Katurlita! - Let's All Gather

Katurlita! - Let's All Gather is an immersive app promoting the tribal history, language, values, cultural knowledge and traditional arts of the Alutiiq people of the Native Village of Afognak. Alutiiq are the indigenous people of the Kodiak Island Archipelago in the Gulf of Alaska who have inhabited traditional lands for over 7,500 years.

Designed to be an educational resource, it has been developed by the Native Village of Afognak which represents over 700 Afognak tribal members, descended specifically from the village of Afognak, on Afognak Island, in the northern part of the Archipelago. The Native Village of Afognak (NVA) is a federally recognized tribe, one of ten in the Archipelago.

Katurlita! - Let's All Gather provides information on Alutiiq culture and heritage using interactive images, text, synchronized audio, video and song. Highlights include an interactive map teaching pronunciation of key sites, a section where you can listen to “Voices of our Elders”, a tool where you can develop your own introduction in the Alutiiq language, and push notifications to build community and engagement.

“ Katurlita! - Let's All Gather is designed to be a rallying point for members to learn important aspects of who we are, our culture and what we do” says Tribal Administrator, Melissa Borton.

“The goal is to bring the expertise, knowledge and sensitivity of our elders into the digital age. This will ensure cultural continuity, where our young people remain strong in retaining their language, culture and heritage.”

The development of the app has been supported by New Zealand based technology innovator Kiwa Digital, an indigenous owned company with a global reputation for its work in language revitalization.

“Katurlita! - Let's All Gather is designed to be a rallying point for members to learn important aspects of who we are, our culture and what we do,” says Tribal Administrator, Melissa Borton.

“We congratulate the Native Village of Afognak for this bold move into future learning” said Steven Renata, CEO of Kiwa Digital.

“In this International Year of Indigenous Languages, indigenous groups around the world are putting huge effort into preserving languages. This is paying off and we are now at a crucial stage in terms of their preservation, with technology the key to success.”

About the Native Village of Afognak

The people of Native Village of Afognak are the descendants of the original Alutiiq inhabitants of the village of Ag’waneq, which was located on the island of Afognak, three miles off the shore of Kodiak Island. We are a federally recognized Tribe. Members of our Tribe inhabited our ancestral village until the Great Earthquake and Tsunami of 1964. Today many of our members live and work in the City of Kodiak, the village of Port Lions, Anchorage, and the Lower 48 States. See more at www.afognak.org

About Kiwa Digital

Kiwa Digital is a technology innovator based in New Zealand specializing in media localization. The company was formed in 2003 to meet the need for dubbing children’s television to the native Māori language. This led to the development of two innovative software applications now licensed to the booming global language services market. See more at www.kiwadigital.com and www.voiceq.com

“The goal is to bring the expertise, knowledge and sensitivity of our elders into the digital age. This will ensure cultural continuity, where our young people remain strong in retaining their language, culture and heritage.”

The development of the immersive app has been supported by New Zealand based technology innovator Kiwa Digital, an indigenous owned company with a global reputation for its work in language revitalization.