Juneau’s Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy (TCLL) students perform Shaklayin wé Gaaw (Jingle Bells) in Tlingit! | Sealaska Heritage Institute

The Tlingit are one of the great Indigenous nations of the Pacific Northwest—rooted for thousands of years along the coastlines, islands, and forests of what is now Southeast Alaska and parts of the Yukon. We are a maritime people, master navigators of the cold Pacific waters, salmon nations, and cedar forests. Our clans—Raven and Eagle/Wolf—carry ancestral laws, histories, and identities passed down through oral tradition, regalia, and monumental art. Our totem poles are not decorations; they a

History

The Tlingit language, rich in metaphor and deep in meaning, encodes the history, life ways, stories, and traditions of the Huna Tlingit. Widely spoken into the mid-20th century, the Tlingit language began to fade during a painful era of western acculturation. Language revitalization is critical, today there are fewer than 60 living fluent speakers. Read more: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/tlingit-language-our-grandparents-language.htm Learn more about Tlingit heritage: https://www.nps.gov/loc

The Sound of the Tlingit language (Numbers, Greetings, Phrases & Story) — Cascadia Department of Bioregion