Preserving Alaska Native culture (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

June 21st, 2011 2:43 pm | Jennifer Gibbins
	
Preserving Alaska Native culture
USA

There was big news last year for the Eyak language, the arrival of
22-year-old Guillaume Leduey, a French student who had stumbled upon
Eyak while randomly surfing the Internet at age 15. Leduey had taught
himself to speak Eyak using materials he ordered from Alaska. His 2010
trip to the United States came at the invitation of Michael Krauss,
University of Alaska linguistics professor, and the only living
speaker of Eyak on the planet since the death of Marie Smith-Jones,
honorary Eyak chief and the last fluent Eyak speaker of the language;
and, Laura Bliss-Spaan, a former television reporter who has taken up
preservation of the language as a personal mission since discovering
Eyak while covering the Cordova Iceworm Festival years ago.

Krauss and Bliss-Spaan wanted a first-person look at the whiz kid to
find out if he was for real and decided he was. This spring the French
phenom returned for several months to work with Krauss as an
assistant. Not only is Leduey speaking Eyak fluently, he's begun
teaching it, earning himself the nickname Super G.

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http://www.thecordovatimes.com/article/1125preserving_alaska_native_culture