Planning Grant: Collaborative Research: Increasing Montana's Tribal College Engagement in Language Documentation and Revitalization

Chief Dull Knife Memorial College, Lame Deer MT

Investigators

Abstract

The state of Montana is home to nine Native American languages (Blackfoot, Montana Salish, Kutenai, Northern Cheyenne, Gros Ventre, Cree, Chippewa, Crow, and Assiniboine) and has seven Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs). This project reinforces the mandate of the Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, which called for stakeholders, including Native American activists, to act together to "declare to preserve, protect and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice and develop" these languages. The TCUs in Montana have been offering Native American language courses to encourage the sustainability of Native languages. This collaborative project between the University of Montana (UM) and one of the TCUs, Chief Dull Knife College (CDKC), aims to support the efforts of Montana TCUs by enriching language instructors' and activists' experience through an exchange of ideas and knowledge with instructors and training partners from UM, CDKC and the American Indian Language Institute (AILDI) of the University of Arizona. The proposed activities foster a positive relationship across institutions and will help identify current issues that may become the focus of future training workshops. The project's broader impacts include building the capacity of language documentation programs at Montana TCUs, enhancing STEM education through technology utilized in language documentation and education, and serving underrepresented populations who often have difficulty accessing training due to the remoteness of their locations. This collaborative project seeks to cultivate common ground for communication across institutional boundaries. It aims to promote the idea that an increased knowledge of linguistics, as a science, can benefit TCU programs related to indigenous language sustainability as well as the idea that linguistics can benefit from community input. A collaborative team, consisting of four language activists from indigenous communities and four non-indigenous linguists, will travel to TCUs in Montana to learn about the current efforts and future goals of their language activities. The collaborative team will then host meetings with selected participants from the Montana TCUs for further discussions. Results will be compiled from these activities feed into future documentation research and indigenous language education through workshops that will circulate the information back to indigenous communities. These project outcomes have the potential to implement indigenous ways of knowing into language documentation projects.