Nanwalek: Education

and Community

Sally Ann Ash was born in the Alaskan village of Nanwalek in 1958. Sarjus Kvasnikoff and Juanita Melshimer, her parents, acted as lifelong members of Nanwalek’s community and incorporated a love of family and home into Ash; therefore, in 2000 she founded a local immersion school to teach her traditional language. Giving the Alutiiq language to the next generation became an important part of her life, and finally an opportunity to teach in the community’s public schools arose. Ash leads intensives and classes to further Alaska’s efforts to preserve Indigenous dialects.

“Language, it is something we have inside of us; it was a comfort to us when we had nowhere to go“ - Sally Ann Ash