Last native speaker of Eeyak dies at 89

ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Marie Smith Jones, the last full-blooded member of Alaska's Eeyak people and an activist for American Indian rights, has died at 89.

Smith Jones died in her sleep in her apartment Monday in Fairview near Anchorage, the Anchorage Daily News reported. She insisted on living on her own even after breaking a hip two years ago.

"Blind and deaf and she wouldn't live with anybody,'' her daughter, Bernice Galloway, said.

Smith Jones became an activist late in life, after her sister's death in 1992 left her as the last native speaker of the Eeyak language. She even took on her tribe's corporation, fighting its decision to clear cut timber on tribal lands.

Michael Krauss, founder of the Alaska Native Languages Center at the University of Fairbanks, called her "something of a poster child" on the issue of language extinction.

Laura Bliss Spaan, a documentary filmmaker who became a friend, said that Smith Jones had some surprising traits. She was a big fan of the National Enquirer and a collector of Pillsbury Doughboy figurines.