FEMA under civil rights investigation after ‘unintelligible’ disaster relief application information was sent to Alaska Natives

The hurricane-force winds and high water brought by Typhoon Merbok leveled storage sheds, destroyed boats and ruined hunting and fishing equipment Alaska Native people use for subsistence. In response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency made those items eligible for disaster relief and recovery funds. But, some of the agency's aid documents were mistranslated into gibberish instead of local Indigenous languages. Now, FEMA is the subject of a civil rights investigation. (Emily Schwing / KYUK)

This story originally appeared on KYUK Public Media and is republished here with permission.

On any given day in Bethel’s airport terminals, most people are speaking Yugtun, or Yup’ik. Hundreds of passengers travel to and from some of Alaska’s most remote Indigenous communities. Much of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta’s store-bought food travels through these same terminals, as well as supplies and equipment people might need in response to a natural disaster. The same kind of supplies that were necessary after one of the most powerful storms in decades destroyed homes, fish camps, and subsistence gear along Alaska’s Bering Sea coast last year.

Yugtun is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in this region. Last fall, the Federal Emergency Management Agency hired California-based company Accent on Languages to translate information on disaster assistance into Yugtun and Iñupiaq, another Indigenous language spoken by thousands.

But when Julia Jimmie, KYUK’s translator, got some of those translated materials, she couldn’t understand them. That’s because they were gibberish. It turns out that the company FEMA hired to do the translations has no record of working in the Indigenous languages spoken in Alaska.

Jimmie grew up speaking Yugtun.

“There’s a lot of Yup’ik. There’s kids still growing up (with) Yup’ik as their first language and they go to school and learn English,” Jimmie said. ”I text my kids in Yup’ik. They respond in Yup’ik, and people are posting in Yup’ik on Facebook, and yeah, Yup’ik is still alive.”

In September, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, her chief of staff, and her chief counsel received a memo from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. According to the memo, a “complaint investigation” is examining how FEMA interacted with Alaska Native communities in the aftermath of last fall’s storm.

A September 2023 memo outlines the details of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties into how FEMA interacted with Alaska Native communities in the aftermath of a powerful storm that wreaked havoc on Alaska's west coast in the fall of 2022. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties)

That complaint cites KYUK’s investigation into the mistranslations as the reason it launched its investigation.

According to the memo, the office wants to find out “whether there are systemic problems” with the way FEMA works with Indigenous communities in Alaska. The office is also looking into whether FEMA violated any laws, regulations, or its own policies. Sam Berlin, who hosts a weekly radio show in Yugtun on KYUK, said that he’s thrilled.

“I think that’s a very positive thing. And to know that they would take the time out for people way up here, especially in our area when some type of disaster happens, that we can look to our government and get some kind of response,” Berlin said.

The mistranslations were particularly galling to Berlin, who grew up speaking Yugtun, because he remembers a time when the federal government forbade Alaska Natives and American Indians from speaking their languages at all.

“Yeah, assimilation,” Berlin said. “This is what was happening. They were trying to do away with our language.”

In an emailed statement, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan wrote that “there is no excuse” for the unintelligible translations “that leave Alaska Native people without the vital information they need in a crisis.”

Sullivan said that his office would be closely monitoring the investigation.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties did not respond to a request for comment on its investigation.

Accent on Languages CEO Caroline Lee declined an interview, but said in an email that she has revamped her company’s quality control procedures.

“We have instituted a complete overhaul of our translator vetting, onboarding, and evaluation processes; and the requirement for all linguists to sign and adhere to a strict code of ethics,” Lee wrote.

FEMA Deputy Director of External Affairs Lucas Hitt also declined an interview. FEMA maintains that Accent on Languages has reimbursed the agency for the botched translation work it did after Typhoon Merbok. In January 2023, the agency told KYUK that they were “no longer working” with Accent on Languages.

But according to a federal spending database, FEMA has opened nearly $480,000 in contracts with the company since September 2022, which does not include a contract the agency said that it ended with Accent on Languages once the fraudulent translations were discovered. It’s unclear how much of that money has been paid out.