10,000 pages of Yukon Indigenous language material published online

A collection of Yukon Indigenous language books has been scanned, organizedand made freely available online.

There's at least 10,000 pagesof materialin eight languages Gwich'in, Han, Kaska, Northern Tutchone, Southern Tutchone, Tagish, Tlingit and Upper Tanana.

The publications used tobe available only on paper at the Yukon Native Language Centre,which is at Yukon College in Whitehorse.

Language curriculum developer Krista Dempster said the goal is to make the work accessible to anyone, anywhere.

"Until now people from the communities would have to come into the language centre to access any resources. Or they'd have to put in an order and it would be mailed out to them. And they weren't free," she said.

One great benefit to scanning is that people can now search the records electronically for instance searching for one word or a person's name.

"You can actually search through all of the 10,000 pages that have been scanned," Dempstersaid.

Council of Yukon First Nations released material

The digitization of material has been happening for yearswith help from a linguistics project at Carleton University, as well as the territorial government'sDepartment of Education.

The online publication only happened after a change in management.

Earlier this year the Yukon government handed over responsibility for the Yukon Native Language Centre to the Council of Yukon First Nations (CYFN).The CYFNhas pledged tochange the centrefrom a resource to certify teachers into more of a community school, reaching out to anyone interested in learning a YukonIndigenous language.

One of those people isU'yenets'echia, also known asSean Smith. He's been building fluency in Southern Tutchone and Tlingit.

"Iam really, really very, very thankful that we'retaking this path to build their resources and to build the connection within our communities. Ithink it's very, very powerful," he said. "Ithink that having the resources online it's veryvaluable for teachers, for learners and for the community members to access."

The next step for the centre will be adding more audio. The Yukon Native Language Centre's website alreadyhas adictionary for Kaska that features pronunciations recorded by elders in communities.

The material can be found at www.ynlc.ca under the languagestab.