Survey for Alaskan Athabaskanists

[Gary Holton]

James,

I'd be happy to participate and would also be interested to see the
results of your survey. Susan Paskvan and Kathy Sikorski may have the
best info for Koyukon and Gwich'in, respectively, but they may not be
on this list. So if you don't mind I'll forward your request to them.

More recent estimates of vitality are in Krauss' article in the 2007
Vanishing Voices of the Pacific Rim volume.

Also, in 2008 Tim Argetsinger compiled a list of revitalization
programs as part of a First Alaskan's internship with ISER. Some
results are posted at
http://www.alaskool.org/Language/LanguageRevitalization.htm, but he
may have a more complete report.

Gary




On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 4:55 PM, James Crippen <jcrippen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm looking for Athabaskanists who have worked extensively in Alaska
> that are interested in participating in a survey about language
> endangerment and revitalization in Alaska. I'm interested in gathering
> professional estimates about how healthy various languages in Alaska
> are, and what sort of revitalization programs might exist or have
> existed in the past.
>
> Here is a random sampling of questions to give some idea about the survey:
>
>  What estimated number of people in the area are L1 speakers of the language?
>  Are there villages where the L1 speakers are the majority? If so, which ones?
>  Is there a modern reference grammar for the language? If so, provide
> a reference.
>  Is there a centralized collection of audio and video recordings of
> L1 speakers?
>  Do any local government agencies (village, tribe, regional corp.,
> etc.) have formal statements or policies regarding Native language
> conservation? Summarize them or provide references if possible.
>  Are there curriculum materials available for teaching children the language?
>
> And so forth. It's a two page questionnaire that should take a couple
> of hours to complete, depending on how detailed one wants to be in
> answering. I'm doing this for a class project on the status of Alaska
> Native languages. It may become a publication in the future, but I
> don't have plans for that yet. The last time that anyone looked at the
> status of Alaska Native languages in total was Mike Krauss back in
> 1980, so it's time to look again.
>
> Please email me directly if you're interested in participating, and
> let me know what languages and areas you could report on. I'm still
> working on the IRB/HSC stuff, so I can't ask any real questions just
> yet, but I can at least start gathering participants.
>
> Thanks,
> James
>