UNANGAM TUNUU

In this episode of “Island Interviews,” Collections Manager Joselle Hale explains the label project and highlights the crucial role of community input in developing the new multilingual displays. They also discuss how residents can preserve their own family histories by learning museum-style documentation techniques.

Unangam Tunuu is taught in only a handful of classes in the public school system, and outside these sessions, the language is seldom spoken in everyday conversation. The struggle on St. Paul mirrors trends across Alaska. A 2024 report from the Alaska Native Language Preservation and Advisory Council, a legislative council that advises the governor's office, found that all of the state’s Indigenous languages are critically endangered, with some spoken by fewer than a dozen people.

The traditional design of the large skin-on-frame vessel used by the Unangax̂ people was thought to be lost after Russian colonizers destroyed the last remaining examples in the 1800s, according to historic journals. But after decades of work, the design has been restored.

Archaeologists found brown and polar bear bones – some over 5,000 years old – at two dig sites on Unalaska and Amaknak Islands in the Aleutians during the early 2000s. Since then, the bones have puzzled scientists. There are no bears on either island today and no historical records of bears ever living there.

The Right Reverend Alexei was elected as the bishop of the Orthodox Church of Alaska in 2022. In May, he made his first visits to some of the farthest-flung parishes in his large, statewide diocese, including St. George in the Pribilof Islands, and then Atka and Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands.

A photo essay following Bishop Alexei of the Orthodox Church of Alaska on his first visit to Atka, one of the westernmost communities in the United States. St. Nicholas Church is one of the oldest Orthodox parishes in Alaska, founded in 1825. There, Bishop Alexei performed the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy, which is only served when the bishop is present, as well as St. Nicholas service for the church's patron saint.

Dozens of people gathered in northern California last month to help tie lashings on an Unangax̂ open skin boat. Marc Daniels facilitated the build in his workshop, with the participation of Unangax̂ and local California tribal members. The vessel will be launched May 27, during the Alaska Native Day celebration at Fort Ross.

A collection of 50-year-old audio recordings from the Aleutians have been digitized and are now accessible online.The recordings were part of an Unalaska school project from the ‘70s. A group of students and their teacher recorded various Elders in hopes of documenting the language, culture and history of the Unangax̂ community and the Aleutian region.There’s about 60 reel-to-reel audio tapes that make up the collection. They include topics from day-to-day activities to historic events, fishing stories and recipes, to accounts from Makushin and the other lost villages that were forcibly evacuated during World War II.

The local Russian Orthodox community celebrated Slavi, or Russian Christmas, over the weekend, which follows the Julian calendar and takes place Jan. 7. It was the first time the church held in-person Christmas services since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unalaska’s Church of the Holy Ascension is one of the oldest churches in Alaska, and arguably the oldest Russian Orthodox church in the state. On Russian Orthodox Christmas, congregants stood at the front of the church, spinning large, colorfully decorated stars in clockwise circles, while the choir sang traditional songs in Russian, Unangam Tunuu, English and the Eastern Orthodox Church’s liturgical language, Slavonic.

On Friday, Oct. 21, the Anchorage Unangax̂ Dancers took the stage for the very last performance of Quyana Nights, a highly-awaited celebration of traditional dance hosted by AFN. Unangax̂ dancer and drummer, Dustin Unignax̂ Newman, composed the newest song for the Anchorage dance group.