There are more students studying Lingít at the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) in a given semester than there are living fluent speakers. The UAS Alaska Native Arts, Languages & Studies Program requires unique texts, audio recordings and curricular resources to support student engagement with language revitalization through learning, documentation, and community activities. Many of these curricular resources exist only in analog formats which limits access to learners beyond our campus.
Supported by a 2021 University of Alaska Faculty Initiative Fund award ($10,000) to grant PI Jonas Lamb for the project (Increasing Access to Lingit, Haida, Tsimshian Language Materials through Digitization), Egan Library acquired an archival quality book scanner to digitize fragile, rare and/or out of copyright, curricular resources currently owned by the Alaska Native Arts, Languages & Studies Program and items in the Cyril George Indigenous Knowledge Collection (UAS Egan Library).
During Summer 2022, grant PI completed trainings from the Sustainable Heritage Network and Local Contexts, received and configured book scanner, wrote project documentation and scanned and initiated or negotiated rights inquiries for seven texts.
As of August 2022 the project team has not yet been able to schedule meetings with the Alaska Native Languages Center (ANLC) and Alaska Native Languages Archive (ANLA) at UAF to discuss strategies for building institutional capacity through inter-university collaboration (UAS, UAF) to increase access to learning resources and scholarship vital to language revitalization efforts more broadly including other University of Alaska programs and language learners around the world. However, email discussions between UAS and ANLC have led to the sharing of resources and initial conversations about the origins of ANLC collections and why regional distribution or repatriation of these collections have not been considered
Project Goals
Increase access to rare curricular resources in support of the UAS Alaska Native Arts, Languages & Studies Program.
Build institutional capacity through inter-university collaboration (UAS, UAF) to increase access to learning resources and scholarship vital to language revitalization efforts more broadly including other University of Alaska programs and language learners around the world.
Grant PI: Jonas Lamb
Collaborators: X'unei Lance Twitchell, Éedaa ḵa Heather Dawn Burge, UAS Alaska Native Arts, Languages & Studies Program
