fur trade was exploitative and detrimental to the Aleut population as a whole, linguists working through the Russian Orthodox Church made great advances in literacy and helped foster a society that grew to be remarkably bilingual in Russian and Unangax^. The greatest of these Russian Orthodox linguists was Ivan Veniaminov who, beginning in 1824, worked with Aleut speakers to develop a writing system and translate religious and educational material into the native language. In modern times the outstanding academic contributor to Unangax^ linguistics is Knut Bergsland who from 1950 until his death in 1998 worked with Unangax^ speakers such as William Dirks Sr. and Moses Dirks – now himself a leading Unangax^ linguist – to design a modern writing system for the language and develop bilingual curriculum materials including school dictionaries for both dialects. In 1994 Bergsland produced a comprehensive Unangax^ dictionary, and in 1997 a detailed reference grammar.

Upper Kuskokwim: Upper Kuskokwim Athabascan is spoken in the villages of Nikolai, Telida, and McGrath in the Upper Kuskokwim River drainage. Of a total population of about 160 people, about 40 still speak the language. Raymond Collins began linguistic work at Nikolai in 1964, when he established a practical orthography. Since then he has worked with Betty Petruska to produce many small booklets and a school dictionary for use in the bilingual program.

I have to compare this list of languages with the one provided by Ethnologue, but in case of non-coincidence I think that the ANLC is more reliable, as they work shoulder to shoulder with them.

Com us vaig dir en una entrada anterior sóc lingüista, filòloga per ser exactes. Així que un dels eixos del meu viatge serà, probablement, l’estudi de les llengües. Suposo que aquesta mirada esbiaixada és inevitable, deformació professional. A més a més, aquest eix sovint m’ha comportat experiències interessants anant de viatge, ja que és una manera d’aproximar-se a la gent i a la seva cultura força interessant. Així que, quan vaig començar a llegir notícies sobre descobriments lingüístics, em va resultar inevitable seguir el fil. I aquest fil m’ha conduït fins a l’Alaska Native Language Center:

Alaska Native Language Center

Missió i objectiu

L’Alaska Native Language Center va ser establer l’any 1972 per la legislació estatal com a centre de recerca i documentació per a les vint llengües nadiues d’Alaska. És internacionalment conegut com el centre més important als Estats Units per l’estudi de les llengües Eskimo i Athabascan. El ANLC publica les seves recerques el col·leccions, diccionaris, gramàtiques i documents de recerca. El centre té un arxiu documental amb més de 10.000 ítems, pràcticament tot el que s’ha publicat sobre les llengües nadiues d’Alaska, incloent còpies de la documentació lingüística més antiga, així com informació sobre llengües que estan relacionades amb les d’Alaska. Els membres del grup de recerca proveeixen de materials els professors bilingües i d’altres professionals de la llengua en tot l’estat, assisteixen els investigadors socials i d’altres que treballin amb llengües nadiues, i ofereixen serveis de consulta i formació a professors, districtes escolats i agències estatals relacionades amb l’educació bilingüe. El grup de recerca de l’ANLC també participa en l’ensenyament en el programe de llengües nadiues d’Alaska, que ofereix titulacions en yup’ik centrali i eskimo inupiaq a la Universitat de Fairbanks, a Alaska. El centre també lluita per fer créixer la consciència pública sobre la gravetat de la desaparició de llengües arreu del món, i particularment en el nord. De les vint llengües nadiues d’Alaska, només dues (el yup’ik siberià en dos pobles a l’illa de St. Lawrence, i el yup’ik en disset poblats al sud-oest d’Alaska) són parlats per infants com a primera llengua, i cadascun dels vint té un inestimable valor per la humanitat i és mereixedor de la preservació. Per això, l’ANLC continua documentant, cultivant i promovent aquestes llengües, per així contribuir al seu futur i en el patrimoni de tots els habitants d’Alaska.

