Alaskan poet Joan Naviyuk Kane is dedicated to sustaining her Alaska Native language, a devotion she learned from her grandmother, who as a young woman had to defend its importance against an increasingly hostile English-speaking society.⠀ ⠀ Kane, Harvard alum and Radcliffe Fellow, says that exposing people to written Inupiaq is essential to the language’s depth and influence. Her poems are written in both Inupiaq and English, and her family owns the only known written dictionaries of the dialect, which her son is working to digitize so they can be shared widely.⠀ ⠀ Today, there are between 100 and 150 primary speakers of Inupiaq remaining, a number that Kane hopes will grow through carrying on and spreading her grandmother’s practice of teaching the language.⠀ ⠀ #HarvardServes #Alaska⠀ ⠀ Photo: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer