Karuk (kyh) Archives and Accessibility Project

Karuk Tribe, Happy Camp CA

Investigators

Abstract

Karuk is a language of the Karuk Tribe, a federally-recognized tribe situated on the middle course of the Klamath River in northwestern California. Karuk is well known for its complex accentual system such as the rules in English (PHOTOgraph versus photoGRAPHic), its unique patterns of word and sentence formation. Thus more data on this language will help with understanding more about its grammar. PI Susan Gehr of Humboldt University, along with a Karuk Language Program Coordinator and 20 community participants, will create an archival repository of Karuk materials, making them searchable and accessible in perpetuity. The materials to be archived include data from the Karuk Tribe's Language Program and materials donated by community members. These unique data will then enrich current knowledge of this highly endangered language. While there are just five elderly known fluent speakers of the Karuk language, there is an active community of Karuk people documenting the fluent speakers of Karuk and publishing Karuk texts, audio and video. Gehr will hold four workshops where she will share state-of-the-art techniques in archiving and preservation methodologies to community members with the view to supporting sustainable archiving practices in the community. The project will not only create infrastructure in the Karuk community, it also provided an example of how to do this with community. This project will also use best practices from the archival profession to produce a freely available collection guide for the Karuk language materials created and collected by the Karuk Tribe's Language Program.