Llengües nadiues d’Alaska

 

Aleut | Alutiiq | Iñupiaq | Central Yup’ik | Siberian Yupik | Tsimshian | Haida | lingit | Eyak | Ahtna | Dena’ina | Deg Hit’an | Holikachuk | Upper Kuskokwim | Koyukon | Tanana | Tanacross | Upper Tanana | Gwich’in | Hän

Classes and Degree Programs

Hi ha vint llengües nadiues diferents a Alaska: Aleut, Alutiiq (també anomenat Aleut o Sugpiaq), Central Yup’ik Eskimo, St. Lawrence Island Eskimo, Inupiaq Eskimo, Tsimshian, Haida, Tlingit and Eyak i onze llengües d’Athabascan. Aquestes llengües tot just comencen a ser reconegudes com a l’herència de valor incalculable que sens dubte són.

Des de l’aprovació a Alaska de la Llei per l’Educació Bilingüe de 1972 hi ha hagut una demanda de professors que puguin parlar i ensenyar aquestes llengües a les escoles a tot l’estat, allí on hi hagi nens que parlin aquestes llengües. Per això hi ha oportunitats professionals per a tots aquells amb habilitats en els sectors de l’educació, la recerca, la cultura i el desenvolupament polític.

El Central Yup’ik Eskimo és parlat per un major nombre de persones, seguit per l’ Inupiaq. S’ofereix currículum educatiu en aquestes dues llengües. També s’ofereixen regularment cursos de Kutchin (Gwich’in) Athabascan. Per totes les altres llengües, s’ofereix instrucció individual o en grups reduïts en temes concrets. Per això s’han impartit sovint classes, seminaris i tallers de Tlingit, Haida, St. Lawrence Island Eskimo, Aleut i Koyukon, així com Eskimo comparat i Athabascan comparat.

La Universitat de Faribanks és l’única que ofereix aquests itineraris, amb la col·laboració del personal i el fons documental del ANLC.

Programes universitaris oferts: Minor in Alaska Native Languages, B.A. or Minor in Iñupiaq or Yup’ik Eskimo, A.A.S. or Certificate in Native Language Education, M.A. in Applied Linguistics.

Poder fer un cop d’ull al directori de personal i a les publicacions. Allà també hi tenen una interessant pàgina de “recursos” que serà motiu de posteriors entrades.

As I told you in another post, I’m a linguist, a philologist to be accurate. So one of the main guidelines of my trip will be the study languages, probably. I suppose it is impossible not to be a bit influenced by that, and it is usually an interesting approach when traveling, as it offers a way of approaching people on the way. So, when on my last post I found out about language research concerning Arctic languages I decided to follow the thread. And it leads to Alaska Native Language Center:

Alaska Native Language Center

Mission and Goal

The Alaska Native Language Center was established by state legislation in 1972 as a center for research and documentation of the twenty Native languages of Alaska. It is internationally known and recognized as the major center in the United States for the study of Eskimo and Northern Athabascan languages. ANLC publishes its research in story collections, dictionaries, grammars, and research papers. The center houses an archival collection of more than 10,000 items, virtually everything written in or about Alaska Native languages, including copies of most of the earliest linguistic documentation, along with significant collections about related languages outside Alaska. Staff members provide materials for bilingual teachers and other language workers throughout the state, assist social scientists and others who work with Native languages, and provide consulting and training services to teachers, school districts, and state agencies involved in bilingual education. The ANLC staff also participates in teaching through the Alaska Native Language Program which offers major and minor degrees in Central Yup’ik and Inupiaq Eskimo at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. An AAS degree or a Certificate in Native Language Education is also available. The center continues to strive to raise public awareness of the gravity of language loss worldwide but particularly in the North. Of the state’s twenty Native languages, only two (Siberian Yupik in two villages on St. Lawrence Island, and Central Yup’ik in seventeen villages in southwestern Alaska) are spoken by children as the first language of the home. Like every language in the world, each of those twenty is of inestimable human value and is worthy of preservation. ANLC, therefore, continues to document, cultivate, and promote those languages as much as possible and thus contribute to their future and to the heritage of all Alaskans.

