I studied the transcript of an interview from the Kodiak Community Oral History Project with a Russian-Aleut and Swedish woman named Eunice Neseth.It is titled “Eunice Neseth-Katmai/1976.” Neseth was born in Afognak island, just north of Kodiak, in 1907. In childhood, she learned Russian from and spoke it with her Grandmother, Parascovia. She attended elementary school there and high school in Washington. Later, she became a teacher and taught high school in Kodiak. She retired after 23 years. During that time, she learned Aleut basketry from an Unalaskan woman who taught at Kodiak's college. Two years before the 1983 interview in question, she and Virginia Samuelson published the book How to Attu: A Guide to Making Your Own Attu Basket. Information on her life after the interview is scarce, but we do know that Neseth passed away sometime in 1993.

Her heritage as a Russian-Aleut reaches back to 1794 when the first Russian fur trader settlement on Kodiak. Not long after the first settlement, Russian Orthodox missionaries moved in and established the first Russian Orthodox church in Kodiak, integrating themselves into Aleut culture in order to convert them to Russian Orthodoxy. Their relationship with the Native population was strong until Presbyterians arrived on Kodiak. These Christian missionaries would go on to suppress both the Aleut and Russian languages. Eventually, they succeeded, and English-only education dominated the island and the rest of Alaska. By the time that system was abolished, Russian as a comprehensive language had disappeared from Kodiak and evolved into “Old Russian,” whose word stock is much smaller than modern Russian. It still exists today, though it's mostly spoken on the island's coastal villages alongside Aleut. Because of this, there's a social difference between speakers of Old Russian and Aleut.

Knowing this, three languages have been primary influences on Kodiak's linguistic history: Aleut, Russian, and English. As a Russian-Aleut woman instructed in English, Eunice Neseth sat in the center of these influences. Her use of the word “Babushka” in the transcript illustrates this point. Interestingly, she does not use it herself, but rather discusses other villagers using it in reference to her grandmother. Knowing her linguistic life, the history of Kodiak, and her connection to it, I posited that her use of “Babushka” is an example of code-switching, or when a speaker alternates between two or more languages in one conversation. Code-switching is heavily linked to one's identity, and Neseth is no different. To take it further, however, her use of the word also exemplifies a concept in sociology called “ethnic mobilization,” which describes how a given ethnic group organizes themselves around some part of their identity. Neseth was a French teacher for a while and stated that she can read 10 languages and speak two. As such, I focused on language as an important aspect of her identity. It became clear to me, then, that her use of “Babushka” represents two things: Kodiak's social distinction between “Old Russian” and Aleut speakers and, when used in the context of English, a recognition of her grandmother's Russian identity and, by extension, her own. 
 

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