Annauk Denise Olin is a graduate student in linguistics in the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative (MITILI), a special master’s program in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy for members of communities whose languages are threatened. She is an enrolled Tribal member of the Native Village of Shishmaref in Alaska, and is developing a curriculum for teaching the Iñupiaq language through MITILI. Olin is raising her two-year-old son to be bilingual in the Iñupiaq language and in English. As the former research director of the climate change research and policy center at the Alaska Institute for Justice, she supported community-based monitoring of severe climate impacts to protect the health and well-being of 15 Alaska Native communities. Her family’s community of Shishmaref has been attempting to relocate for the past decade because of the effect of global climate change: intense climate-induced flooding, erosion, and permafrost thaw. Olin earned a BA in comparative literature and a certificate in American Indian studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Annauk Denise Olin is speaking at MIT Better World (Sustainability) on March 16, 2021.