The Tsimshian people are fighting to save their language, Sm\u2019algyax \u2014 and they\u2019re fighting part of the battle with t-shirts designed by father and son David A. and David R. Boxley.<\/p>\n
The money will go to the projects of The Haayk Foundation, which consists of David R. Boxley (cochair) Gavin Hudson (chair) and Kandi McGilton (secretary and treasurer), all of Metlakatla. The organization\u2019s main goal, David R. said, is language preservation and revitalization; one of their goals is to sponsor free Sm\u2019algyax classes for Tsimshian people.<\/p>\n
The foundation also supports culturally specific projects; recently, for example, it brought Delores Churchill for the first of several lessons on Metlakatla\u2019s style of cedar bark weaving, in partnership with the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center. The foundation is also working to digitize tapes of elders recorded speaking Sm\u2019algyax, in essence starting a library.<\/p>\n
Since the three started the foundation, \u201cWe\u2019re finding out\u2026 the process of saving an endangered language it\u2019s nothing we could ever do by ourselves,\u201d Boxley said. \u201cIt (the state of the language) is an emergency\u2026. Hopefully we can have an influence and help create some young people who speak our language, so it doesn\u2019t die. If we lose it, we lose a really important part of our identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quoting his father, David R. said \u201cwe\u2019re all in this canoe together.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt (working to save Sm\u2019algyax) is probably the most important thing we\u2019ll ever do,\u201d Boxley said. \u201cThe foundation is something we hope will help, but we\u2019re very aware that it\u2019s going to be a big job, and it\u2019s going to take the rest of our lives. We\u2019re going to keep pushing forward, because I don\u2019t want to say that my generation didn\u2019t do what it needed to\u2026 so that somebody\u2019s actually speaking it in 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
To buy a shirt, go to https:\/\/www.booster.com\/tsimshian. They\u2019ll be for sale until July 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Tsimshian people are fighting to save their language, Sm\u2019algyax \u2014 and they\u2019re fighting part of the battle with t-shirts designed by father and son David A. and David R. Boxley. The money will go to the projects of The Haayk Foundation, which consists of David R. Boxley (cochair) Gavin Hudson (chair) and Kandi McGilton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":18417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18416"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}