Indigenous Languages and the Promise of Archives captures the energy and optimism that many feel about the future of community-based scholarship, which involves the collaboration of archives, scholars, and Native American communities. The American Philosophical Society is exploring new applications of materials in its library to partner on collaborative projects that assist the cultural and linguistic revitalization movements within Native communities. A paradigm shift is driving researchers to reckon with questionable practices used by scholars and libraries in the past to pursue documents relating to Native Americans, practices that are often embedded in the content of the collections themselves. The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at the American Philosophical Society brought together this volume of historical and contemporary case studies highlighting the importance of archival materials for the revitalization of Indigenous languages. Essays written by archivists, historians, anthropologists, knowledge-keepers, and museum professionals, cover topics critical to language revitalization work; they tackle long-standing debates about ownership, access, and control of Indigenous materials stored in repositories; and they suggest strategies for how to decolonize collections in the service of community-based priorities. Together these essays reveal the power of collaboration for breathing new life into historical documents.

For centuries, Indigenous peoples have been advocating for their rights to their land, cultures and languages in the context of (settler) colonial institutions that have repressed and removed these rights and knowledges, as well as the mechanisms for their transmission. This thesis attempts to open up questions regarding what settler-colonial archives and archivists could do to support Indigenous language maintenance, resurgence and use, given the reality that most Indigenous languages in Canada (and globally) are declining in use and number of speakers. Using Inuktut (Inuit languages) as a case study, it will outline the circumstances that have led to both this decline and the role that settler-colonial archives have had in it. By examining Inuktut records held by the settler-colonial institution of Hudson's Bay Company Archives (HBCA) and their Names and Knowledge Initiative as a case study, this thesis will illustrate both the challenges posed by Indigenous language records held by such institutions, as well as the opportunities for (settler) colonial archives to contribute to Indigenous sovereignty over their linguistic data, knowledge and records. It will also explore the use of Indigenous languages in the delivery of services by archives to further support their use as languages of daily life.

Focusing on the Americas – home to 40 to 50 million Indigenous people – this book explores the history and current state of Indigenous language revitalization across this vast region. Complementary chapters on the USA and Canada, and Latin America and the Caribbean, offer a panoramic view while tracing nuanced trajectories of "top down" (official) and "bottom up" (grass roots) language planning and policy initiatives. Authored by leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, the book is organized around seven overarching themes: Policy and Politics; Processes of Language Shift and Revitalization; The Home-School-Community Interface; Local and Global Perspectives; Linguistic Human Rights; Revitalization Programs and Impacts; New Domains for Indigenous Languages Providing a comprehensive, hemisphere-wide scholarly and practical source, this singular collection simultaneously fills a gap in the language revitalization literature and contributes to Indigenous language revitalization efforts.

A collection of essays about the theory and practice of Native American lexicography, and more specifically the making of dictionaries, by some of the top scholars working in Native American language studies.

With world-wide environmental destruction and globalization of economy, a few languages, especially English, are spreading rapidly in use, while thousands of other languages are disappearing, taking with them important cultural, philosophical and environmental knowledge systems and oral literatures. We all stand to suffer from such a loss, none more so than the communities whose very identity is being threatened by the impending death of their languages. In response to this crisis, indigenous communities around the world have begun to develop a myriad of projects to keep their languages alive. This volume is a set of detailed accounts about the kind of work that is going on now as people struggle for their linguistic survival. It also serves as a manual of effective practices in language revitalization.Following are the key features: 23 case studies of language revitalization in practice, from Native American languages, Australian languages, Maori, Hawaiian, Welsh, Irish, and others, written primarily by authors directly involved in the programs; short introductions situate the languages, to help make the languages more 'real' in the minds of readers; each chapter gives a detailed overview of the various kinds of programs and methods in practice today; introductions and maps for each of the languages represented familiarize the reader with their history, linguistic structure and sociolinguistic features; and, strong representation in authorship and viewpoint of the people and communities whose languages are threatened, gives the readers an inside understanding of the issues involved and the community-internal attitudes toward language loss and revitalization. This book was previously published by Academic Press under ISBN 978-01-23-49354-5.

A wide-ranging, multidisciplinary look at Native American literature through non-narrative texts like lists, albums, recipes, and scrapbooks Kelly Wisecup offers a sweeping account of early Native American literatures by examining Indigenous compilations: intentionally assembled texts that Native people made by juxtaposing and recontextualizing textual excerpts into new relations and meanings. Experiments in reading and recirculation, Indigenous compilations include Mohegan minister Samson Occom’s medicinal recipes, the Ojibwe woman Charlotte Johnston’s poetry scrapbooks, and Abenaki leader Joseph Laurent’s vocabulary lists. Indigenous compilations proliferated in a period of colonial archive making, and Native writers used compilations to remake the very forms that defined their bodies, belongings, and words as ethnographic evidence. This study enables new understandings of canonical Native writers like William Apess, prominent settler collectors like Thomas Jefferson and Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, and Native people who contributed to compilations but remain absent from literary histories. Long before current conversations about decolonizing archives and museums, Native writers made and circulated compilations to critique colonial archives and foster relations within Indigenous communities.

The world’s linguistic map has changed in recent years due to the vast disappearance of indigenous languages. Many factors affect the alteration of languages in various areas of the world including governmental policies, education, and colonization. As indigenous languages continue to be affected by modern influences, there is a need for research on the current state of native linguistics that remain across the globe. Indigenous Language Acquisition, Maintenance, and Loss and Current Language Policies is a collection of innovative research on the diverse policies, influences, and frameworks of indigenous languages in various regions of the world. It discusses the maintenance, attrition, or loss of the indigenous languages; language status in the society; language policies; and the grammatical characteristics of the indigenous language that people maintained and spoke. This book is ideally designed for anthropologists, language professionals, linguists, cultural researchers, geographers, educators, government officials, policymakers, academicians, and students.

This volume traces the theme of the loss of language and culture in numerous post-colonial contexts. It establishes that the aphasia imposed on the indigenous is but a visible symptom of a deeper malaise — the mismatch between the symbiotic relation nurtured by the indigenous with their environment and the idea of development put before them as their future. The essays here show how the cultures and the imaginative expressions of indigenous communities all over the world are undergoing a phase of rapid depletion. They unravel the indifference of market forces to diversity and that of the states, unwilling to protect and safeguard these marginalized communities. This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of cultural and literary studies, linguistics, sociology and social anthropology, as well as tribal and indigenous studies.

U.S. Museum Histories and the Politics of Interpretation is the first collection to examine the history of museums in the United States through the lens of the political and ideological underpinnings at the heart of exhibitions, collecting, and programming. Including contributions from historians, art historians, anthropologists, academics, and museum professionals, the book argues that museums have always been embedded in the politics and culture of their time – whether that means a reification of hegemonic notions of race, gender, and progress or a challenge to those normative structures. Contributions probe the political nature of collection and interpretation as concept and practice, and museum work as both reflective of and contributing to the politics and circulation of power in different historical moments. As a whole, the volume provides detailed readings of museums that demonstrate the ways in which these trusted cultural institutions have intervened in shifting concepts of nation, community, indigeneity, race, citizenship, inclusion, identity, localism, and memory. U.S. Museum Histories and the Politics of Interpretation makes arguments about the historically and politically rooted nature of cultural production in museums that apply to institutions across the globe. It is essential reading for students and scholars of museum studies, public history, cultural history, art history, and memory.

AILLA is a digital archive of recordings and texts in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America.