Breath of Life Archival Institute for the Indigenous Languages of the Americas -- A Planning Meeting

Advocates For Indigenous California Language Survival, Fresno CA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal initiates the planning for a National Indigenous Language Institute based on the model of the Breath of Life Language Workshop for California Indians. The planned National Indigenous Language Institute will be based the first year in Washington D.C. and will orchestrate a partnership for training venues and resources which includes the National Anthropology Archives of the Smithsonian Institute, the National Museum of the American Indian and the Library of Congress. The National Indigenous Language Institute will foster community-linguist relationships which can result in continued collaborations beyond the institute. The Institute will engage mentors in the use of language documentation by heritage communities, therefore training them to produce documentation that is more relevant to and useful for community efforts. The Institute will support on-going and future community-based language documentation efforts by teaching participants about the importance of language documentation and its relevance to on-going cultural initiatives. Participants (most of whom are language teachers or are otherwise culturally active) will be more likely to engage in future language documentation efforts or initiate a new effort in their home community. For both mentors and Native American participants, this institute will also demonstrate the critical importance of archiving materials that either linguists or community people have collected.