Qaivaralria Rosalie Lincoln

“Kituuciqa qanrutekqataraqa yugtun piyaramcetun nutem. Aatairutma Nurataam Qaluyaarmiunguluni aanairutma-llu Cupugniralriim Caputnguarmiunguluni yukaagnga. Angakayagaugua atma-llu aipaa Qaivaralria. Nunakauyarmiunguunga. I am going to introduce myself the way Yup’ik people traditionally do. I am a child of my late father, Phillip Moses of Nelson Island, and my late mother, Maria Moses from Chefornak. My name is Qaivaralria Rosalie Lincoln of Toksook Bay.”

Qaivaralria Rosalie Lincoln’s first language is Yugtun, and she has been a bilingual Yup’ik educator for over 30 years. In that time, she has written several children’s books in Yugtun, she has taught students learning Yup’ik for the first time, and she has taught Yup’ik orthography to fluent speakers. For the past 8 years, Qaivaralria has been involved in a Yup’ik Expect Group (YEG), developing a new Yugtun Piciryaranek Qaneryaranek-llu Cuqyun (Yup’ik Culture and Language Measurement), writing language assessments for K-6th grade and 7th-12th grade students in the Lower Kuskokwim School District. Rosalie has been an AKPIRG Language Panelist since 2019, and created art for the COVID-19 language translation project, as well.

Looking to the future, Qaivaralria told us, “my vision is to show people everywhere how powerful and unique our indigenous languages are through this work. Our languages are alive and well through a lot of adults, many of whom are parents, grandparents, and elders in different regions of Alaska. I hope communities work together to maintain, preserve, and revitalize our indigenous languages.”

We thank Rosalie for working to keep the Yugtun language alive across generations in her community, and for her work as an AKPIRG Language Panelist. Quyana!

To learn more about Qaivaralria and to hear her introduce herself in Yugtun, visit akpirg.org/language-access.

#LanguageMatters #LanguageChampions #AKPIRGLanguageAccess