Native Voices Endowment Recipients - 2008
-Jacob Manatowa-BaileySac & Fox Nation of OklahomaSauk Language Mentor Program, Modesta Minthorn and Noel Rude - Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR), Oregon
Umatilla Dictionary Project
The Umatilla Indian Reservation is located in northeast Oregon and consists of three tribes: Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse. Of the 2,500 enrolled members, it is estimated that approximately 1% are fluent speakers of the tribes' heritage languages: Ímatalam (Umatilla language with approximately nine fluent speakers remaining); Wallulapam (Walla Walla language with three fluent speakers remaining); the Cayuse language is considered to have fallen silent. Approximately ten remaining Cayuse members speak a dialect of Nez Perce. The Umatilla and Walla Walla languages are both classified as Sahaptian languages and are mutually intelligible. The creation of a Umatilla dictionary, the primary focus of this project, will therefore benefit speakers of other Sahaptian dialects. The dictionary, a culmination of language documentation efforts that began in 1983, will include analysis of grammar and verbal patterns, example sentences, audio recordings, and pertinent cultural information. The project is undertaken in collaboration with the University of Washington Press, which has supported other language documentation and analysis initiatives of CTUIR. The dictionary will be academically oriented and used by the tribe's charter high school as well as distributed to universities, local high schools, CTUIR members, and speakers of other Sahaptian languages.
Robert Brave Heart, Sr - Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota
Mahpiya Luta Lakol Waunspe Wicakiyapi - Teaching Lakota to Red Cloud Students
The Red Cloud School has been dedicated since 1888 to Lakota language and culture on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It is currently composed of two elementary schools, a college preparatory school, a heritage center, parishes, and churches. With partial support over the next three years from the NVE, this five-year project will establish a partnership between the school's Lakota teachers and experts from the American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University who specialize in linguistics, second language acquisition pedagogy, and the development of educational materials. The team will establish and promote a comprehensive, sequential, K-12 Lakota language curriculum. Efforts will focus on the development of instructional materials (textbooks, multimedia games and presentations, teacher's manuals, flash cards, dictionaries, and readers), teacher training, and the implementation of a Visiting Elders Program and Lakota Language Community Nights. The current number of Lakota speakers is estimated at 6,000 with an average age of 65 years old, which is above the life expectancy on the reservation. The goal of the project is to ensure that by 2020 at least 75% of Red Cloud high school graduates are fluent in Lakota. The curriculum developed by the partnership will be the first professionally designed, comprehensive, and standardized Lakota curriculum and will be made available to other Lakota communities.
Vera Sonneck and Harold Crook - Nez Perce Tribe, Idaho
Documenting Nez Perce Language in Conversation
This project seeks to document and analyze conversational interactions in Nez Perce, a language spoken in Nez Perce and Latah counties in Idaho, Asotin and Whitman counties in Washington, and Umatilla County in Oregon. Though documentation of Nez Perce lexical items abounds, conversational Nez Perce has not been sufficiently recorded or studied. In order to gain insight into Nez Perce discourse, groups of fluent elders will be videotaped conversing about everyday matters, including greetings and salutations, food preparation, tribal business, workplace interactions, health, recreational activities, religion, traditional narratives, and horsemanship. Conversational Analysis techniques will be used to study the recordings and examine turn-taking, particles, adverbials, detransitivization patterns, focus, and emphasis. Transcriptions of the recordings will be written using official Nez Perce orthography, ensuring that the material will be accessible to tribal members. Recordings and transcriptions will be made available to the Nez Perce Tribe's Language Program where it will be used for curriculum development, community outreach programs, and language instruction from elementary school through college. The project will culminate in the creation of a Web site displaying project findings and will make these otherwise inaccessiable materials available to tribal members, scholars of Nez Perce, and the public.