Alaska Native Languages

 

Aleut | Alutiiq | Iñupiaq | Central Yup’ik | Siberian Yupik | Tsimshian | Haida | lingit | Eyak | Ahtna | Dena’ina | Deg Hit’an | Holikachuk | Upper Kuskokwim | Koyukon | Tanana | Tanacross | Upper Tanana | Gwich’in | Hän

Classes and Degree Programs

There are 20 different Alaska Native languages: Aleut, Alutiiq (also called Aleut or Sugpiaq), Central Yup’ik Eskimo, St. Lawrence Island Eskimo, Inupiaq Eskimo, Tsimshian, Haida, Tlingit and Eyak and 11 Athabascan languages. These languages are becoming recognized as the priceless heritage they truly are.

Since the passage of the Alaska Bilingual Education Law in 1972 there has been a demand for teachers who can speak and teach these languages in the schools throughout the state where there are Native children. Professional opportunities for those skilled in these languages exist in teaching, research and cultural, educational and political development.

Central Yup’ik Eskimo is spoken by the largest number of people, and Inupiaq by the next largest. In these two languages major and minor curricula are now offered. Courses are also regularly offered in Kutchin (Gwich’in) Athabascan. For work in all other languages, individual or small-group instruction is offered under special topics. Thus there have frequently been instruction, seminars, and workshops also in Tlingit, Haida, St. Lawrence Island Eskimo, Aleut and Koyukon, comparative Eskimo and comparative Athabascan.

UAF is unique in offering this curriculum, which benefits also from the research staff and library of the Alaska Native Language Center.

Degree Programs Offered: Minor in Alaska Native Languages, B.A. or Minor in Iñupiaq or Yup’ik Eskimo, A.A.S. or Certificate in Native Language Education, M.A. in Applied Linguistics.

You can also check out their staff and publications. They also have an interesting “Resources” page, I will deal with it later.

Estic molt contenta amb això que he trobat! Estava llegint Anthropology.net, i han publicat un article sobre Sibèria i els nadius d’Alaska del National Geographic. El podeu llegir aquí, o en aquest mateix bloc:

L’enllaç entre les llengües siberianes i les dels nadius americans. Un inici.

John Roach
per National Geographic News
26 de març, 2008

Una llengua en perill d’extinció a la remota Sibèria central comparteix una llengua materna amb una dotzena de llengües d’Amèrica del Nord parlades milers de quilòmetres més enllà, confirmen les noves recerques. La troballa permetria als lingüistes de sospesar com Amèrica va començar a ser poblada, d’acord amb Edward Vajda, director del Centre pels Estudis de l’àsia Oriental i Occidental de la Universitat de Belingham.

Des de 1923 els investigadors han suggerit que existeix una connexió entre les llengües asiàtiques i nordamericanes, però aquest és el primer cop que aquesta connexió s’ha demostrat a partir d’estàndards, afirma Vajda, que ha estudiat aquesta relació durant més de quinze anys. Investigadors anteriors havien recopilat llistes de paraules semblants, però els seus mètodes no eren científics. Aquestes semblances, diu Vajda, poden ser considerades casualitats tot i que representin una evidència genuïna. Així que Vajda va desenvolupar un altre mètode. “He establert un sistema sencer de vocabulari similar i també paral·lels gramaticals, bàsicament sobre l’estructuració dels prefixes verbals”, diu.

Llengua en perill d’extinció

La seva recerca enllaça la família lingüística del Vell Món del Yeniseic a la Sibèria Central amb la família Na-Dene de llengües a l’Amèrica del Nord. La família Yenisec inclou les llengües ja extingides Yugh, Kott, Assan, Arin, i Pumpokol. Ket és l’única llengua que encara sobreviu, amb menys de 200 parlants, la majoria d’ells amb més de 50 anys, segons Vajda. “En un parell de generacions el Ket probablement s’haurà extingit”, afirma. (Notícies relacionades: “Languages Racing to Extinction in 5 Global ‘Hotspots’” [September 18, 2007].)
La família Na-Dene inclou llengües que es parlen pel grup de tribus Athasbaskan als EUA i Canadà, així com per la gent Tlingit i Eyak. L’última parlant d’Eyak va morir el gener passat.

