Annauk Olin, holding her daugher Tulġuna T'aas Olin, and Rochelle Adams pose on March 20, 2024, after giving a presentation on language at the Alaska Just Transition Summit in Juneau. The two, who work together at the Alaska Public Interest Research Group's Language Access program, hope to compile an Indigenous environmental glossary.
Adams and Olin already have plenty of experience with language and cultural instruction and documentation. They, with some AKPIRG colleagues, in 2022 produced a set of. Olin, among other projects, has helped guide the Northwest Arctic Borough School District’s language-immersion instruction. Adams is one of the creative forces behind the PBS Kids series Molly of Denali, serving as aAt the summit session, Adams and Olin described ways that Indigenous languages are valuable in practical life.
Western scientists have already adopted at least one Indigenous word as a term to describe an effect of climate change. The Yup’ik word usteq, which translates to “surface caves in,” isin which “frozen ground disintegrates under the compounding influences of thawing permafrost, flooding, and erosion,” according to the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.