According to a press release, Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI), a regional nonprofit representing the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people of Southeast Alaska, has received a federal grant to research and migrate old Tlingit language recordings to a format that will make them more accessible to modern-day Native language students and scholars.

The $150,000, two-year grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services will allow SHI to migrate more than one hundred recordings of people speaking Tlingit from an old format to a digital format, said SHI archivist Zachary Jones. Recordings with the potential to aid language students and educators will be placed online.

“We’re very excited about this grant because it not only helps us with our archival collections, but it also helps us with our language,” Jones said.

The oldest Tlingit recordings date to the early 1900s, and historic Tlingit recordings from that era will undergo a review. SHI will contract fluent Tlingit speakers to listen to the recordings and provide detailed information on topics such as traditional ecological knowledge and Tlingit history.

“It will help document the content of them in great detail right down to the clan or clan-house level if possible,” he said.

The grant also will fund an internship program between the institute and the University of Alaska Southeast, allowing undergraduate students studying Tlingit language to become involved in the project. And, it will establish an archive-sharing partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Native Language Archive.

To browse SHI's current set of online digitized collections, click here.