Vajda va presentar els seus resultats el febrer, en una trobada de lingüistes al Centre de Llengües Nadiues d’Alaska, a Fairbanks.

Establint la connexió

Vajda va establir que l’enllaç entre la família Yeniseic i Na-Dene a partir de l’observació del sisteme de prefixació verbal. Aquests prefixes no existeixen en cap altra llengua del nord d’Àsia. “Tan sols les llengües Na-Dene tenen un sistema de prefixes verbals molt semblant al Yeniseic”, afirma. A partir d’aquí Vajda ha trobat algunes dotzenes de cognats, paraules que pertanyen a diferents llengües però que son semblants des d’un punt de vista fonètic i semàntic. Aquests resultats encaixen amb els treballs anteriors de Merritt Ruhlen, un antropòleg de la Universitat de Stanford a Califòrnia; qui, segons Vajda, va descobrir els primers cognats del Yeniseic i els Na-Dene. Vajda també assenyala que aquests cognats tenen correspondència fonètica. “He connectat sistemàticament les estructures de les llengües Yeniseic amb les estructures del Na-Dene modern” – diu Vajda – “les meves comparacions no mostren tan sols semblances formals, si no que també mostro que hi ha un sistema al darrera”.

Johanna Nichols és una lingüista a la universitat de Califòrnia a Berkeley, que va assistir a la torbada on Vajda va presentar la seva recerca. Amb l’excepció de la família Eskimo-Aleut que s’estén al llarg de l’estret de Bering i les Illes Aleutianes, aquesta és la primera demostració exitosa que existeix una connexió entre una llengua de l’Antic i el Nou món”, diu Nichols.

Llengua originària

Vajda afirma que la seva recerca situa la lingüística al mateix escenari que l’arqueologia, l’antropologia i la genètica pel que fa als estudis sobre la història dels éssers humans al Nord d’Àsia i Nord Amèrica. Ni el Ket modern ni el Na-Dene representen la llengua originària. Per exemple, probablement alguns sons de del Na-Dene són més propers al tronc comú que els del Yeniseic. Algunes altres paraules en Yeniseic, però, són probablement més antigues.

A partir de les evidències arqueològiques de les migracions humanes a través de l’estret de Bering, la connexió lingüística es podria remuntar a, com a mínim, 10.000 anys enrera. Si això és cert, segons Vajda es tractaria de l’enllaç lingüístic més antic demostrat fins avui dia. Encara falta, però, molta recerca sobre quan es van originar aquestes llengües i com van integrar-se ne diverses cultures abans que això s’accepti, afirma Nichols. “No crec que hi hagi cap raó per assumir que aquesta connexió es remunti a fa 10.000 anys. Segurament es deu tractar d’un episodi tardà en una història de l’assentament més llarg i més complex”, diu ella.

Sent jo mateixa filòloga, estic fascinada per aquest descobriment. Són molt bones notícies, enhorabona pels investigadors! A veure si troballes com aquesta contribueixen a fomentar i expandir l’ús i conservació d’aquestes llengües ignorades.

I am so happy, take a look at what I have just found! I was reading Anthropology.net, and they had an article about the Siberan and native Alaskan languages from National Geographic. Check it out here, or read it below:

Siberian, Native American Languages Linked. A First.

John Roach
for National Geographic News
March 26, 2008

A fast-dying language in remote central Siberia shares a mother tongue with dozens of Native American languages spoken thousands of miles away, new research confirms. The finding may allow linguists to weigh in on how the Americas were first settled, according to Edward Vajda, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Since at least 1923 researchers have suggested a connection exists between Asian and North American languages—but this is the first time a link has been demonstrated with established standards, said Vajda, who has studied the relationship for more than 15 years. Previous researchers had provided lists of similar-sounding and look-alike words, but their methods were unscientific. Such similarities, Vajda noted, are likely to be dismissed as coincidence even if they represent genuine evidence. So Vajda developed another method. “I’m providing a whole system of [similar] vocabulary and also of grammatical parallels—the way that verb prefixes are structured,” he said.

