National Geographic Society

MISTY UPHAM
Misty Upham, born in Kallispell, Montana, grew up in south Seattle, the fourth of five children. She began her career at the age of thirteen when she joined a community theater group, Red Eagle Soaring. What began as a summer workshop soon turned into a full-time job. By the age of fourteen she was writing and directing short skits and performing on tours throughout the northwest. In the next four years she would be accepted to several Seattle theater companies, all while attending high school. Her first break came in 2001 when she landed the role of Mrs. Blue Cloud in Chris Eyre's sophomore project SKINS, where she portrayed a victim of domestic abuse on the Pine Ridge reservation. Upham additional credits include: Eyre's EDGE OF AMERICA, Rick Stevenson's EXPIRATION DATE, ABC's DREAMKEEPER and also starred in her same role as Lila across Melissa Leo in the short, FROZEN RIVER.

Recently nominated for the "Best Supporting Female" Spirit Award, Misty Upham will participate in a discussion after the screening of FROZEN RIVER at the National Geographic headquarters on March 5th at 7 p.m.

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Photograph courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

PARIS (AFP) - The world has lost Manx in the Isle of Man, Ubykh in Turkey and last year Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak, Marie Smith Jones, died, taking the aboriginal language with her.
Of the 6,900 languages spoken in the world, some 2,500 are endangered, the UN's cultural agency UNESCO said Thursday as it released its latest atlas of world languages.
That represents a multi-fold increase from the last atlas compiled in 2001 which listed 900 languages threatened with extinction.
But experts say this is more the result of better research tools than of an increasingly dire situation for the world's many tongues. Still there is disheartening news. There are 199 languages in the world spoken by fewer than a dozen people, including Karaim which has six speakers in Ukraine and Wichita, spoken by 10 people in the US state of Oklahoma. The last four speakers of Lengilu talk among themselves in Indonesia.
Prospects are a bit brighter for some 178 other languages, spoken by between 10 and 150 people.
More than 200 languages have become extinct over the last three generations such as Ubykh that fell silent in 1992 when Tefvic Esenc passed on, Aasax in Tanzania, which disappeared in 1976, and Manx in 1974. India tops the list of countries with the greatest number of endangered languages, 196 in all, followed by the United States which stands to lose 192 and Indonesia, where 147 are in peril.
Australian linguist Christopher Moseley, who headed the atlas' team of 25 experts, noted that countries with rich linguistic diversity like India and the United States are also facing the greatest threat of language extinction. Even Sub-Saharan Africa's melting pot of some 2,000 languages is expected to shrink by at least 10 percent over the coming century, according to UNESCO.
On UNESCO's rating scale, 538 languages are critically endangered, 502 severely endangered, 632 definitely endangered and 607 unsafe. On a brighter note, Papua New Guinea, the country of 800 languages, the most diverse in the world, has only 88 endangered dialects. Certain languages are even showing signs of a revival, like Cornish, a Celtic language spoken in Cornwall, southern England, and Sishee in New Caledonia. Governments in Peru, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Mexico have been successful in their efforts to prevent indigenous languages from dying out.
UNESCO deputy director Francoise Riviere applauded government efforts to support linguistic diversity but added that "people have to be proud to speak their language" to ensure it thrives.

The Enduring Voices Project, a partnership between National Geographic and the Living Tongues Institute is working to address this challenge head on. Don't miss the broadcast premiere of "The Linguists" February 26 on PBS. Check your local listings for details.

Following a successful run across the globe on the film festival circuit, "The Linguists" (Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller, and Jeremy NewBerger) will have its world premiere broadcast February 26 on PBS (Check your local listings). The film, which chronicles linguists David Harrison and Gregory Anderson who are on a whirlwind race against time to document endangered languages, was a hit at the All Roads Film Festival 2008. With such a concerted effort lauded upon the ecological challenges of climate change, endangered languages provides a tangible reminder of the cultural implications facing our planet. Harrison and Anderson, the linguists, are at the forefront of The Enduring Voices Project, a partnership between National Geographic Mission Programs and the Living Tounges Institute for Endangered Languages.