Nikki Corbett was desperate.

The mother and small business owner had searched online and in stores near her home in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, but she could not find any books to teach her young children the Yup’ik language.

Growing up, Corbett says, she was more fluent in the language – because she lived in the largely Yup’ik community of Bethel, Alaska.

“And so obviously being immersed in that, you understand more and can speak more,” Corbett says. “But being away from it – the community that I live in, it’s not a language that’s normally spoken.”

So Corbett – and her friend, Katie O’Connor, an illustrator and mother – decided to create their own Yup’ik alphabet coloring book.

Nikki Corbett (left) and Katie O’Connor (right) won a fellowship from the Rasmuson Foundation to create a Yup’ik book for young language learners.

Courtesy of Nikki Corbett

hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Courtesy of Nikki Corbett

In Alaska, there’s a market for primers like this.

More than 20% of the state’s population is Native. Of the estimated 21,000 Alaskans who identify as Yup’ik, nearly half speak the language.

In fact, Yup’ik is the most commonly spoken Native language in Alaska. 

Corbett may have been immersed in Yup’ik culture when she was growing up in Bethel. But that’s not the case for every Alaska Native.

The subjugation of Native Americans and hostility toward Native language and culture has a lot to do with it, Corbett says.

“The younger generations, like my generation, in some of those areas, they don’t know the language because their parents were punished for speaking Yup’ik,” Corbett says. “And so I think that they were afraid to teach their children because they didn’t want their children to be punished for speaking our language.”

There are immersion schools in Alaska that have Yup’ik learning materials, but Corbett says it’s nearly impossible to find those books outside the classroom.

“If you go in the store and you see the kids section and you look at the educational material and you’ll see French or German or Spanish,” Corbett says. “Wherever those things are, we want to be able to create something similar in the Yup’ik language.”

A page from the Yup’ik coloring book.

Courtesy of Nikki Corbett

hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Courtesy of Nikki Corbett

Katie O’Connor is an Inupiaq artist based in Nome, Alaska.

Growing up, O’Connor says, she didn’t learn much about her own Inupiaq culture until after high school.

“There’s not a lot available out there. And then also, when you start digging into it, the literature, the books that are out there related to any Alaska Native culture, most of them are written by non-Native people,” O’Connor says. “Most of them are written by people who aren’t from Alaska, and some are written by people who’ve never even been to our region.”

Corbett and O’Connor, who had met at the Iditarod, teamed up and applied for a fellowship to make their book.

The result is 27 pages, each featuring a letter of the Yup’ik alphabet and illustrations celebrating Yup’ik culture and heritage.

“The letters of the Yup’ik language, they relate to something in our culture, like you won’t see a coloring book that has fry bread in it,” Corbett says. “And so it’s images from a part of who we are as Alaska Natives.”

Corbett says they have between 700 and 1,000 bulk order requests for the coloring book — including an Alaska school district.

“Our culture is so strong and our people are resilient and just to be able to, you know, it’s just a coloring book. But for us, it’s just so much more than a coloring book,” Corbett says.

Corbett and O’Connor hope to release their next coloring book in the Inupiaq language.

Majd Al-Waheidi edited this article.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The Bank of Canada has signalled that borrowing costs could fall further in the coming months, after rate-setters cut interest rates for the third time in a row on Wednesday.

The central bank lowered its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.25 per cent, in line with expectations.

Its governor, Tiff Macklem, said after the decision that if inflation continued to fall back towards the central bank’s 2 per cent goal, then it was “reasonable to expect further cuts”.

While inflation remains above rate-setters’ target at 2.5 per cent, growth has been weak for several quarters. The central bank expects inflation to fall to 2 per cent by the second half of 2025.

The unemployment rate has inched up to 6.4 per cent — nearly 2 percentage points higher than the record low set two summers ago.

The central bank’s decision comes against the backdrop of a pressing social and political issue: high housing costs.

Housing affordability has become a bellwether for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government a year out from a national election.

Shortly after the announcement, Trudeau posted on social media that there was still a “lot of work to make life more affordable” for Canadians.

“But this is a strong signal that we’re going in the right direction, and it’s welcome relief for a lot of people looking to buy a home,” he said on X.  

Taylor Schleich, a rates strategist at National Bank of Canada, told the Financial Times that the rate cuts were a low-stakes tactic aimed at reducing mortgage costs for Canadian homeowners. Schleich said rates were so high that it was still quite “easy” for rate-setters to continue to incrementally cut them.

“Decisions start to get a bit more finely balanced probably next year,” he said.

While the central bank could move in bigger increments should growth come in lower than anticipated, Macklem indicated that the lender was likely to stick with smaller cuts.

“We will be assessing the data as it comes out,” the governor told the media. “If we need to take a bigger step, we are prepared to take a bigger step. At this point, 25 basis points looks appropriate.”

Tony Stillo, director of economics for Canada at Oxford Economics, said: “We think this means larger 50 basis-point cuts are off the table for now.” 

The latest Canadian rate cut comes amid expectations that the US Federal Reserve will lower borrowing costs for the first time in four years at its September 18 vote.

Other G7 central banks including the Bank of England and the European Central Bank have already started to reduce rates amid signs that the worst bout of inflation for a generation is over.

Carolyn Rogers, a deputy governor at the central bank, told reporters on Wednesday that Canada’s rapid population growth had had a big effect on the economy.  

“The Canadian economy is having trouble absorbing the number of workers into jobs,” she said. “We haven’t seen a big increase in unemployment but we have seen vacancies come down and we are seeing the unemployed rate tick up a bit.”

Last week, Trudeau announced measures to tighten Canada’s foreign workers programme.

While the programme is credited with helping Canada recover from the pandemic, it has been blamed for the high cost of housing, pressure on the healthcare system and rising youth unemployment.

Canada has added more than 1.6mn citizens since 2018, according to official data. The number of non-permanent residents in the country —  a figure that includes temporary workers, international students and asylum seekers — has more than doubled from about 1.3mn in 2021 to nearly 2.8mn in the second quarter of this year, Statistics Canada data shows.

“It is something we are watching closely,” Rogers said. 

Gov. Brian Kemp orders state law enforcement to assist