Dying Tongue

His research links the Old World language family of Yeniseic in central Siberia with the Na-Dene family of languages in North America. The Yeniseic family includes the extinct languages Yugh, Kott, Assan, Arin, and Pumpokol. Ket is the only Yeniseic language spoken today. Less than 200 speakers remain and most are over 50, according to Vajda. “Within a couple of generations, Ket will probably become extinct,” he said. (Related news: “Languages Racing to Extinction in 5 Global ‘Hotspots’” [September 18, 2007].) The Na-Dene family includes languages spoken by the broad group of Athabaskan tribes in the U.S. and Canada as well as the Tlingit and Eyak people. The last Eyak speaker died in January.

Vajda presented the findings in February at a meeting of linguists at the Alaska Native Language Center in Fairbanks.

Making the Connection

Vajda established the Yeniseic-Na-Dene link by looking for languages with a verb-prefix system similar to those in Yeniseic languages. Such prefixes are unlike any other language in North Asia. Only Na-Dene languages have a system of verb prefixes that very closely resemble the Yeniseic,” he said. From there, Vajda found several dozen cognates—or words in different languages that sound alike and have the same meaning. The results dovetail with earlier work by Merritt Ruhlen, an anthropologist at Stanford University in California who Vajda said discovered the first genuine Na-Dene-Yeniseic cognates. Vajda also showed how these cognates have sound correspondences. “I systematically connect these structures in Yeniseic with the structures in modern Na-Dene,” Vajda said. “My comparisons aren’t just lists of some look-alike words … I show there is a system behind it.”

Johanna Nichols is a linguist at the University of California in Berkeley who attended the Alaska meeting where Vajda presented his research. With the exception of the Eskimo-Aleut family that straddles the Bering Strait and Aleutian Islands, this is “the first successful demonstration of any connection between a New World language and an Old World language,” Nichols said.

Mother Tongue

Vajda said his research puts linguistics on the same stage as archaeology, anthropology, and genetics when it comes to studying the history of humans in North Asia and North America. However, the research has not revealed which language came first. Neither modern Ket nor Na-Dene languages in North America represent the mother tongue. For example, some words in the Na-Dene family likely represent sounds of the mother tongue more closely than their Yeniseic cognates. Other words in Yeniseic, however, are probably more archaic.

Based on archaeological evidence of human migrations across the Bering land bridge, the language link may extend back at least 10,000 years. If true, according to Vajda, this would be the oldest known demonstrated language link. But more research is needed to determine when the languages originated and how they became a part of various cultures before such a claim will be accepted, according to UC Berkeley linguist Nichols. “I don’t think there is any reason to assume the connection is [10,000 years] old … this must surely be one late episode in a much longer and more complicated history of settlement,” she said.

Being a linguist myself, I am thrilled with that discover. This is very good news, congratulations for the researchers! Let’s see if this helps conserving and increasing the use of all those forgotten languages.

1999–The largest Festival of Native Arts is held in the University of Alaska Fairbanks Davis Concert Hall, drawing up to 4,500 people. The gathering is promoted heavily throughout the state because it is the largest such gathering of the century. Feathered on this day for the first time ever is Native performance art, done by Paulette Moreno of Anchorage. The festival theme is “Dancing Our Stories.” It illustrates traditional ideas behind Alaska Native performance art and features 26 dance groups and more than 40 Native artisans. The festival started officially in 1974 in Fairbanks. Originally the goal was to give Native students attending UAF from villages a sense of belonging and home. It evolved into a celebration of indigenous cultures throughout the world. Originally, the festival was held over five days, but in recent years has been held over three days.

