Wrangell high school and middle school students will be offered a new language and cultural class this coming school year.
Students will be able to learn Tlingit, a language and culture belonging to one of Southeast Alaska’s predominant Native tribes.
Wrangell Johnson O’Malley Director Virginia Oliver and Wrangell schools Indian Education Director Luella Knapp developed the classes.
Oliver is one of the few fluent speakers in the Wrangell area. She says the class will help give students a well-rounded representation of Southeast history.
“And, we took Alaska history, we learned about the Russian history,” said Oliver about her experience in school. “We didn’t hear too much about our own history, the Tlingit language. The only language that we’re going to center on is Tlingit language. That’s what we know about and our culture.”
With the language dwindling over the years due to assimilation to western culture, Oliver said the need to teach Wrangell’s next generation the language and culture is strong.”
“My grandson went to UAS last year. He graduated from Wrangell High School and he said that the kids kind of glom up together. There are certain areas up north and around,” said Oliver referring to other tribes with strong cultural ties.
Tlingit is an oral language passed down the generations, but linguists began creating written works in the ‘70s in an effort to preserve it, Oliver said.
“It’s been being written since the ‘70s and we kind of are using the orthography that was produced then to this day.”
The Tlingit noun and verb dictionaries were some of those first publications. Wrangell started to see a resurgence in 2013 when Oliver launched Tlingit Phrase of the Week, an audio project teaching small phrases, she said.
Oliver and Knapp hope to build on that resurgence with these classes.
“And seeing what a beginning and then an advanced beginner, lower intermediate, higher intermediate, all the way up into conversational Tlingit,” said Oliver. “We’re going to teach the basic language and go from there. It’s very exciting.”
Wrangell School Superintendent Patrick Mayer says the district is exploring the possibility of the class meeting the foreign language requirement.
The district currently only offers Spanish.
