Yup’ik Immersion School Program in Alaska Opens Doors to Cultural Connection

Growing up in Bethel, Alaska, Amber Arnaqulluk Shields spoke Yup’ik from a very young age. Whenever she wasn’t in school, her parents sent her to their ancestral home in Toksook Bay to spend time with grandparents who spoke no English.

Speaking Yu’pik at home had always been a priority for her family, and so when Shields had her kids, whom she is raising in Anchorage, Alaska, she wanted to give them the same access to her culture and family connections. Her son Kangrilnguq, a rising fifth grader who is the eldest of her three children, was raised speaking Yup’ik.

“We only speak Yup’ik in the house to our kids. My son actually didn’t really know much English by the time he was in kindergarten,” Shields told Truthout.

However, she started noticing that Kangrilnguq would shy away from playing with other kids at the park and not want to meet any other kids outside the family. She recalls a time when she was helping her relatives move, and there was a child her son’s age there whom she was encouraging him to play with, but he refused and ran away to hide in their truck. “I was like, ‘Hmm, I wonder why he’s not paying with the kids.’ And I asked that little girl [in Yup’ik], ‘Hey, could you go into the back of my truck and help me get that bag out?’ And he jumped out of the truck, and he asked me, ‘Does she understand? She speaks Yup’ik?’” That’s when he started playing with her, and when it clicked for Shields that he wasn’t playing with other kids because they weren’t understanding each other.

As a result, when Shields learned about the Yup’ik immersion program at College Gate Elementary School in Anchorage, it was a natural choice for her to send her children there. Her son started the program as a kindergartener in 2022, “and my hope was that he’ll be able to understand his teachers, and his teachers would be able to understand him,” Shields said.

The program at College Gate started in 2018, with support from a federal grant, to reinvigorate Indigenous languages. Each year since its inception, the school has successfully added a grade to the program, and the Anchorage school system is now adding an 8th grade class to the program at Wendler Middle School, with plans to add high school grades next year, too.

“Kids are fully immersed with the target language for half the day, and then they get their reading and math for the other half with an English partner teacher,” explained Darrell Berntsen, the principal at College Gate Elementary. “And so that happens daily, where they’re with one teacher for the start of the day, and then they move to another teacher to end the day.”

It’s not just the language that is taught, Berntsen said — the culture is taught also. “So it has really changed the culture of my school … and our school has kind of adopted their culture because we act like a big village here at the school.”

According to Shields, this has been especially important for her family, and her son specifically. Their family engages in many Yup’ik subsistence practices “even though we’re in Anchorage,” Shields explained, and now her son is “able to feel normal, I guess, because there’s other kids that do subsistence.” In the Yup’ik immersion program, he can also regularly interact with Yup’ik elders who teach in the program. She recalls a time when their family was going to Bethel and had plans to go ptarmigan hunting, and Kangrilnguq promised to bring a bird back as gift for his teacher. Another time, she recalls he wanted to go fishing so that he could bring back fish for his teachers. “He’s like, ‘she’s an elder, and I want to give her fish.’ So we were able to still practice giving to elders that way, and he really appreciates being able to understand his teachers, his teachers being able to understand him and who he is and where he comes from.”

Berntsen, who is Alutiiq from Kodiak Island, said he hopes that the school’s Yup’ik immersion program will have a lasting effect on the city, and “that they’ll be able to kind of revive the language and have more Indigenous speakers here in Anchorage.” In 2018, Anchorage Daily News reported that Alaska Native languages are in a “linguistic emergency” and most are predicted to be extinct or dormant by the end of the 21st century unless action is taken to save them, according to a new report from a state body.

Language immersion programs like this one are especially critical for Native Alaskan communities, which generally rely on oral transmission, rather than written texts, to pass on knowledge, customs, and traditions. A qualitative study explored language acquisition of Lingít (another Native Alaskan language) among the people of Lingít Aaní (Southeast Alaska), elucidating how Lingít language learning experiences are understood in relation to historical trauma, racism, and ongoing cultural oppression. The study found that learning Lingít fosters psychological healing by restoring voice, identity, belonging, and cultural continuity. Participants described language learning not simply as cognitive but also as relational and embodied. Lingít students described their language-learning experiences as ones that counter internalized racism, strengthen ancestral and community ties, and cultivate resilience amid historical trauma.