Alvena Oldman - Northern Arapaho Tribe of the Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyoming
Storytelling for Empowerment
This project focuses on the Northern Arapaho, "Wyoming" dialect of the Arapaho language and seeks to incorporate the tribe’s storytelling tradition into the curriculum of the Hinono’eitiino’oowu’ Immersion School. The Arapaho stories, which convey the tribe’s teachings, belief system, history, values, and laws, will be told in the original language in a format designed for 3 to 7-year-old students. The stories will be selected by cultural consultants and compiled in a series of six children’s books containing Arapaho text, illustrations, and audio recordings. The series will be published by the Northern Arapaho Industries Corporation which is owned by the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Project materials will be collected in the Arapaho Language Repository, managed by the Council of Elders, and will be available for future use. Puppet shows enacting the stories will be presented to school children, who will occasionally participate themselves in role playing of the stories. The ultimate goal of the project is to create a new generation of Arapaho storytellers, a living record of the tribe’s sacred and irreplaceable knowledge.
Darrell Kipp, Mizuki Miyashita and Robert Hall - Piegan Institute, Montana
Recording Digital Video Language Materials for Blackfoot Documentation and Revitalization
This project will create new educational materials for the instruction of Blackfoot, a language spoken by the Blackfeet tribal community in Montana. Only 3% of enrolled Blackfeet members speak the language, the majority over 75 years of age. Under the auspices of the Piegan Institute, a community based, non-profit organization on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana, the project team will create short instructional videos that portray everyday life situations. Native speakers will be recorded while engaged in various scenarios, such as shopping, parenting, speaking with elders, visiting historical sites significant to the tribe, conversing with friends, housekeeping, and related situations. The recordings will be transcribed, interlinear analysis and English glossing will be produced, and the materials will be archived in the institute's library. Scenarios and scripts based on analysis of the recordings will be written for puppet shows portraying similar situations. After review and correction of the scripts by native speakers, the scenarios will be enacted with puppets and filmed. Voice-overs will be recorded by native speakers and students from the Blackfoot immersion program. The videos will be used by the school and will be shown on local cable television to raise public interest in Blackfoot and encourage its use among tribal members.
Lindsay Marean - Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Oklahoma
Scholarship for the study of Nishnaabemwin/Neshnabémwen
The Native Voices Endowment supports collaborative language projects as well as efforts of individuals to increase their knowledge of an endangered indigenous language. Nishnaabemwin/Neshnabémwen refers to two closely related languages: Odawa (spoken primarily in Ontario, Canada) and Potawatomi (historically spoken by tribes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oklahoma). Marean, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Oklahoma, will use this award to study Nishnaabemwin (as it is spoken on the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve in Ontario, Canada and taught in the Nishnaabemwin Pane program at Bay Mills Community College in Michigan) and Potawatomi (currently spoken by several members of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas and the Forest County Potawatomi in Wisconsin). The scholarship will fund Marean’s enrollment in an Odawa immersion program and cover expenses associated with visiting and studying with elder native speakers of Potawatomi.
Valerie Switzler - Yakama Indian Nation, WA, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, OR, and the University of Kansas
Practical Kiksht Grammar: Producing a Grammar Workbook from Discourse
Kiksht is the language of the Wasq'u/Wishxam people who used to live along the Columbia River. These tribes were divided and resettled in the Yakama Indian Nation, WA and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, OR. It is estimated that Kiksht currently has two fluent speakers: Nelson Moses of Yakama, in his late seventies, and Gladys Thompson (Switzler's grandmother) of Warm Springs, in her nineties. Moses and Thompson have collaborated to produce Kiksht documentation and educational materials. This project seeks to provide recordings for the first in a series of Kiksht workbooks and will commence with digital audio recordings of Thompson engaged in monologues, conversations with Moses, and other activities. The recordings will be analyzed and a project apprentice will provide orthographic transcription. Switzler will create an interlinear glossed text that will include the original Kiksht, morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, translations, and annotations. This material will become the foundation of a future comprehensive and practical Kiksht grammar book.
