Status of Alaska Native languages through the years

Based on phone calls and emails I've received this past week, the new Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Alaska map has triggered quite a bit of interest in the status of Alaska Native languages, that is, the number of speakers and the state of endangerment. For example, Sunday's article in the Anchorage Daily News began with a discussion of the map but focused much more on the threat to Native languages. That's actually a very reasonable connection to make. And in fact, the original 1974 edition was motivated very much by a desire to make people aware of the perilous state of Alaskan languages even 40 years ago.

The two previous editions of the map made an effort to indicate language status village by village according to a three-point scale

• closed dots indicate villages where most or all of the children speak the language
• half-open dots indicate villages where some the children speak the language
• open dots indicate villages where very few or none of the children speak the language

Based on feedback from several public forums language status was not indicated on the 2011 IPLA map. Instead, the authors agreed to provide this information digitally via a website which shows speaker numbers over time. That information is still being compiled from various sources and so not yet ready for prime time. However, thanks to efforts of UAF graduate student Jonathan Manker we now have language status information compiled from three previous maps:

• Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska (Krauss, 1974)
• Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska, revised edition (Krauss, 1982)
• Inuit Nunait - Nunangit Yuget - Unangan Tanangin (Krauss, 1995) 

The last of these only reports information for the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan languages, but that happens to be where the most change is seen between the 1980's and the 1990's. I mapped the speaker data this morning using GIS and generated the following three maps. (Click to enlarge)

Status of Alaska Native Languages in 1974

Status of Alaska Native Languages in 1982

Status of Alaska Native Languages in 1995 (Inuit-Yupik-Unangan)

There are certainly limits to this methodology. Assessment of number of children speaking are bound to be somewhat subject, and the boundaries between the three categories are deliberately fuzzy. Also, these assessments focus on first-language speakers and exclude second-language teaching efforts, which are becoming increasingly important today. Nonetheless, since the assessments were all compiled by the same author across the 1974, 1982, and 1995 maps, they are broadly comparable and so provide an interesting time series on the endangerment status of Alaska Native languages. Some may argue that the result is too depressing. While I don't necessarily disagree, I also think it's important to acknowledge what has happened to Native languages over the past few decades. Acknowledging the past is the first step to improving the future. The changes shown across these three maps are not news -- we already know that the number of children speaker Alaska Native languages has been declining -- but the imagery clearly shows the expanse of the problem. Let's hope that it provides a stimulus for more action.

We hope to get this information into a more accessible and interactive form, including speaker information from other sources as well. In the meantime if you'd like to explore the time series yourself the language status information has been added into the GIS dataset available from the Alaska Native Language Archive.