Published Jan 25, 2024

The Alutiiq language also known as Sugpiaq is broken up into two main dialects, the Koniag Alutiiq spoken in Kodiak as well as the upper Alaska Peninsula, and the Chugach Alutiiq, which is spoken on the Kenai Peninsula and Prince William Sound.

A new Alutiiq Language textbook, released to the public last month on Dec. 12, focuses on the Koniag dialect, although it’s open to anyone who wants to learn Alutiiq.

With Elders and fluent Alutiiq speakers dying off, there is a need for more speaker-teachers to help the next generation achieve proficiency in their second language. In the hopes of addressing this, the Sun’aq Tribe started an Alutiiq Master-Apprentice Program over two years ago to train at least five fluent speaker-teachers.

That’s where Peggy Azuyak comes in. She’s teaching Alutiiq language classes to young adults, and this is the first semester she has been able to teach from the new textbook in her Alutiiq 102 class at Kodiak College, under the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is also a full-time Secondary and Alutiiq Language teacher at the Old Harbor School.

Azuyak says the new textbook is easier to follow compared to the previous one they used that dated back to the 1970s – Dr. Jeff Leer’s dictionary and grammar books, which weren’t published until the 1990s. The new Alutiiq Language textbook features 15 chapters, including sections on numbers and math, and is targeted towards high school and college age students.

Published Jan 24, 2024 by https://www.kyuk.org/people/sunni-bean

The images map the depth of the ground surface, showing how high and low the land is in what’s known as a digital surface model. UAF faculty will come back and scan the village again in a year or two to track how the ground has changed.

Nunapitchuk is one of 10 communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta that will be scanned and rescanned again in the coming years. That will help researchers understand a root question: how is permafrost in a changing climate affecting the ground surface and, in turn, everything that sits on top of it?

“Once we can take another model, say after the summer or next fall, then when that changes the deck detection, where we can see ‘Oh, this used to be 1 foot above river level and now it's 0.7 feet above river level,’” Delue said. “Then you can start to examine: ‘Was that because of permafrost that we're seeing those specific changes? And what's the rate of that change?’”

Published Jan 24, 2024 by Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan says Alaska is back as a recognized location of importance for the U.S. military and national security.

Another sign of renewed attention on the north came two weeks ago, when the Homeland Security Department awarded $46 million to the University of Alaska Anchorage to lead an Arctic Center of Excellence. The center is intended to bring together experts in cybersecurity, emergency management and related fields.