Kuiggluk situation and needs analysis

Kuiggluk Language Program

The situation and needs analysis was done collaboratively with my boss, my workmate, and myself last week.

Language program focus:
Our focus is to preserve and teach our cultural activities to our students and to strengthen and preserve our cultural knowledge.


Language situation:
There is a language gap between each generation in this community.
There is a gap between the elders (roughly between ages 90-65) and the ones after them (roughly between ages 64-40), the elder’s children. Then the ones after them (roughly between ages 39-27) and then the young adults (roughly between the ages 26-18), and then there is a definite language gap between the two age groups of high school and the elementary school age groups. The high school and elementary students are all mostly English speakers, but they all understand well Yugtun.


Cultural situation:
We are losing our culture faster than we are losing our language. We know that our language will follow our cultural loss.


Need Analysis:
We want to document (audio/video) the cultural knowledge from elders before they pass away and the knowledge is lost.

We want to use these documents to create:
- Curriculum components – language activities (K-12) books, stories
- cultural activities (K-12)
- Documentary videos
- Other archive necessary to make books, histories of families

We would like to do all these to protect and extend the knowledge base.


Technology component: We would need the following equipment
1. digital audio recording devices (4 of them)
2. digital video recording devices
3. 2-3 CCD or equivalent
4. 4 single CCD or equivalent
5. Computers
a. 4- work stations – audio/video processing
b. Classroom kits (6 laptops each) for 4 labs, total.
6. Green Screen
7. Inexpensive digital video camera
8. Still digital camera
9. Color laser printer (11X17)
10. Paper
11. DVD duplicator
12. Audio CD duplicator
13. Jason Ohler’s Digital Storytelling Books
14. An analogue audio to digital converter
15. An analogue video to digital converter



We would also need the following expense components:

1. stipends to pay local experts (4 person – regular people)
2. a budget for purchasing material for cultural activities
3. money to pay Jason Ohler to come out to train students and staff in digital storytelling
4. chest freezer