KENAITZE TRIBE: But Internet posting is only part of a larger effort.
KENAI -- For Alan Boraas, an anthropology professor at Kenai Peninsula College, helping to revitalize a language that's nearly dead is not just an interesting project, it's the right thing to do.
"It's a very emotional thing to see a language become extinct," he said. "It's the equivalent of a species becoming extinct. What we lose is not just the words, but the thought processes that are part of a language."
For more than two years, Boraas and colleague Michael Christian have taken pictures, navigated through HTML and digitized old audio recordings of Native writer Peter Kalifornsky in order to present Dena'ina vocabulary, grammar, stories and place names in an interactive Web site that went live last month.
In an e-mail, Boraas said some browsers may not support his Web site, but the kinks should be worked out within the next couple of weeks. The Web site is an ongoing project with more features being added to it as time goes by. Visitors can access the Web site at qenaga.org/kq/index.html.
This project is the latest in the Kenaitze tribe's endeavor to revitalize their Native language. Cultural director Alexandra "Sasha" Lindgren, a tribal elder with the Kenaitze, said a three-year grant from the Administration for Native Americans allowed the tribe to buy Boraas out of his teaching contract with KPC, enabling him to devote more time to the Web site.
But the site is only one part of what the grant was used for.
"We're training people to teach the Dena'ina language," said Lindgren, the project director for the grant. "It's more than the Web site."
The credit for much of the Dena'ina revitalization goes to James Kari, who spent 30 years working on a dictionary that's on sale now as well. Boraas said Kari came to Alaska in the 1970s after studying Navajo and worked with Peter Kalifornsky to develop his dictionary.
"He began recording before computers," Boraas said. "He would write the word as people said it, develop the spelling system and just build up massive amounts of information."
Kari's dictionary took him to Nondalton and Tyonek, where he would seek out Native speakers in order to expand it.
"What's so remarkable about it is if it wouldn't have been done over this 30-year period, it would never have been done because the youngest speaker that we know of is 60 years old and most are in their 70s or 80s," Boraas said.
The majority of the tribe's 1,200 members live in Anchorage, Soldotna and Kenai, but the Web site is an important tool for members scattered across the country.