Festival Links

Festival of Native Arts

Home
History of the Festival
Alaska Native Cultures
Event Information
Sponsor Information
Planning Committee
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Alaska’s Native Cultures

The Native cultures of Alaska are wonderfully rich both in their similarities and diversity. Each group of people interacts with the environment where they settled. The strong influence of Alaska’s varied environments form the ties between the people and their land. Legends, customs, and subsistence lifestyles developed in harmony with the specific area where they settled. To survive in the harsh climates of Alaska, a deep awareness and unity with the living things around them is an absolute necessity. All Native people have great respect for the spirit of each living thing. Respect and cooperation among village members and for all things were the values that guarantee the survival of the people.

The Native people of Alaska have traditionally been hunters and food gatherers. Rivers, lakes and the ocean were major passageways, and all the cultures included variations of water vessels among their transport options. Although most of the groups were not truly nomadic, their subsistence made it necessary to cover great distances. Almost all of the groups lived in permanent villages throughout the winter, but moved to fish camps on the rivers in the summer. Most all of Alaska Native cultures, then and now, depend heavily upon fish and marine life of many varieties for subsistence. Land mammals are also used for food and clothing. In addition, gathered vegetation (e.g. mushrooms, seaweed, etc.) and a myriad of berries supplement the diet.

Language and culture boundaries between Alaska Native groups are distinct (see map), and are reflective of the nature of the respective culture.

• Aleut
• Athabaskan
• Eyak
• Inupiaq
• Sugpiaq
• Tlingit/Haida/Tsimshian
• Yup’ik
• Siberian Yupik

AK Languages Map

Last modified 2007-10-28 by OIT Web Developer. | UAF is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and educational institution.

Cited From: A Reference in Time, Alaska Native History Day by Day. Edited by Alexandra J. McClanahan. Published by The CIRI Foundation, 2001.

A Reference in Time

Self did not sleep a wink last night, dear blog readers. Not one wink. Yet, such is her perseverance that she is here, at 8:40 a.m., ready and able to blog. Would you not say she is tops in category of writers-who-can-still-function-after-zero-hours of sleep?

Self remembers reading somewhere that scientists have discovered that there is a link between the number of hours one sleeps and longevity: that is, those who sleep at least seven or eight hours a night are more likely to live longer.

Which, judging from last night’s insomnia, means that self does not have long for this world, dear blog readers.

Okey dokey! This morning, despite being extremely bleary-eyed and feeling extremely lousy (and self still has to drive to the City tonight to appear before a class at San Francisco State!), self is reading the San Francisco Chronicle of almost a week ago and has discovered the following highly interesting pieces of information:

Seven people were killed in Oakland over the weekend.

The Native American language Eyak will soon witness the passing of its last native speaker, which prompts Santa Clara professor Jeff Zorn to write, in a letter to the editor: “We all have better things to worry about.”

There are “about 110,000 Vietnamese Americans living in Santa Clara County alone.”

Feb. 12 was the 199th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth.

Susan Jacoby, in the Opinion page, maintains that “fewer than half of Americans accept the scientific validity of any form of evolution,” a fact which rather startled self (!!!) and which, Jacoby maintains (and self agrees) is “completely at odds with America’s image of itself as a world leader in education, science and technology.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

“When a language dies, a whole world dies. It takes millennia to develop, and is an artifact that contains within it a whole culture. This is a tragedy.” said Steven Levinson, of the Max Planck institute for psycholinguists in the Netherlands.

Chief Marie Smith Jones, 89, the last full-blooded member of Alaska’s Eyak Indians has died. She was not only the last of her tribe but also the last fluent speaker of the Eyak language. Born Udach’ Kuqax*a’a'ch, which means “a sound that calls people from afar”, on May 14, 1918 in Cordova, Alaska, Chief Marie Smith Jones grew up on Eyak Lake, where her family had a homestead. She died Jan. 21, 2008 at her home in Anchorage.

Udach’ Kuqax*a’a'ch had a passion. She wanted to preserve the Eyak language. As the last fluent speaker of Eyak she collaborated with Michael Krauss, a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her goal was to create a written record of the language that future generations could learn from and maybe even resurrect. She helped Krauss compile an Eyak dictionary and grammar. Along with her sister and a cousin she told Krauss stories, Eyak tales, that were made into a book.

