By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
Ethnic minorities, religious refugees, and other groups segregated by a dominant society have developed and implemented strategies and tactics to protect their national identity, religious practices, ancient traditions, and community cohesiveness.
In most cases, the tactics and strategies of these unique orthodox groups, created to secure cultural continuity and “living memory” among their members, have historic roots and have resulted from cognitive rational choices.
This process of assimilation in which an individual has changed so much as to become dissociated from the value system of his group, or in which the entire group disappears as an autonomously functioning social system is evident in today’s many ethnic minority, religious refugee, and immigrant groups in the United States, including Alaska, and, presumably, in other free democratic societies around the world.
In his article of Aug. 29 Juneau campus gives esteemed speaker invite to woman who sees racism in study of Arctic ice, Joel Davidson of the Alaska Watchman reported:
“Dr. Jen Rose Smith is a young academic who has dedicated her early career to studying Arctic ice through the critical race theory lens of colonialism, white privilege and racism. On Aug. 30, the publicly-funded University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) will host Smith for its prestigious Egan Fall Lecture Series, where Smith will pontificate on her forthcoming book, ‘Ice Geographies: The Colonial Politics of Race and Indigeneity.’
“Like many emerging critical race theorists on the cultural left, Smith holds to the belief that racism, colonialism and white privilege lurk hidden in myriad corners of Western civilization, both past and present—even in our understanding of ice and kelp.”
I attended Smith’s presentation at the Egan Library in Juneau on Aug. 30. Indeed, not only are her ideas simply convoluted, but it is also false and poorly researched.
At the end of her presentation, I commented that about 15 years ago, the last fluent speaker (an elderly woman) of the Eyak language passed away. It was well documented by the Anchorage Daily News, Juneau Empire, several anthropologists in Alaska, etc.
Nevertheless, Dr. Smith was visibly offended by my comments, stating that, “It depends how I define a ‘speaker’ of languages.”
I responded that, “Speakers of languages communicate in full sentences and fluently convey messages to each other; not just limit their communication by saying ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ or few other common words or expressions.”
I also argued that disappearance, revival and/or evolution of languages has only partially to do with colonization politics and influences of Western civilization; and many other factors and causes involved in cultural changes, including evolution, extinction and revival of languages.
For example, while in Alaska in the mid-19th century, Russian Orthodox Bishop Ivan Veniaminov learned the Aleut language, for which he invented an alphabet and charted a grammar.
However, Presbyterian missionaries in Alaska in the 19th and early 20th centuries were known for suppressing Native languages in Alaska, forcing Natives to speak only English.
Indeed, if languages of ethnic minorities are not institutionalized (the process of becoming a permanent or respected part of a society, system, and organization) or contribute very little to socio-economic development of the dominant culture, then those languages will eventually decline or become a symbolic representation of a given ethnic minority. It happened to many native languages in Siberia, Alaska, Africa, etc.
Yes, languages of ethnic minorities decline, change and become extinct every year worldwide. Typically, languages have become extinct because of the process of cultural assimilation leading to language shift, and the gradual abandonment of a native language in favor of a foreign lingua franca, largely those of European countries.
Israel’s revival of the authentic Hebrew language (a Semitic language—a subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages spoken across the Middle East) from 1948 (i.e., when Israel was re-established by the United Nations) has resulted in a gradual disappearance of the Yiddish language (West Germanic language) that was historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe.
In fact, Yiddish is a German dialect which integrates many languages, including German, Hebrew, Aramaic, and various Slavic and Romance languages. Today, Yiddish, a language of my parents and grandparents, is at the stage of extinction and its unfortunate destiny has nothing to do with colonial politics.
In her presentation, Smith argued that there are many speakers of the Eyak language left in Alaska.
Alaska Native Language Archive, however, describes it otherwise.
“Eyak is not an Athabaskan language, but a coordinate sub-branch to Athabaskan in the Athabaskan-Eyak branch of the Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit language family. Eyak was spoken in the 19th century from Yakutat along the south-central Alaska coast to Eyak at the Copper River delta, but by the 20th century only at Eyak. It is now represented by about 50 people but no surviving fluent speakers. With the passing of Marie Smith Jones on January 21, 2008, Eyak became the first Alaska Native language to become extinct in recent history.“
Frankly, most people in the audience could not understand Smith’s awkward concepts of ice, open space, and colonial politics. However, new UAS Chancellor Dr. Aparna Dileep-Nageswaran Palmer was delighted by Smith’s convoluted presentation.
In short, “Professor Jen Rose Smith” is a new version of the far-left woke ideology in our troubled country and a clear representation of the poor scholarship.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.