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The Alaska Native Language Center was established by  in 1972 as a center for research and documentation of the twenty Native languages of Alaska. It is internationally known and recognized as the major center in the United States for the study of Interior and Northern Alaska Native languages. The mission of the Alaska Native Language Center and Program is to cultivate and promote Alaska’s twenty Native languages.

Faculty & staff members provide materials for bilingual teachers and other language workers throughout the state, assist social scientists and others who work with Native languages, and provide consulting and training services to teachers, school districts, and state agencies involved in bilingual education.

The center strives to raise public awareness of the gravity of language loss worldwide but particularly in the North. Of the state's twenty Native languages, only one (Yup'ik in southwestern Alaska) is spoken by children as the first language of the home.

Like every language in the world, each of those twenty is of inestimable human value and is worthy of revitalization. ANLC, therefore, continues to study, cultivate, and promote those languages as much as possible and thus contribute to their future and to the heritage of all Alaskans.