Yup’ik Elders, parents, teachers, retired teachers, and community members have transformed a Yugtun language test at Bethel-area schools. It measures things like speaking, reading, and writing, but also non-verbal skills and the Yup’ik worldview.
Yugtun, or central Alaskan Yup’ik, is the most widely spoken Native language in Alaska and the second largest in the United States after Navajo. Bethel is the hub for Yugtun speakers, and the language is finally getting a curriculum and test that captures its core.
That’s because Yup’ik Elders, parents, teachers, retired teachers, and community members transformed the test. It measures things like speaking, reading, and writing, but also non-verbal skills and the Yup’ik worldview. Around 2010, the district began to pilot a comprehensive Yup’ik immersion curriculum that not only teaches the language, but brings Yup’ik values and stories into the classroom.
This new test is designed to see if their localized curriculum works. How the kids perform will shapehow they change the curriculum in the future. “For instance, in English we have, we have pronouns: this, that, and those,” explained Walkie Charles, who grew up speaking Yugtun at home. “In Yupik we have 30 of these pronouns. And these are more specific because of location, how I see my world: this; that; those; over there; those across there; those underneath; those up there; those that I can’t see upstairs; those that I cannot see that are down below; maybe in- or upriver; downriver.
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