Linguists across the state say Alaska’s primary research institute for Alaska Native languages is being starved of funding, and that its mission is at risk. But administrators at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which houses the Alaska Native Language Center, say that’s not true — and that it's actually growing.
The state created the center 54 years ago to preserve and study Alaska Native languages at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. But it’s gone through a period of change, leaving some faculty and university administrators at odds.
The center operates partly on state funding. Alaska lawmakers requested a hearing following a wave of public controversy surrounding the institution.
X̱’unei Lance Twitchell is a linguistics professor at the University of Alaska Southeast. He stood before members of the Senate Education Committee on April 1 to speak about the state’s responsibility to correct the erasure of Alaska Native languages.
“We have story after story of elders who were beaten and abused and neglected, had chemicals put in their mouths,” Twitchell said. “We had teachers who wrote books about doing stuff just like this to keep them from talking.”
A few of those languages survived — though some were scattered and remain incomplete. But Twitchell told state lawmakers that there’s a new threat: the deprioritization of research and faculty retention at the Alaska Native Language Center.
Changes at the center ignite concern across Alaska
In recent years, a reorganization made the center part of UAF’s College of Indigenous Studies. Among the many changes since then: the center’s publishing capabilities moved to a consortium based in Colorado.
Gary Holton, a University of Hawai’i linguistics professor with ties to the center, had been working with an Alaska Native community to publish a dictionary of their language last year. Then he learned the center’s press had left the state.
“There, we would have no dedicated editorial support,” Holton said. “And the ANLC editor position was being terminated, so that we would have nobody to work with on the editing. This particular incident really drove home the fact that we are really losing something. We're losing something that no one else is going to do.”
Holton wrote an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News in protest of what he views as the quiet closure of the center. And it blew up — along with coverage from UAF’s student-run paper, the Sun Star. Statewide, national, and even international letters of support poured in for the center.
UAF administrators insist the center is growing. Faculty say its purpose has been diluted.
Teisha Simmons is the dean of UAF’s College of Indigenous Studies. She told lawmakers at the Senate Education Committee hearing that the college is not eliminating research, courses, or publications. In fact, she said, they’re trying to expand the program in a more accessible, community-oriented direction.
“There are so many people that really want to have access to language learning opportunities, and so we're looking at offering more workshops at no cost,” Simmons said. “The most requested one is: ‘I want to be able to introduce myself in my language.’”
Many senior faculty said they can’t remember a time when the center wasn’t community-oriented — but that they’re seeing gradual changes that remove their autonomy and overwhelm their research capacity.
The center hasn’t had a director in years. Administrators attribute that to a pair of failed hiring searches. Then there’s staffing — senior faculty members told state lawmakers that their responsibilities are piling up with regular attrition, and that some of them have received letters of non-retention.
In interviews, others said they’re being assigned classes that take away from their research capacity and being asked to write grants to fund their own positions.
The university also began hiring other faculty members without advanced degrees — in the interest of inclusivity, according to testimony from university administrators.
Alaska Native Language Archive director Anna Berge takes issue with that sentiment.
“It devalues the work of the faculty here, and it's not fair to the students,” she said. “If I want to send my daughter to a university and I find out that all her teachers are going to be barely more knowledgeable than she is, I'm not paying $17,000 a year or whatever it is.”
UAF administrators testified that the center’s student enrollment is up because of the College of Indigenous Studies’ stewardship, and that its budget has doubled — even during a time of financial strain throughout the University of Alaska system.
But the language center’s outgoing department chair, Samuel Alexander, told committee members that the university’s priorities are shortsighted, and that its focus on teaching introductory language classes — rather than investing in research — could doom endangered languages.
“Why am I not teaching people who are going to become teachers of the language?” Alexander asked the committee. “We need that new linguistic research, we need to document things like this: how do we talk about death? How do we talk about birth? How do we admonish somebody? How do we praise somebody? Where is that language research? We have the capacity to do it, but we need support.”
Lawmakers signal support for the center’s future
At the hearing, members of the Senate Education Committee said they were committed to the center’s mission to restore and preserve Alaska Native Languages. Sen. Löki Tobin, who chairs the committee, even offered to seek out avenues of additional support.
“It is my intent to continue working with all stakeholder groups to reimagine the authorizing legislation and to ensure that the resources are stable, predictable and provide the support that you desperately need,” Tobin said.
The same day as the hearing, hundreds of miles north, a few dozen protesters packed into the UAF’s student union — singing and chanting in Minto, Gwich’in, Iñupiaq, Denaakk’e, and Lower Tanana. The signs in their hands read: “Save the Alaska Native Language Center” and “Language is life.”
The protestors said that’s where they’ll be every Wednesday afternoon, in between classes, until they see meaningful support for the center.