Last Alaska language speaker dies (ps, this is why i have the bbc set as my homepage)
A woman believed to be the last native speaker of the Eyak language in the north-western US state of Alaska has died at the age of 89.
Marie Smith Jones was a champion of indigenous rights and conservation. She died at her home in Anchorage.
She helped the University of Alaska compile an Eyak dictionary, so that future generations would have the chance to resurrect it.
Nearly 20 other native Alaskan languages are at risk of disappearing.
Ms Jones is described by her family as a tiny chain smoking woman who was fiercely independent, says the BBC's Peter Bowes in Los Angeles.
"To the best of our knowledge, she was the last full-blooded Eyak alive," her daughter Bernice Galloway told the Associated Press news agency.
"She was a woman who faced incredible adversity in her life and overcame it. She was about as tenacious as you can get."
She believed passionately in preserving the Eyak language and wanted a written record of it to be kept so for future generations, our correspondent adds.
from the bbc
Seeking Her Forgiveness by Susie Silook
"My aunts are dying off on me and alone I’ll be living … " These haunting words come from the "Lament for Eyak," a story-poem sung by Anna Nelson Harry and recorded on tape by Michael E. Krauss, a University of Alaska linguist in Yakutat Alaska in 1972. The Eyak people she mourns -- her family -- once lived in the territory between present-day Cordova and Yakutat. In 1880, before the arrival of the first American canneries and trading posts, they numbered around 200. Within the next 20 years, their culture was overwhelmed by the non-Natives who came to work the canneries. The newcomers brought alcohol and deadly diseases and interfered with subsistence practice, and by 1900 the two principal Eyak villages had been destroyed. A few Eyak lingered in Old Town Cordova, but their story was drawing to a close. By 1933 the Eyak population was down to 30, only 15 of whom spoke the native language. In 1952, when the first linguist arrived, only seven native speakers remained. Today, there is just one.
Northern Star: Alaska Quarterly Review
Now there are none.
Marie Smith Jones was a champion of indigenous rights and conservation. She died at her home in Anchorage.
She helped the University of Alaska compile an Eyak dictionary, so that future generations would have the chance to resurrect it.
Nearly 20 other native Alaskan languages are at risk of disappearing.
Ms Jones is described by her family as a tiny chain smoking woman who was fiercely independent, says the BBC's Peter Bowes in Los Angeles.
"To the best of our knowledge, she was the last full-blooded Eyak alive," her daughter Bernice Galloway told the Associated Press news agency.
"She was a woman who faced incredible adversity in her life and overcame it. She was about as tenacious as you can get."
She believed passionately in preserving the Eyak language and wanted a written record of it to be kept so for future generations, our correspondent adds.
from the bbc
Seeking Her Forgiveness by Susie Silook
"My aunts are dying off on me and alone I’ll be living … " These haunting words come from the "Lament for Eyak," a story-poem sung by Anna Nelson Harry and recorded on tape by Michael E. Krauss, a University of Alaska linguist in Yakutat Alaska in 1972. The Eyak people she mourns -- her family -- once lived in the territory between present-day Cordova and Yakutat. In 1880, before the arrival of the first American canneries and trading posts, they numbered around 200. Within the next 20 years, their culture was overwhelmed by the non-Natives who came to work the canneries. The newcomers brought alcohol and deadly diseases and interfered with subsistence practice, and by 1900 the two principal Eyak villages had been destroyed. A few Eyak lingered in Old Town Cordova, but their story was drawing to a close. By 1933 the Eyak population was down to 30, only 15 of whom spoke the native language. In 1952, when the first linguist arrived, only seven native speakers remained. Today, there is just one.
Northern Star: Alaska Quarterly Review
Now there are none.