Verdena Parker

{{Short description|Last fluent speaker of the Hupa language (born 1936)}}

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{{use American English|date=January 2025}}

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| birth_name = Verdena Leona Chase

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1936|3|1}}

| birth_place = Hoopa Valley, California

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| nationality = Hupa

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| known_for = Most fluent speaker of the Hupa language

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Verdena Leona Parker ({{née|Chase}}; born March 1, 1936) is the last fluent speaker of the Hupa language,{{cite book|last=Evans|first=Nicholas|title=Dying words: endangered languages and what they have to tell us|year=2010|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|location=Chichester, U.K.|isbn=978-0-631-23305-3}} an Athabaskan language spoken by the Hoopa Valley Tribe, indigenous to northern California. While other children of her generation were sent to boarding schools, isolating them from their families, Parker was raised by her grandmother, who spoke Hupa with her.{{cite web|last=Newberry|first=Daniel|title=Rescuing Languages From Extinction: The Experience of the Hoopa Valley, Karuk, and Yurok Tribes|url=http://www.ijpr.org/Feature.asp?FeatureID=836|publisher=Jefferson Public Radio|accessdate=29 November 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120306022513/http://www.ijpr.org/Feature.asp?FeatureID=836|archive-date=6 March 2012|url-status=usurped|df=dmy-all}}{{cite web|url=https://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/at-home-with-the-last-native-speaker-of-the-hupa-language/|title=At Home With A Language's Last Native Speaker|publisher=Oregon Public Broadcasting|author1=Miller, Dave|author2=Blanchard, Dave|date=2 July 2015|website=opb.org|accessdate=20 February 2019|archive-date=30 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190730210045/https://www.opb.org/radio/programs/thinkoutloud/segment/at-home-with-the-last-native-speaker-of-the-hupa-language/|url-status=dead}} Through adulthood, Parker continued to speak Hupa with her mother daily, maintaining a high level of fluency despite language loss in the rest of the Hupa community.{{cite journal|journal=International Journal of American Linguistics|volume=82|issue=1|date=January 2016|pages=71–91|author=Spence, Justin|title = Lexical Innovation and Variation in Hupa (Athabaskan)|publisher=U of Chicago P|doi=10.1086/684424|s2cid=146938496 }}

Beginning in 2008 and continuing through the present, Parker has regularly worked with researchers at UC Berkeley and Stanford to provide recordings of spoken Hupa for the documentation of the Hupa language.{{cite web|title=Survey projects|url=http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~survey/activities/projects.php|work=The Survey of California and Other Indian Languages|publisher=Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley|accessdate=29 November 2011}} She is also active in language revitalization projects.{{cite news|last=Lara|first=Callie|title=Opinion|url=http://www.tworiverstribune.com/2011/08/opinion-callie-lara-hoopa-calif/|accessdate=29 November 2011|newspaper=Two Rivers Tribune|date=2 August 2011|archive-date=4 March 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304113038/http://www.tworiverstribune.com/2011/08/opinion-callie-lara-hoopa-calif/|url-status=dead}}