All of us here at Doyon Foundation had a wonderful time at the 2019 Doyon, Limited annual meeting, which took place on March 15 in Fairbanks. A big thank you to everyone who stopped by our table to meet our staff members, play our language game Gen Gonee (“What’s this?” in Denaakk’e), and pick up swag, like our beautiful bandana featuring “I am learning our language” in the 10 Native languages of the Doyon region! We also distributed Foundation information, including our 2018 annual report, and updated scholarship resource handbook and scholarship brochure. If you didn’t get a copy of these materials, you can find them on our website.
During the annual meeting, our executive director, Doris Miller, gave a presentation to attendees on the current activities of the Foundation, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year! During the presentation, she introduced Foundation board and staff members, and discussed how the Foundation is “remembering the past, inspiring the future” through our scholarship program and language revitalization efforts.
When discussing scholarships, Doris encouraged Native organizations to work together in advocating for continued funding for our local education systems, from Head Start to higher education institutions, which are in jeopardy of losing a significant amount of state funding. She also introduced our new scholarship program manager, Jenna Sommer, and reminded students of upcoming scholarship application deadlines.
During the language section of the presentation, Doris honored all of the “language champions” who are working with the Foundation to not only preserve the languages of our ancestors, but also share these languages with our youth and inspire them to carry our languages forward for future generations. She shared that, after years of hard work, the Foundation and its partners launched the first series of Doyon Languages Online lessons, as well as online versions of Hän language lessons originally developed by the late Isaac Juneby in the early 1990s.
The presentation opened with a short video featuring Foundation scholarship recipients, and closed with a video that was included in the launch of the Doyon Languages Online lessons.
We thank Doyon, Limited for allowing us the opportunity to present at the meeting, and we are grateful for the time we got to spend with our fellow shareholders!