Umatilla Dictionary Project
The Umatilla Indian Reservation is located in northeast Oregon and consists of three tribes: Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Cayuse. Of the 2,500 enrolled members, it is estimated that approximately 1% are fluent speakers of the tribes' heritage languages: Ímatalam (Umatilla language with approximately nine fluent speakers remaining); Wallulapam (Walla Walla language with three fluent speakers remaining); the Cayuse language is considered to have fallen silent. Approximately ten remaining Cayuse members speak a dialect of Nez Perce. The Umatilla and Walla Walla languages are both classified as Sahaptian languages and are mutually intelligible. The creation of a Umatilla dictionary, the primary focus of this project, will therefore benefit speakers of other Sahaptian dialects. The dictionary, a culmination of language documentation efforts that began in 1983, will include analysis of grammar and verbal patterns, example sentences, audio recordings, and pertinent cultural information. The project is undertaken in collaboration with the University of Washington Press, which has supported other language documentation and analysis initiatives of CTUIR. The dictionary will be academically oriented and used by the tribe's charter high school as well as distributed to universities, local high schools, CTUIR members, and speakers of other Sahaptian languages.
Robert Brave Heart, Sr - Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota
Mahpiya Luta Lakol Waunspe Wicakiyapi - Teaching Lakota to Red Cloud Students
The Red Cloud School has been dedicated since 1888 to Lakota language and culture on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It is currently composed of two elementary schools, a college preparatory school, a heritage center, parishes, and churches. With partial support over the next three years from the NVE, this five-year project will establish a partnership between the school's Lakota teachers and experts from the American Indian Studies Research Institute at Indiana University who specialize in linguistics, second language acquisition pedagogy, and the development of educational materials. The team will establish and promote a comprehensive, sequential, K-12 Lakota language curriculum. Efforts will focus on the development of instructional materials (textbooks, multimedia games and presentations, teacher's manuals, flash cards, dictionaries, and readers), teacher training, and the implementation of a Visiting Elders Program and Lakota Language Community Nights. The current number of Lakota speakers is estimated at 6,000 with an average age of 65 years old, which is above the life expectancy on the reservation. The goal of the project is to ensure that by 2020 at least 75% of Red Cloud high school graduates are fluent in Lakota. The curriculum developed by the partnership will be the first professionally designed, comprehensive, and standardized Lakota curriculum and will be made available to other Lakota communities.
Vera Sonneck and Harold Crook - Nez Perce Tribe, Idaho
Documenting Nez Perce Language in Conversation
This project seeks to document and analyze conversational interactions in Nez Perce, a language spoken in Nez Perce and Latah counties in Idaho, Asotin and Whitman counties in Washington, and Umatilla County in Oregon. Though documentation of Nez Perce lexical items abounds, conversational Nez Perce has not been sufficiently recorded or studied. In order to gain insight into Nez Perce discourse, groups of fluent elders will be videotaped conversing about everyday matters, including greetings and salutations, food preparation, tribal business, workplace interactions, health, recreational activities, religion, traditional narratives, and horsemanship. Conversational Analysis techniques will be used to study the recordings and examine turn-taking, particles, adverbials, detransitivization patterns, focus, and emphasis. Transcriptions of the recordings will be written using official Nez Perce orthography, ensuring that the material will be accessible to tribal members. Recordings and transcriptions will be made available to the Nez Perce Tribe's Language Program where it will be used for curriculum development, community outreach programs, and language instruction from elementary school through college. The project will culminate in the creation of a Web site displaying project findings and will make these otherwise inaccessiable materials available to tribal members, scholars of Nez Perce, and the public.
