Teaching Indigenous Languages
books |  conference |  articles |  columns |  contact |  links |  index |  home

The National Geographic Society's Enduring Voices Project notes that every two weeks another of the world's languages is no longer being spoken. The Project identified five language "hot spots" around the world where Native languages are most rapidly being lost, three of which are in the Americas: the Northwest Pacific Plateau, the Southwestern United States and Oklahoma, and Central South America.

For the past fifteen years, the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposiums have been disseminating information about effective practices to teach and learn Indigenous languages. Held across the United States and Canada, these symposiums have brought together community language activists, language teachers and linguists to share and disseminate ways to revitalize our precious Indigenous linguistic heritage so that it will not be lost to our children. Selected papers and speeches from the 14^th and 15^th symposiums can be downloaded at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/ILR/. The 15^th symposium was proud to offer three distinguished keynote speakers:

	Dr. Christine Sims (Acoma) teaches at the University of New Mexico and has worked for the last quarter century with tribes in areas of language planning, language teacher training and language revitalization. She co-chairs the Indigenous Special Interest Group for the National Association for Bilingual Education as well as the New Mexico Bilingual Advisory Committee.
	Darrell Robes Kipp (Blackfoot) is the co-founder and director of the Piegan Institute on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana. Founded in l987, the Institute's mission is to research, promote and preserve the South Piegan (Blackfoot) Language. He designed the Cuts Wood School immersion program. This privately funded school is one of the exemplary models of tribal language revitalization. He has worked with indigenous communities in New Zealand, Hawai'i and the Balkans and with over one hundred American Indian tribes. He is a noted historian and filmmaker and belongs to the two oldest Blackfoot societies: Okan Medicine Lodge and Medicine Pipe.
	Dr. Peggy Speas is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a founding member of the Navajo Language Academy, which promotes scholarship on the Navajo language and supports Navajos in their efforts to keep their language alive and strong. She is the co-author (with Dr. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie, SILS 15 Symposium Co-Chair) of Diné Bizaad Bínáhoo'aah (Rediscovering the Navajo Language)

The planning committee would like to thank Northern Arizona University's Office of the President, Institute for Native Americans, College of Education, and Department of Educational Specialties, Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, Leonard Chee (Navajo Nation Council Delegate for Leupp, Tolani Lake and Bird Springs), and the Lannan Foundation for their support of this conference.

books |  conference |  articles |  columns |  contact |  links |  index |  home

Copyright © 2008 Northern Arizona University, All rights Reserved