On Tuesday, the governor created a new, statewide council tasked with saving Alaska Native languages. In the Aleut community of St. Paul, efforts to revive Unangam Tunuu have been ongoing for decades. KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce reports on the challenges of bringing a language back from the brink of extinction.

Transcript

SJ: At 86, Ludmilla Mandregan still vividly remembers the punishment for speaking Aleut in school.

Mandregan: “Don’t spit it, don’t spit it!!” they say. Phillips-Matthews brown soap. It had lye in it. We didn’t know.

SJ: When Mandregan had children, she vowed they wouldn’t suffer the same abuse.

Mandregan: I speak English only to them. And then when they start teaching Aleut, they said, “mom, can I go to class?” and I said “no kid of mine going to learn to speak Aleut!!!”

SJ: Today, Mandregan is one of only two dozen fluent Aleut speakers in St. Paul, even though the community’s population is predominantly Unangan. She’s no longer opposed to teaching kids Aleut, but she recognizes that it might be too late.

Mandregan: Hardly anybody to speak Aleut with now. When somebody asks me sometimes I forget the names of things, you know.

[Children speaking in Aleut]

SJ: In this fourth grade class at the St. Paul school, Edna Floyd’s students are reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in Aleut. The dozen kids are still mostly at the beginner level.

Floyd: Okay - happy birthday. 

Children talking
Child: Pascha-Qaĝaadan.
Floyd: Say it again.
Child: Pascha-Qaĝaadan.
Floyd: Okay, now everybody say it. 
Chorus of children: Pascha-Qaĝaadan.

SJ: The students work their way through a list of vocab words, translating from English to Aleut and then from Aleut to English. Floyd says the progress is slow because she only sees the kids twice a week for 40 minutes. She wishes the community had an immersion program, but:

Floyd: I don’t know how that would work. You’d have to have people that are willing to work and speak Aleut all the time to the children.

SJ: Are there enough teachers to even possibly do that?

Floyd: No, uhn-uh, no.

SJ: Floyd herself is done teaching. After 27 years, she’s retiring from the Pribilof School District. She wishes she’d been able to do more.

Floyd: The younger kids you can get them hooked. Once they get up there in age, they kind of lose interest.

SJ: Over the years, Floyd says she’s only had two students really pursue Aleut beyond the elementary level.

Floyd: And they’re both gone now. But they knew a lot. They could speak and did real well. But usually once they get out, then that’s it.

SJ: Floyd says that’s because there are so few opportunities to use the language outside of the classroom. Most of her student’s parents, and often even their grandparents, don’t speak Aleut. To stay fluent herself, Floyd talks frequently with Ludmilla Mandregan, the elder we heard earlier.

Floyd: She calls me and talks to me in Aleut, tells me all these stories, you know, where if you were to say it in English we would lose a lot of meaning.

SJ: Whether anyone will be able to understand those stories in 50 years is still an open question for Floyd.

Floyd: I know it’s being worked on. But it has to be fast.

SJ: There are only about a hundred fluent speakers of Aleut left in the world today and most are elderly. But the language may not end with them. Some Native groups are taking steps to develop a digital language program, so Aleut can be passed on to future generations even after the last teachers are gone.

Reporting in St. Paul, I’m SJ.