MIT graduate student Annauk Denise Olin didn’t grow up speaking Iñupiaq, the language of her Alaska Native community. Nevertheless, she’s raising her son in the language — thanks in part to the grounding in linguistics she is gaining through the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative (MITILI), a master’s program for members of communities whose languages are threatened.“The beauty of the Iñupiaq language is that the perspective and the wisdom of my ancestors has been preserved in the language,” says Olin, who is developing a curriculum for teaching Iñupiaq through MITILI. “If we…
