AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith with Abe Rivers, one of two AmeriCorps members recruited from within the community of Scammon Bay for the Resilient Alaska Youth program. Rivers leads after school activities, from playing basketball to honing subsistence skills like hunting and fishing.
“Our goal is to support homegrown talent. You know, ‘nothing about us without us.’ Folks in the community have to really lead this work,” he said. “The focus is on cultural revitalization and language preservation,” she said. “A lot of the elders that we have in the program either only speak their Native language or speak some English and mostly their Native language.” Alaska Native languages were suppressed in American schools for about 100 years and children were even punished for speaking them.
Kozevnikoff still speaks Yup’ik as her primary language at home and with friends and family, but she said many students hear the Yup’ik language and understand it, but never speak it.
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