WORLD

Indigenous Siberians have linguistic links to Native North Americans. (Al Jazeera)

Take a look at our map to trace the settlement of the Americas—and why people in Russia and Arizona may have linguistic similarities.

Teachers, scroll down for a quick list of key resources in our Teachers’ Toolkit.

The Kets are an indigenous group who live in the Russian taiga around the Yenisei River in Siberia. Linguists have studied the Ket language, and compared it to elements of the Na-Dene language group spoken by Native American communities in North America. Photograph by Fridtjof Nansen, courtesy Wikimedia. Public domain.

This woman is one of the last speakers of Hupa, an endangered language once spoken by the Hupa community of Northern California. Photograph by Lynn Johnson, National Geographic

This Arizona family speaks one of the most well-known Native American languages, Navajo. Photograph by Walter Meayers Edwards, National Geographic

These Chiricahua Apache vaqueros may speak Mescalero-Chiricahua, spoken by thousands of people in Oklahoma and New Mexico. Photograph by Bruce Dale, National Geographic

These Tlingit dancers speak Tlingit, an endangered language spoken in western Alaska and Canada. Photograph by David Alan Harvey, National Geographic

Discussion Ideas

• Read through the easy Al Jazeera article. It identifies Ket, spoken by an indigenous group living near the Yenisei River in Siberia, as an endangered language. Nat Geo defines an endangered language as one that is at risk of falling out of practical use as its speakers die or shift to speaking another language. Why is Ket an endangered language?
  • The Ket people have suffered waves of forced migration and assimilation over thousands of years.
    • Prehistoric “reindeer pastoralists and horse herders pressed Kets to flee their ancient homeland between Mongolia and Lake Baikal northwards to the world’s largest forest, the Siberian taiga.”
    • Czarist-era Russian expansion of the 16th and 17th centuries “roughly coincided with the European conquest of the Americas—and also brought along infectious diseases, alcoholism, and conversion to Orthodox Christianity.”
    • During the 1920s and 1930s, “Stalinist-era collectivization forced Kets to settle down in several villages, and their children were sent to boarding schools, where they forgot their parents’ language.”
    • Today, Ket is “taught in the first three grades of the local schools, but it is losing ground to Russian in everyday life … There is increased intermarriage with Russians, and the survival of the unique Ket language as a medium of everyday communication beyond the next two generations is in doubt.”

• How does the Ket language hint at how the Americas were settled?
  • Linguists have linked Ket words and verbal systems with the Na-Dene language family. The huge Na-Dene family includes:
    • Eyak, an extinct language. Eyak was spoken by the Eyak people, native to the Copper River delta in Alaska.
    • Tlingit, an endangered language. Tlingit is spoken fluently by about 500 people (Tlingit) in the U.S. states of Alaska and Washington, the Canadian province of British Columbia, and the Canadian territory of Yukon.
    • Hupa, an endangered language. Hupa is spoken fluently by fewer than 10 people (Hupa) around the Trinity River in northern California.
    • Plains Apache, sometimes called Kiowa Apache, a nearly extinct language. Plains Apache is spoken fluently by fewer than 10 people (Plains Apache) around southwestern Oklahoma.
    • Navajo, one of the most widely spoken Native American languages. Navajo is spoken by more than 170,000 people (Navajo) in the southwestern United States, centered around the Four Corners area of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah (areas that make up Navajo Nation, the largest Native American territory in the U.S.) and Colorado.

• Is there any genetic evidence to support the tantalizing linguistic links between Ket and Na-Dene?
  • No, scientists have yet to find any direct genetic links between Kets and Native Americans. However:
    • A 2012 genetic analysis identified three waves of migration from Asia to North America. Most Native Americans descend from an ancestral population called ‘First Americans.’ The Eskimo-Aleut group also have genetic markers from another wave. The Chipewyan have a third set of genetic markers. (Chipewyan are a Na-Dene-speaking community in western Canada.)
    • Kets have been genetically linked to another North American group, the Saqqaq. The Saqqaq were the first inhabitants of Greenland, and their people and culture disappeared around 800 BCE.

• Is there any other evidence linking the Kets and Native Americans?
  • Yes. Folklorists have uncovered similar motifs in the mythologies of both cultures. “These motifs include specific myths such as the tale about the first humans who live lazily consuming tasty, satiating fat or bone marrow and plants until a supernatural creature makes them inedible so that humans have to learn hunting or farming in order to survive.”

TEACHERS’ TOOLKIT

Al Jazeera: Tracing ancient Asia-America migration in language

Nat Geo: Human Migration map