“With her death, the Eyak language becomes extinct,” Krauss said. In all, he said, nearly 20 native Alaskan languages are at risk of the same fate. He called them “the intellectual heritage of this part of the world. It is unique to us and if we lose them, we lose what is unique to Alaska.”

According to her daughter, Bernice Galloway, her mother was a traditional Indian in many ways. She was the youngest of the children and waited until her last older sister, Sophie, died in 1992 before taking on the responsibility that comes with being the oldest child. It was at that time that Jones pursued her interest in preserving the Eyak language and the environment, Galloway said.

To the best of our knowledge she was the last full-blooded Eyak alive,” Galloway said. She was a woman who faced incredible adversity in her life and overcame it, she was about as tenacious as you can get.”

Many of her siblings died young when smallpox and influenza tore through the Eyaks, her daughter said. In 1948, she married William F. Smith, a white Oregon fisherman who met Jones while working his way up the coastline. The couple had nine children, seven of whom are still alive. None of them learned Eyak because they grew up at a time when it was considered wrong to speak anything but English.

Wary of the press, Mrs Smith-Jones nevertheless gained a global reputation for activism. She fought against logging on the Eyaks’ ancestral lands – which run 300 miles along the Gulf of Alaska – oversaw the repatriation of Eyak bones, and twice addressed the United Nations on the subject of peace and the preservation of indigenous languages.

According to Michael Krauss, “she was very much alone as the last speaker of Eyak for the last 15 years. She understood as only someone in her unique position could, what it meant to be the last of her kind.”

“It’s the first, but probably not the last, at the rate things are going, of the Alaska Native languages to go extinct. She understood what was at stake and its significance, and bore that tragic mantle with grace and dignity.”

This is rather sad but will be of interest to anyone who loves languages. The BBC reported today that the very last speaker of an Alaskan language called Eyak has died. Marie Smith Jones (picture above borrowed from the BBC story) was the mother of 9 children but none of them learned Eyak because when they were growing up it was considered wrong to speak anything but English.

Mrs Smith Jones, described as a “tiny, chain-smoking woman who was fiercely independent” devoted much of her energy in her later years to conservation and the rights of native Alaskans.

She also worked with linguist Michael Krauss to ensure that written records of the language were kept. He said of her:

“she was very much alone as the last speaker of Eyak” for the last 15 years.

“She understood as only someone in her unique position could, what it meant to be the last of her kind,”

(Alaska photo by Jim Hanus from Michigan Imaging www.michiganimaging.com/alaska/alaska.html )

Makes you think about what language really means to us doesn’t it. I think it would be brilliant if more people spoke more languages. The more we understand eachother across different cultures the better and every different language has its own music and special secrets. I love the English Language with all its history and variety and irregularities and believe that on the whole it has been the right choice as a common world language. But heaven forbid it should overwhelm other languages however few speakers there are.

Anyway, here’s the link to the BBC story about Marie Smith Jones. May she rest in peace. It also talks about other languages at risk of dying out and has links to a website for the preservation of Alaskan Languages.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7206411.stm

According to UNESCO there are more than 3000 languages at risk of dying out in the world today. That is a shocking number! Imagine the poetry, song and tradition that will die with them.

Read about it here:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/02/21/unesco-languages-disappear.html

Comments on this story are very welcome. If we were asked in an exam to suggest what could be done to preserve these languages what kind of things could we recommend?

“Das letzte Mitglied des Volks der Eyak in Alaska ist im Alter von 89 Jahren gestorben. Marie Smith Jones war zugleich die Letzte, die die Eyak-Sprache fließend beherrschte. …”

Diese Meldung hat höchstens indirekt mit unserer Alten Sitte zu tun und Götter werden wohl auch nirgendwo erwähnt. Aber es bewegt mich und ich sehe da schon einen Zusammenhang zwischen dem Aussterben von Völkern und Kulturen in Alaska und unserer Alten Sitte, von der ja auch vieles in jahrhundertelanger Unterdrückung und Zerstörung verloren gegangen ist.

Obigen Artikel könnt Ihr unter krone.at weiterlesen.