Since September, the University of Alaska Anchorage has been offering regular Unangam Tunuu classes. It’s the first time in over 20 years that the language classes have been taught at the university level.
March 3, 2022
At the helm of the course is Haliehana Alaĝum Ayagaa Stepetin, an Unangax̂ artist, scholar and subsistence fisher from Achan-Ingiiga, or Akutan. For the last nine years, she’s been studying the language, which is native to the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands region, with her mentor and Unangam Tunuu expert Moses Qagidax̂ Dirks. Together, the two are co-teaching these classes.
“I’m in a Native American Studies PhD program, so almost everyone is Native,” Stepetin said. “We all introduce ourselves, and I was like, ‘it would be really great if people were doing this, not just at the Aleut Villages Conferences, but everywhere that Unangax̂ people are in the world.’” This period was one of the first times various tribes from around the state gathered in large numbers. After Alaska became a state in the late 1950s, there was an imminent threat of land loss for Indigenous peoples. This threat prompted the creation of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the largest Native organization in the state.
“And because a bunch of people at the time had known each other, especially through being removed to boarding schools or different residential schools,” she said. “They would be like ‘oh, yeah, I know your mom,’ or, ‘I know your dad. I’ve heard of that village. So-and-so, who I went to school with is from there.’”
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