New generation benefits from elders’ struggles over native languages

Two teachers, one who was beaten for speaking his native language and the other who dealt with cultural prejudice, are fighting to keep their languages from going extinct.

In Fairbanks, Alaska, Professor Walkie Charles, 49, who was hit for speaking his parents' language in boarding school, is teaching college students an Eskimo language.

Like many others, Walkie went to the boarding schools made mandatory in 1879 by the U.S. government's Indian policy. The schools used family separation and physical abuse to force Western assimilation as late as the 1970s in Alaska.