Resources

  • Piciryaramta Elicungcallra: Yup'ik Immersion Language Education

    Spring 2022

    UAF's Applied Linguistics program and the Lower Kuskokwim and Lower Yukon School Districts have launched a new site, Piciryaramta Elicungcallra, about language immersion and programming.

    Visit our new site

  • The Name Troth Yeddha'

    Updated 10/8/18

     Read about Chief Peter John's 1994 blessing and vision for Troth Yeddha' and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

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  • Native Placenames of the Fairbanks Area

    3/6/2012
    Although the modern city of Fairbanks was founded in 1901, the region in which Fairbanks is located has long been occupied by speakers of the (Lower) Tanana Athabascan language. The Native placenames of the region reveal a long history of use by Athabascan speakers. In fact, many common English names derive ultimately from Athabascan.
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  • Inuit or Eskimo: Which name to use?

     
    Although the name "Eskimo" was commonly used in Alaska to refer to Inuit and Yupik people of the world, this usage is now considered unacceptable by many or even most Alaska Natives, largely since it is a colonial name imposed by non-Indigenous people. Alaska Natives increasingly prefer to be known by the names they use in their own languages, such as Inupiaq or Yupik. "Inuit" is now the current term in Alaska and across the Arctic, and "Eskimo" is fading from use. The Inuit Circumpolar Council prefers the term "Inuit" but some other organizations use "Eskimo".
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  • The Name "Athabascan"

    7/1/2011
    Athabascan is the name of the interrelated complex of languages indigenous to Interior Alaska, western Canada, the northern California and southern Oregon coast, and the desert Southwest United States.
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  • Inuit Snow Terms: How Many and What Does It Mean?

      2003
    This paper was originally presented at the IPSSAS Seminar, 1 June 2003, and appears in the proceedings volume Building Capacity in Arctic Societies. Formatting may differ slightly from the original.
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  • Mapping Alaska's Native Languages

     
     The most widely accepted map of Alaska Native languages is Michael Krauss' Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska (1974, revised 1982).
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  • Dene-Yeniseian Languages

     
    The Dene-Yeniseian Hypothesis proposes a genetic relationship between the Na-Dene (or Athabascan-Eyak-Tlingit) languages of North America and the Yeniseian languages of Central Siberia.
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  • Alaska Native Language Websites

    6/6/2012
     Programs concerned with Alaska Native Language Revitalization
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  • Comparative Yupik and Inuit

    7/1/2011
    Four distinct Yupik (or Western Eskimo) languages are spoken along the shores of the Gulf of Alaska, in southwestern Alaska, and on the easternmost tip of Siberia. The Inuit (or Eastern Eskimo) language continuum is spoken in northern Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Another Eskimo language, the virtually extinct Sirenikski of Siberia, is usually grouped with the Yupik languages although it may actually constitute a third distinct branch.
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  •  Yukon-Kuskokwim Ethnobotany

     
    Elders in western Alaska have compiled "A Guide to the Ethnobotany of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Region."
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  • CoLang 2016

     
    The Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang) was held on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2016. The institute was designed to provide an opportunity for community language activists and linguists to receive training in community-based language documentation and revitalization. 
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