Indigenous language database project

Endangered Language Fund, Inc., New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

For about 12,000 years, numerous small foraging communities lived in equilibrium in a region of what is now the US. Using resources created in this project, linguists are reconstructing their relationships and history, and community members are regaining language and culture, a vital gesture of restorative justice and healing of generational trauma. The project compiles, elucidates, and makes accessible invaluable language resources that are in danger of being lost both to scientists and to the communities. The scientific results of the study contribute significantly to our understanding of human prehistory and to theories of language contact and change, while the broader impacts include training and transfer of data stewardship to community members, advancing US efforts to build relationships with Indigenous communities based on respect for Tribal sovereignty and self-governance. This project delivers a linguistic database to the Indigenous community, with a grammar, dictionary, collection of oral literature (translated, analyzed, and annotated), and a range of materials and processes created by project staff for the people to make each of their homes a 'language nest' in which the language is used and nurtured. For several other languages in the area, it provides the example and explicit instruction for Indigenous language activists and researchers to create a database of the same sort for their respective languages. These databases together enable researchers to reconstruct the linguistic history of the earliest inhabitants of the region with specificity, completeness, and confidence that have until now been impossible. This award is made as part of a funding partnership between the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities for the NSF Dynamic Language Infrastructure – NEH Documenting Endangered Languages Program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.