The Central Alaskan Yupik are by far the most numerous of the various Alaska Native groups and speak the Central Alaskan Yup'ik language, a member of the Eskimo-Aleut family of languages.
As of the 2001 U.S. Census, the Yupik population in the United States numbered over 24,000,[REF] of whom over 22,000 lived in Alaska, the vast majority in the seventy or so communities in the traditional Yup'ik territory of western and southwestern Alaska [REF].