Students help lighten load for dwindling Tlingit speaking population

"It really lifts the spirit," says 71-year old Teslin elder Kiyish Besie Cooley, during a break at a workshop in Carcross, Yukon,this week.

She is one of three Tlingit teachers working with eager students tobolsterthe Tlingit language.

"Language is the core of our identity."

The seven-day gathering features talks, songs, literacy exercises and a chance for the participants to speak Tlingit together.

"It lightens the heart, it also makes me feel like it is lightening the load that I carry because I am a speaker."

Organizer Deborah Baerg says the turn out has been more than she expected, as many as 36 people one afternoon, but she still hopes for more. She says, although Tlingit is taught in school, children are not becoming fluent.

"I think with these gatherings, speakers gathering to share the language, I'll think we'll build on that."

She hopes this workshop will becomean annual event.

"We'd really like to see our youth coming out and coming to these workshops. Hopefully some prayers will help and get this language going so it's more of a movement than just a few people trying to learn."

Among the instructors this week, were two Alaskans invited byBaerg.

"For me it's a little scary to know what's coming down the road," says Hans Chester, a Tlingit speaking teacher fromJuneau, Alaska, who was invited to be an instructor at the Carcross gathering. He says he has feelings of fear, sadness and grief over the dwindling number of fluent Tlingit speakers.

The number of first-language Tlingit speakers has dramatically shrunk over the last couple of decades. Chester says when he started learning the language in the late 1990s there were 500 people who were first-language Tlingit speakers.

He saysthat number is now closer to 85. Most of those speakers live in coastal Alaska.

"I'm trying as hard as I can to work with as many of the speakers as I can to learn as much as I can."

But, Chester is also inspired to teach what he's learned. He looks to his 11 year old niece who now speaks the language and has hope Tlingit will survive.