Another study, conducted by Brandon Todd Locke, director of World Languages and Immersion Programs for the Anchorage School District, found that “benefits and values of Alaska Native languages and cultures” that surfaced in the findings are “clearly and overwhelmingly powerful testaments of the ongoing need for healing for the decades of generational trauma experienced by Alaska Natives.”

“Themes such as reclamation, empowerment, and cultural connections and competency were extremely evident and powerful,” the 2024 study added.

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As part of the Yup’ik immersion program in Anchorage, the students learn what is called “the way of life.” A Yup’ik pledge, it’s a reminder that what they are learning has been passed down since time immemorial. In learning “the way of life,” students pledge to be respectful and to remember that everything has a spirit, according to Panigkaq Agatha John-Shields, Kangrilnguq’s grandmother, who is a Yup’ik elder and founding member of the Yup’ik Immersion School in Bethel, as well as a faculty member at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. She believes that if you live respectfully and are compassionate to the people and things around you, the effects of doing so will come back to you and bring prosperity.

The Yup’ik book called Qanruyuteput Iinruugut, which means “our teachings are medicine,” is also essential to learning Yup’ik language and culture, John-Shields said. “The teachings that we were raised on, the teachings that have been passed down for 10,000 years, are true to helping a person’s mental health,” she said, explaining that learning Yup’ik language is very important to accessing these teachings. She added:

To be mindful of other people, as well as yourself to get to know who you are, where you come from, the family that you’re involved in, as well as you know the teachers … the elders who are passing down the teachings and the language, and the language is very connected to the land. It’s connected to subsistence. It’s connected to the place. So that also helps you to be mindful and aware of things around you.

Shields and her family saw this play out very closely. Her son was nervous to go to school at first, but now that he has a school community rooted in Yup’ik language and culture, “he actually has friends that he goes fishing with, and his friends actually go hunting, seal hunting too here, and they’re able to share that experience together,” Shields said.

The students in Yup’ik immersion are also some of the best behaved in the school, according to Berntsen. They are well-behaved and courteous, and continue to receive this feedback even when they go to middle school, which Berntsen attributes to them learning the Native culture. “It’s part of the culture to treat the elders good, and respect the teachers and stuff like that,” he said.

The program’s success has also inspired visits from other Indigenous nations in the country and across the world including the Ainu people of Japan, as well as the chief of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, as they were considering using the model to start similar programs, according to Berntsen. “And we’ve consistently had people from up in the North Slope come down to visit our program because they wanted to start a new Yup’ik immersion program, and so they used our model to kind of inspire them to go to their school boards and try to get it started up there.”

As the only urban district offering an Indigenous language program in the U.S., the program is not without its challenges.

The program was initially funded in 2018 by the U.S. Department of Education grant known as the Native American Language Program. The grant was awarded for three years and extended for another three, Berntsen said. However, each year, he has had to reallocate resources and move one teacher from the regular neighborhood program to Yup’ik immersion, causing strain for the school. “And then after the six years of the grant, the district picked up the tabs and we’re going to keep this program growing,” he said.

Moreover, according to the 2025 study, although the Yup’ik immersion program is fully staffed, it has not been easy to find qualified teachers, and there isn’t a pool of candidates waiting, so vacancies are hard to fill. The study also noted academic challenges, as instruction time was reduced for children in the immersion program compared to those who are not. According to the study, one English partner teacher, Maangiar, said: “We do have a limited time to teach core concepts and core subjects. And we have some strugglers, academically, and so I don’t know if it’s because it’s just half day or if it’s just a lack of support elsewhere.”

Transportation has also been an ongoing challenge since the program began, the study found. The Yup’ik Immersion Program is lottery-based, and for all lottery programs in the Anchorage School District, transportation is not provided to students who live outside of the school’s attendance zone. “Our goal is to have at least 25 students in the Yup’ik” immersion classrooms. That fluctuates. “Attrition happens,” Brentsen said. “Parents get tired of driving their kids. So we have some classes where there’s over 20, and some classes are very low. I think it comes down to transportation and having to come because we get kids from … all over the town coming to our program here in the East Side.”

For Shields, too, this has been a challenge, as she has to drive her children to the school. “I have other relatives that have kids that aren’t in the Yup’ik immersion program due to transportation because we do have to bring our kids since we were not zoned into the school,” she said.

Despite the program’s challenges, Shields can see how happy her son is. He loves a more subsistence-based lifestyle and wants to move to their village, “but he doesn’t want to leave his school. He loves his school here,” she said. Speaking about her two children in the program, she added: “I see they’re more confident, they feel included.”

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