Inuk at the Anchorage Film Festival

Be sure to check out these screenings of the amazing Greenlandic film Inuk, sponsored by the Anchorage Film Festival! The film will be screened tonight (Friday, December 2nd) at 8 PM at the Bear Tooth, Thursday, December 8th at 8 PM at the Alaska Experience Theater (Large Theater), and again at 8:15 PM in the Small Theater. A full schedule is available here. Inuk was directed by Mike Magidson, co-written by Magidson and anthropologist Jean-Michel Huctin. From the Film Festival synopsis:

Created as an original road-movie on the sea-ice, “Inuk” is both an authentic story of Greenland today, a country torn between tradition and modernity, and a universal story about the quest for identity, transmission and rebirth. The film is intensified by the exceptional performance of the non-professional Inuit actors: teenagers from a home for neglected Inuit children and local seal hunters.

 See you there!

Kuspuk Project

Title VII is currently planning an exciting Kuspuk Project in coordination with the fabulous organization Living Cultural Storybases. Students will not only learn to make kuspuks, they will document their experiences and the cultural traditions inherent in the process through the use of audiovisual recordings and other media. These will be uploaded to the project website and linked to the kuspuk itself through embedded QR tags!

We are currently looking for volunteers! If you know how to make kuspuks, we want to talk to you! Call 742.7867 or click "contact" in the navigation bar!

Updates to the Michael Krauss Language Map

In 1974, linguist Michael Krauss published his authoritative Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska map, after fifteen years of research. Since that time, the map has become an instrumental teaching tool in classrooms and universities, and, has received no significant challenges or revisions.

This year, the Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC) at UAF and the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) at UAA have released an updated version of the map, with new languages and the addition of Alaska Native place names. A zoomable version of the map is available on Alaskool.

At Title VII, we're promoting the release of the map with an ASDTube video. The video will include an interview with Jim Kerr, who assisted in creating the digital version of the map, and audio of native speakers pronouncing different place names. So far, we've had volunteers for Unangax, Tlingit, Yup'ik, and Gwich'in Athabascan, and Den'aina. Please contact us if you would be interested in taking part! We are looking for volunteers who speak the following:

• Inupiaq

• Koyukon

• Tanana

• Han

• Tanacross

• Upper Tanana

• Ahtna

• Alutiiq

• Haida

• Tsimshian

Please note that ASDTube is a platform only accessible to ASD employees, and requires a secure log-in. So any audio we record will only be accessible to District employees.

Title VII will be receiving approximately 200 copies of the new map from ISER. If you are interested in obtaining a copy for your school, please let us know! You can contact us by clicking "contact" in the navigation bar.