document | Tunun Kayutukun: Words Have Power

Ilarion (Larry) Merculieff and Libby Roderick challenge non-Indigenous people to rethink, from the ground up, how language works in the world. Drawing on the linguistic understandings and practices of the Unangan (Aleuts) communities of Alaska’s Pribilof Islands, as well as those of other Indigenous Peoples, the authors argue in a direct and powerful way that words are not just abstractions but entities with intrinsic power that “must be chosen and used with utmost care.” This story was published in Terralingua's Langscape Magazine, Vol 7(1), 2018.