Marie Smith Jones | Last of Alaska tribe, 89
Marie Smith Jones, 89, the last full-blooded Eyak and fluent speaker of her native language, has died. Ms. Jones died Monday at her home in Anchorage, Alaska, said daughter Bernice Galloway of Albuquerque, N.M. Ms. Jones was the last person alive who was fluent in Eyak, a branch of the Athabaskan Indian family of languages, said Michael Krauss, a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who collaborated with Ms. Jones for years in an effort to preserve the Eyak language. The Eyak ancestral homeland runs along 300 miles of the Gulf of Alaska. - AP
Marie Smith Jones, 89, the last full-blooded Eyak and fluent speaker of her native language, has died.
Ms. Jones died Monday at her home in Anchorage, Alaska, said daughter Bernice Galloway of Albuquerque, N.M.
Ms. Jones was the last person alive who was fluent in Eyak, a branch of the Athabaskan Indian family of languages, said Michael Krauss, a linguist and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who collaborated with Ms. Jones for years in an effort to preserve the Eyak language. The Eyak ancestral homeland runs along 300 miles of the Gulf of Alaska.
- AP