Overview:
The University of Alaska Southeast has launched a first-of-its-kind master's degree program to help Indigenous language speakers become fully licensed teachers, expanding opportunities to preserve and revitalize Alaska Native languages.
Dr. Angela Luda first heard her Native language on the mudflats of the Taku River in Alaska’s Southeast Panhandle. She spent her childhood summers at a fish camp along the river, picking berries and harvesting fish. Amid the Taku’s steady, quiet roar, she heard the rising and falling tones of her mother speaking Tlingit.
“She would speak to the land or to the animals, and we could hear her speaking Tlingit,” Luda told Native News Online. “I grew up hearing the language, but she never spoke it to us. She wanted us to speak English so we would be accepted. In her desire to protect us, she did not teach any of us.”
Now, Luda, the dean of education at the University of Alaska Southeast, is helping bring that language into classrooms across Alaska. Last month, the university launched its Master of Arts in Teaching Indigenous Languages (MAT-IL), a first-of-its-kind program designed to help Indigenous language speakers become fully licensed teachers.
Currently, many Indigenous language educators in Alaska hold a Type M limited teaching certificate, which allows them to teach subjects for which certification is not available or required. This limits their scope of work and compensation. Becoming fully certified enables educators to earn a full salary and benefits while teaching critically endangered languages.
The move is significant for Indigenous language revitalization, a global movement to increase the number of speakers of endangered mother tongues in Native communities.
“It’s a big deal,” Luda said. “This is something that is really crucial to the well-being of our people.”
According to the Alaska Native Heritage Center, there are 20 Alaska Native languages from four distinct language families. Federal policies that forced Alaska Native children into Indian boarding schools, where Native languages were forbidden, and an English-only mandate that prevented state officials from speaking to people who did not speak English decimated the languages. Although the mandate was not overturned until 2002, the Alaska Legislature created the Alaska Native Language Program in the 1970s to preserve the languages.
While a recent report from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development identifies youth as one of the main age groups using Alaska Native languages — a sign that revitalization efforts are working — most languages remain critically endangered.
Luda spent the early part of her career teaching math and science in Alaska’s public school system. She often brought her students outdoors and invited elders to teach them Tlingit words for the plants and salmon they were studying up close. The experience prompted her to take classes to learn the language herself. When she began using Tlingit words with her students, she saw them respond to the language with a sense of belonging.
“When I would use a word or phrase that a Tlingit student had heard in their home, it was like we had a code,” she said. “I saw how that sense of belonging was nurtured through just the tiniest use of a phrase.”
In a society and school system where Alaska Native students have the highest school dropout rate and face a deluge of disparities, that sense of belonging can make all the difference. A study of 185 urban Native American adolescents found that youth who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native and had a strong sense of cultural identity experienced better mental health outcomes and lower rates of substance abuse.
“There is a mismatch between students’ home lives and their school lives, and maybe that has something to do with it,” Luda said. “Your cultural identity is built through all kinds of things — the food that you eat, the land that you walk on, the company that you keep, and the language that you speak.”
The university’s Master of Arts in Teaching Indigenous Languages program uses a flexible hybrid model, with courses available online or in person at the school’s Juneau campus. It is open to highly fluent speakers and advanced learners of any Indigenous language.
Dr. Éedaa Heather Burge, an assistant professor of Alaska Native language, has taught at the university since 2021 and will teach about half of the courses in the Master of Arts in Teaching Indigenous Languages program.
Burge told Native News Online that she hopes the program will bring Alaska Native languages beyond the classroom.
“We need language everywhere else,” Burge said. “A generation from now, this program is going to be a part of having built that.”
