The Alaska Legislature is considering two bills that would pave the way for language immersion charter schools in the state. But one of the bill\u2019s sponsors, Sitka Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, said at the Native Issues Forum Wednesday it\u2019s possible to create language immersion schools right now. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you were the parent of a child in the Lower Kuskokwim School District in Bethel you actually have the ability to enroll your son or daughter in immersion language Yup\u2019ik elementary school through the fifth grade,\u201d Kreiss-Tomkins said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s a fact that many people in Southeast Alaska and many people in Anchorage, Fairbanks and Kodiak do not know, but it\u2019s a fact worth knowing and it\u2019s a fact work emulating and replicating,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s exactly what Lance Twitchell has been working toward in Juneau. Twitchell is an assistant professor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast and a language advocate.<\/p>\n
Kreiss-Tomkins and Twitchell were two of five panel speakers at the forum, which had an audience of about 100 at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall. <\/p>\n
Twitchell said a partnership between the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and a long list of other organizations and tribes is going to start a childcare and preschool that raises and teaches children entirely in Tlingit. Tlingit language instructor Mary Folletti will be the teacher.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to resist all suggestions that this will leave them behind, or that they are missing opportunities. We are going to stop at nothing and make sure this begins and happens this year,\u201d Twitchell said.<\/p>\n
He said the partnership is also going to build a Tlingit language medium school that teaches K-12 curriculum entirely in the Tlingit language.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout our languages, we are darker-skinned, card-carrying white people who know how to fish, hunt, dance but cannot speak with our ancestors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Marvin Adams, CCTHITA\u2019s fifth vice president, said federal money through the Bureau of Indian Affairs could help bring other ideas like this into fruition. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to keep the pressure on to get funding brought back to Alaska. It\u2019s important because we have to pay for our language teachers. We have to get money for that,\u201d Adams said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of activity will allow us to have a say in what we teach our children,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
Two of the other panel speakers were examples of Alaska Native language learners. <\/p>\n
Alfie Price, who is both Tlingit and Tsimshian, studies Sm\u2019algyax, the Tsimshian language.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s part of a group of six in Juneau that meet regularly multiple times a week to learn Sm\u2019algyax. Similar efforts are taking place elsewhere in Southeast, like Ketchikan and Metlakatla.<\/p>\n
Price said in British Columbia, there are more than 30 fluent speakers. In Alaska, only seven remain and they\u2019re all elderly. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe future of Sm\u2019algyax depends on those of us who refuse to let it disappear,\u201d Price said. \u201cWe have so much work to do.\u201d <\/p>\n
Robert Edwardson first started learning Haida when he was a boy growing up in Ketchikan, but gave it up in his teenage years.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t pick it again until his daughter started studying Haida at the University of Alaska Southeast and his wife and son started learning as well. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey did classes and I didn\u2019t, and I was listening to them talk in Haida and the more they talked, the more I remembered it, and I decided I wanted a little of that, too,\u201d Edwardson said. <\/p>\n
He started taking classes three years ago. Now, as a 50-year-old, he\u2019s determined to become fluent, no matter how long it takes. <\/p>\n
Edwardson said there are only about three fluent speakers of Alaska Haida.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I actually like our chances,\u201d Edwardson said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere I think the future of Haida is going is toward technology,\u201d he said. \u201cWe do our classes over Google Hangout. It\u2019s a little bit difficult sometimes, getting all the computers to line up but we do video-conferencing and it works fantastic and compared to doing nothing, it\u2019s phenomenal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Alaska Legislature is considering two bills that would pave the way for language immersion charter schools in the state. But one of the bill\u2019s sponsors, Sitka Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, said at the Native Issues Forum Wednesday it\u2019s possible to create language immersion schools right now. \u201cIf you were the parent of a child in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":26183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26182","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=26182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26182"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}