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Arctic Yearbook 2014
lack adequate numbers of trained specialists who are sufficiently proficient in the indigenous
languages to conduct the surveys. More realistically, the committee is striving to create an adequate
survey and pilot test it in a handful of communities for a proof-of-concept trial which can
subsequently leveraged to apply for funds to conduct a full-scale pan-Arctic survey. There is a deep
commitment to gathering the necessary data to make informed decisions for action. Finally,
community members must have opportunities to provide input into assessments and to peer review
findings before they are finalized. This last requirement comes from the experience of participants
of many years of outsiders painting inaccurate pictures of their communities, and from a desire to
make this a true indigenously enterprise, defined in terms of indigenous models of inquiry.
The second set of challenges facing the assessment group is more intellectual in nature. Through
firsthand experience and past surveys, in particular those conducted by linguists in close
collaboration with community members (see especially Vakhtin 1992, 2001), and information from
indigenous community members,2 we know that the details of micro language ecologies differ in the
Arctic, and language vitality can vary from village to village, even within the same region. Yet policy
makers, administrators and leaders often do not have the time, interest i