First proposal to create a program in Alaska Native languages at UAF

Here's a blast from the past. This document is the first proposal to the University of Alaska calling for the establishment of a program in Alaska Native Languages. It is dated Dec 1960. It would be twelve more years before the Alaska Native Language Center would be created by state legislation. Written by ANLC founder Michael Krauss, the memo recognizes the already extremely endangered status of Alaska's Native languages some 50 years ago, noting that "if the University does not initiate a linguistic research program soon, much of the data will be lost forever." The memo also recognizes the role of the University of Alaska in providing leadership and training in the field of Alaska Native languages.

See item G961K1960

Important new collection of comparative Athabaskan materials

Leer materials being processed

The Archive has just received an important new collection of Jeff Leer's notes on comparative Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit. These materials documents Leer's extensive work on reconstructing the history of the Athabaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit languages. Materials are scheduled to be scanned in April 2011. I'll post another announcement once the scanned materials are available.

"Tlingit onset deaspiration hypothesis"

ANLA in Goldmine

Lisa Smith providing on-site training in the
use of SirsiDynix WorkFlows

ANLA has joined the ranks of the libraries accessible through the UAF Goldmine catalog. If you search for books using Goldmine, you will see that one of the choices under "library" is UAF - Alaska Native Language Archive. Don't get too excited: there aren't any books listed there yet. ANLA staff are currently receiving training in cataloging and the use of the Goldmine system. Once this training is complete you will be able to search for certain ANLA materials using Goldmine. In the near term this service will be restricted to published materials such as books; manuscripts and recordings will remain searchable through our regular catalog interface.

New book: "We are our language"

We just acquired a copy of Barbra Meek's new book We Are Our Language: An Ethnography of Language Revitalization in a Northern Athabascan Community. It's a study of the sociolinguistics of language revitalization in Kaska, a Canadian Athabaskan language. Cataloged as CN001M2010.

Open Language Archive Community

After a several year hiatus, the Archive catalog is once again registered with the Open Language Archives Community (OLAC). This allows the catalog to be searched remotely via any service provider compliant with the OLAC protocol. In particular, users may search for Alaska Native language resources across a federation of dedicated language archives.

New books

We just received several new books, including three dictionaries published by Sealaska Heritage Institute.

• Dictionary of Tlingit, by Keri Edwards
• Dictionary of Alaskan Haida, by Jordan Lachler
• Dictionary of Shm'algyack, by Donna May Roberts

We also now have a copy of Bill Bright's Native American Placenames of the United States. This volume contains information on many Alaskan names of Native origin. ANLC faculty Lawrence Kaplan and James Kari are consulting editors.

Alutiiq language materials

The Archive just received a deposit of Alutiiq language materials prepared by the Native Village of Afognak with funding from the Administration for Native Americans. The materials include a curriculum workbook, a teacher's guide, and several story books. Materials have been adapted for the Kodiak dialect from materials originally prepared in the Chugach dialect. In addition, the materials are supplemented by new recordings. All of these materials can be accessed online at the Alutiiq Language Elementary Curriculum website.