Language and music in the songs of Minto, Alaska ...

• Main Author: Tuttle, Siri G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Language Documentation and Description 2014
• Subjects: Fairbanks; Athabascan; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.25894/ldd191; https://www.lddjournal.org/article/id/1142/

The community of Minto lies about 130 miles northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Athabascan language spoken in Minto is the last dialect surviving of the language known as Tanana or Lower Tanana. It is extremely endangered, with no native speakers under the age of 70, and fluent elders passing on. The elder leaders in Minto decided that songs should be studied. Several generations of Minto elders have participated in sharing their culture with formal researchers in many disciplines. They have also supported religious and secular community organizers, language learners, and interested visitors. The project reported on here (NEH HD-50298-08, Minto songs) set out to integrate archived Minto music present in the ANLC Archive and other archives with information from elders and other sources. The activities in this project included archival organization, workshops, linguistic/musical sessions and transcription. A student technician spent the period of the project listening to 44 Minto recordings in the Alaska ... : Language Documentation and Description, Vol. 10 (2012): Special Issue on Humanities of the lesser-known: New directions in the description, documentation and typology of endangered languages and musics ...