(he/him)

Walkie Charles (Yup'ik) is an associate professor of Yup'ik at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He was born and raised in Emmonak where he became aware of speaking the Norton Sound Kotlik dialect of Yup'ik. At age 12 he was sent to Wrangell Institute Boarding School. It was there that he experienced that speaking one's heart language was forbidden. His attitude toward celebrating his first language was disrupted to where he pretended not to speak the language through which he was raised. In 1980, Charles enrolled at the University of Alaska Fairbanks as a freshman where Yup'ik was taught as a course. Curious to see what it was, and with skepticism, he signed up and learned that a non-Yup'ik was teaching the course. It was the most robust, analytical, exciting times of his exposure to a language that would have fallen asleep. His devotion to pursue everything about Yup'ik was born, and has continued to learn and teach the language as professor at the same university where he first learned the written form. Since then, as a professor and scholar of Yugtun, Charles has become an advocate for language policy and planning, second language acquisition, and material development for second language learning.

In continuation for his celebration of language, he has several-times been a member of the Alaska Native Language Preservation and Advisory Council, initially appointed by then-Governor Sean Parnell (2012).