The decline of the Alutiiq language did not begin, as many would assume, with the arrival of Russian fur traders and explorers. Many Alutiiq men and women learned Russian in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but most Native families continued to use Alutiiq in daily life. The Russian Orthodox Church incorporated Native languages into their mission, rather than enforce a Russian-only policy. Those who were bilingual and also educated in Russian church schools were among the first to help Alutiiq become a written language. This first form of written Alutiiq was in the Cyrillic alphabet. Most of these texts were translations of church texts, such as the Lord's Prayer and the Gospel of St. Matthew (Black 2001).

After Alaska was sold to the United States in 1867, Alutiiq villages became trilingual, with Alutiiq, English, and Russian spoken in different social spheres. While children often spoke Alutiiq at home, and Russian and Alutiiq in Russian Orthodox services, American missionary and government schools instituted a harsh English-only policy, often enforced with corporal punishment (Crowell & Lührmann 2001). These students, punished and shamed for speaking their Native tongue, would be the first generation who did not teach Alutiiq to their children. This was a decision based on love; parents wanted to protect their children from the pain they suffered as they grew up. In the early twentieth century, it was widely believed that since English was the language of the dominant American society, it was the only language children should learn. School teachers believed in the pervasive "kill the Indian, save the man" ideology, which encouraged assimilation over extinction for Native children in the United States. In the early to mid 1900's, adults would often talk to each other in Alutiiq when visiting, but only in relaxed, non-public settings. Most Alutiiq people between the ages of 40 and 60 years old who were children during that era, can understand Alutiiq but cannot speak it (Hegna 2003).

From the turn of the century until about 1960, Native languages around Alaska were severely suppressed, and the Alutiiq people of Kodiak Island were among the hardest hit. By 1982, when the Alaska Native Language Center published the "Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska" map, there were an estimated 900 speakers of Alutiiq in all dialects, and there were no villages where Alutiiq was being taught to children (Krauss 1982). Twelve years later, 450 speakers were estimated to be living (Chaussonnet 1995). By 2003 on the Kodiak Archapelago, a survey by the Alutiiq Museum estimated only 50 speakers of the Koniag dialect, with the youngest speaker being 55 years old. It is projected in this report that if nothing is done to save our language, within 15 years we will have few or no speakers left (Hegna 2003).

Linguist Irene Reed collected information on the Alutiiq language on the Kodiak Archapelago in the 1960's, and her materials are archived at the Alaska Native Language Center at UAF. Beginning in the 1970's and continuing to this day, Jeff Leer has been the primary professional linguist working to document and preserve the Alutiiq language. The alphabet and writing system we use today is largely due to Leer's efforts. He has created conversational dictionaries in a number of dialects, as well as writing a grammar and has taught a class on the Alutiiq Language at UAF.

There have been many programs in the past two decades, which have attempted to revitalize the Alutiiq language. Many of these were grass-roots endeavors, such as the "Alutiiq Language Corner" in The Kodiak Area Native Association's (KANA) The Village Connection newsletter during the early 1990's. The 1990's also saw the formation of culture camps around Kodiak, beginning with KANA's Spirit Camp. The Alutiiq Dancers were formed during this period, and continue to perform Alutiiq language songs locally and around the state. Dig Afognak camps sponsored through the Native Village of Afognak also include language along with culture, singing, and dancing for youth, educators, and Elders. Also in this decade there was also a high school class on Alutiiq culture, where elder Florence Pestrikoff taught Alutiiq twice a week. Because of these efforts, young people today have an appreciation for the Alutiiq language, and many have a small vocabulary of greetings and common environmental words (Hegna 2003).

Anthropologist Philomena H. Knecht helped create a Hypercard Alutiiq language computer program in 1992, which was utilized in a short-lived college class through Kodiak College in 1995. This was the first attempt to create interactive media for learning the Alutiiq language (Knecht 1992). Hypercard is no longer found on many computers, and this program is not available to the public, but the idea behind the original computer program was the inspiration for Sharing Words. The idea of clicking on words to hear letter sounds and incorporating images along with text was easily employed and expanded on with today's new technologies. The Alutiiq Word of the Week, and other Alutiiq Museum projects such as the Language Educational Boxes and other new materials have enlarged the corpus of learning materials about the Alutiiq language.

Recently, perhaps because of an understanding of the dire need to end the erosion of the Alutiiq Language, there has been a resurgence in efforts to revitalize Alutiiq by Elders, Native & Educational groups in the Kodiak area. Native Educators of the Alutiiq Region (NEAR) has been working on a variety of place-based education projects for the school district, all of which incorporate the Alutiiq language to varying degrees. The Alutiiq Museum and the Alaska Native Language Center are working together to create a new, expanded, multi-dialect dictionary, which will have over 6,000 entries. And, in an effort to grow the first new speakers in two generations, the Alutiiq Museum and twenty other organizations and tribal councils around the Kodiak Archipelago are working in partnership to create the Qik'rtarmiut Alutiit Program, which will pair fluent elders with adults wishing to learn Alutiiq, using the proven Master-Apprentice method of language aquisition.

All hope is not lost for the Alutiiq Language. There have been a number of Alutiiq language revitalization programs throughout the years, and our language has been extensively studied. It is now up to today's generation to build on what has been done and create projects and programs, which will sustain and grow our language for future generations. If the twentieth century was the century of language loss, the twenty-first will be the century where our language is reborn.

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