Last Of The Alaskan Eyaks Dies; Unique Language Dies As Well

Los Angeles, CA (AHN) -- Marie Smith Jones, 89, the last Eyak Indian, has died and with her the Eyak tongue; one of 20 languages spoken in northwestern Alaska. "She understood as only someone in her unique position could, what it meant to be the last of her kind," Michael Krauss, a linguist at the Alaska Native Languages Center, told the Anchorage Daily News.

"I don't know why it's me, why I'm the one. I tell you, it hurts. It really hurts," Jones once said of being the last one to talk the language.

Jones, who died in her sleep Monday in her home in Cordova, Alaska, was a tiny, chain-smoking conservation and indigenous rights activist who once spoke before the United Nations on the rights of native Americans but was shy in public, Agence France-Presse reported.

According to the book "Vanishing Voices," indigenous people compose 4 percent of the world's population but speak at least 60 percent of its 6,000 or more languages.

"The survival of the fittest principle does not apply to languages. The world's many languages encode critical knowledge," say authors Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine. "Linguistic diversity is an irreplaceable resource for future generations."