Alvena Oldman - Northern Arapaho Tribe of the Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyoming
Storytelling for Empowerment
This project focuses on the Northern Arapaho, "Wyoming" dialect of the Arapaho language and seeks to incorporate the tribe’s storytelling tradition into the curriculum of the Hinono’eitiino’oowu’ Immersion School. The Arapaho stories, which convey the tribe’s teachings, belief system, history, values, and laws, will be told in the original language in a format designed for 3 to 7-year-old students. The stories will be selected by cultural consultants and compiled in a series of six children’s books containing Arapaho text, illustrations, and audio recordings. The series will be published by the Northern Arapaho Industries Corporation which is owned by the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Project materials will be collected in the Arapaho Language Repository, managed by the Council of Elders, and will be available for future use. Puppet shows enacting the stories will be presented to school children, who will occasionally participate themselves in role playing of the stories. The ultimate goal of the project is to create a new generation of Arapaho storytellers, a living record of the tribe’s sacred and irreplaceable knowledge.
Darrell Kipp, Mizuki Miyashita and Robert Hall - Piegan Institute, Montana
Recording Digital Video Language Materials for Blackfoot Documentation and Revitalization
This project will create new educational materials for the instruction of Blackfoot, a language spoken by the Blackfeet tribal community in Montana. Only 3% of enrolled Blackfeet members speak the language, the majority over 75 years of age. Under the auspices of the Piegan Institute, a community based, non-profit organization on the Blackfeet Reservation in northwestern Montana, the project team will create short instructional videos that portray everyday life situations. Native speakers will be recorded while engaged in various scenarios, such as shopping, parenting, speaking with elders, visiting historical sites significant to the tribe, conversing with friends, housekeeping, and related situations. The recordings will be transcribed, interlinear analysis and English glossing will be produced, and the materials will be archived in the institute's library. Scenarios and scripts based on analysis of the recordings will be written for puppet shows portraying similar situations. After review and correction of the scripts by native speakers, the scenarios will be enacted with puppets and filmed. Voice-overs will be recorded by native speakers and students from the Blackfoot immersion program. The videos will be used by the school and will be shown on local cable television to raise public interest in Blackfoot and encourage its use among tribal members.
Lindsay Marean - Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Oklahoma
Scholarship for the study of Nishnaabemwin/Neshnabémwen
The Native Voices Endowment supports collaborative language projects as well as efforts of individuals to increase their knowledge of an endangered indigenous language. Nishnaabemwin/Neshnabémwen refers to two closely related languages: Odawa (spoken primarily in Ontario, Canada) and Potawatomi (historically spoken by tribes in Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oklahoma). Marean, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Oklahoma, will use this award to study Nishnaabemwin (as it is spoken on the Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve in Ontario, Canada and taught in the Nishnaabemwin Pane program at Bay Mills Community College in Michigan) and Potawatomi (currently spoken by several members of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas and the Forest County Potawatomi in Wisconsin). The scholarship will fund Marean’s enrollment in an Odawa immersion program and cover expenses associated with visiting and studying with elder native speakers of Potawatomi.
Valerie Switzler - Yakama Indian Nation, WA, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, OR, and the University of Kansas
Practical Kiksht Grammar: Producing a Grammar Workbook from Discourse
Kiksht is the language of the Wasq'u/Wishxam people who used to live along the Columbia River. These tribes were divided and resettled in the Yakama Indian Nation, WA and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, OR. It is estimated that Kiksht currently has two fluent speakers: Nelson Moses of Yakama, in his late seventies, and Gladys Thompson (Switzler's grandmother) of Warm Springs, in her nineties. Moses and Thompson have collaborated to produce Kiksht documentation and educational materials. This project seeks to provide recordings for the first in a series of Kiksht workbooks and will commence with digital audio recordings of Thompson engaged in monologues, conversations with Moses, and other activities. The recordings will be analyzed and a project apprentice will provide orthographic transcription. Switzler will create an interlinear glossed text that will include the original Kiksht, morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, translations, and annotations. This material will become the foundation of a future comprehensive and practical Kiksht grammar book.
