Alutiiq speakers record CD to preserve dying language

[Linda Lanz]

Alutiiq speakers record CD to preserve dying language

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/rural/story/8594236p-8487031c.html



STRONG TURNOUT: The songs help keep culture alive in Kodiak.

By SCOTT CHRISTIANSEN
Kodiak Daily Mirror

Published: January 27, 2007
Last Modified: January 27, 2007 at 01:54 AM



KODIAK -- Enthusiasm and humor were contagious Wednesday afternoon  
while Susan Malutin and Teresa Clark donned headphones and took a  
second turn at a pair of microphones in the main gallery of Kodiak's  
Alutiiq Museum.

The women had just finished a carefully annunciated version of  
"Miktengcusqaq miskiiRaq," an Alutiiq translation of the children's  
song "Itsy Bitsy Spider."
"Good," producer Stephen Blanchett said. "Now give me a silly one."
Blanchett had previously recorded a group chorus. Now he was  
listening for, and capturing, individual voices for the songs final  
mix. He tapped a computer keyboard on the table in front of him. One  
of the sliding controls on the sound mixing board patched to the  
computer moved as if an invisible hand touched it.
"OK, for real this time."
"For real?" Clark asked.
"For real. Just be silly. This one is for the kids."
Malutin and Clark went through the next take with high-pitched  
girlish voices. All around the room, cheeks swelled. Dimples revealed  
themselves, and women covered their mouths to prevent giggles from  
reaching Blanchett's microphones.
By the time they got to the words "paipaq mayunqiiskii," ("the pipe  
it climbed up again"), everyone was cracking up.
As lighthearted and downright goofy as the scene seemed, its also  
part of a weightier, more important story.
The Sugpiaq people, Natives of Kodiak, are working hard on several  
fronts to preserve their language. Alutiiq is likely spoken by fewer  
than 100 people in Alaska.
Alutiiq Museum Director Sven Haakanson Jr., a Harvard-trained  
anthropologist who is also Sugpiak, estimates that between 35 and 50  
original speakers live on Kodiak Island today.
"We're fighting a falling tide on this one. The language is  
disappearing, and if we don't do something about it -- if we don't do  
something about it now -- it's going to disappear," Haakanson said.
A children's song that's fun to sing and includes words for "rain,"  
"spider" and "up" can help. It can likely help in a way that a  
picture book, and almost certainly a dictionary, can't.
Over five days last week, Sugpiaq singers with ties to every  
community on Kodiak Island came together to record songs. Not just  
children's songs but also Christian hymns sung in Alutiiq and  
Slavonic and other songs native to Kodiak.
A CD from the sessions will be available for sale later in the year,  
and museum workers say demand from visitors already exists.
For Malutin, a second-year student in an Alutiiq language  
preservation program, the recording sessions have already been an  
important event.
"The best thing was to have so many of our elders here together in  
one place at the same time," Malutin said.
"From 10 to 5 every day, and that's a really big commitment for some  
of them."
Clyda Christensen, 86, is one of the elders who made time to share  
songs and her knowledge of the language. Elders sang and also  
rehearsed with younger singers, coaching their pronunciation.
Christensen grew up in Karluk and remembers when the town had seven  
canneries operating during the summer and hundreds of residents.
Karluk had 27 residents in 2005, according to census data. More  
recently, Karluk residents said about 40 people lived there.
"There was about 300 people (in Karluk) when I was growing up. My  
dad, he was from Sweden, and he used to say there was about 500  
people there when he met my mom," Christensen said.
She grew up speaking English in school and with her father and  
Alutiiq with her mother. As a little girl, she would listen to house  
guests speak Alutiiq with her mother over tea.
This is how she first got word of airplanes. She says she  
misunderstood at first.
"I heard them say that many years from now, people are not going to  
use boats or dories. But they are going to fly through the air. I  
remember running to my sister and telling her, 'We're going to fly!  
Maybe we'll have wings like seagulls. I think that's what Mom and  
them are talking about,' " she said.
Christensen, like many people her age, refers to the Alutiiq language  
as "Aleut." She recognizes which island village a speaker is from by  
his or her accent.
"They called us the North-enders. Our language is the same as Old  
Harbor and Akhiok, but the dialect is a little different," she said.
"When we would all sing together, it was sometimes hard for us to  
follow them. They sing a little different -- but the same songs."
The Orthodox caroling tradition, called "starring," was part of  
growing up in Karluk, Christensen said. This week's recordings came  
right at the end of the church's Christmas holidays, which start at  
the beginning of January.
"Its caroling," Christensen said. "We go starring. The stars are  
stars that we carry. And we would carry them into every home. Its  
carrying Jesus into every home."
The museum's language manager, April Laktonen-Counselor, guessed that  
about one-fourth of all the original Alutiiq speakers living on  
Kodiak participated in the recordings.
"I think the starring songs had a lot to do with that, and the  
general upbeat nature of singing. I think that this time of year  
there was a hunger for that," Laktonen-Counselor said.
While Blanchett was packing up his equipment Wednesday, he talked  
about his work. Blanchett is Yup'ik and a member of Pamyua, one of  
Alaska's most popular bands. His group mixes influences from Yupi'k,  
Greenland Inuit, American soul singing and more. It has released  
three albums and won a Native American Music Award in 2003.
For the last two years, Blanchett has been picking up jobs with his  
field recording equipment. He's traveled to Barrow, Tatitlek and  
Chenega Bay, among other places.
"I'm all about making recordings and CDs, because we don't have  
anything to listen to," he said.
"And it's great to be with the elders. It's been like that, laughing,  
since I got here last week."
Blanchett paused while packing and talked about the "vibe" in the  
museum's gallery.
"We were upstairs in the boardroom and then we had to come down  
here," he said.
"They had to have a board meeting. When they said we could go back up  
there I said, 'No, I like it better here.' "
The singers were more comfortable in the museum than the boardroom,  
"even with the interruptions," he said.
He waved a hand toward a display case containing oil lamps carved  
from stone.
"I like doing it here, down here next to these thousand-year-old  
things."