Native Voices Endowment Recipients - 2020

Virginia Beavert and Sharon Louise Hargus – University of Washington
‘Northwest Sahaptin Textual Transcription and Translation’ – Northwest Sahaptin (ykm)
The current project would continue a project funded in 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2019 by NVE, ‘Northwest Sahaptin Textual Transcription and Translation’, providing another 3 years of a stipend to Beavert for her time on primarily two activities: (a) bringing to light her mother’s voice on audio recordings (with little or no English) her mother made before her death in 1993, (b) bringing to light her own voice, through her writing of original sentence illustrations of new lexical items in her mother’s texts, to be included in a future revised edition of the 2009 Yakama Sahaptin bilingual dictionary (Beavert and Hargus 2009). The project has also been supported 2009-2016 and 2018-2019 by the Jacobs Research Funds (JRF), mainly for travel assistance for project collaborator Sharon Hargus. Beavert and Jansen 2012 listed the remaining number of Sahaptin speakers of any dialect as around 50. However, in Umatilla (a Columbia R. dialect of Sahaptin), according to Noel Rude (e-mail to Sharon Hargus, 4-2-10), ‘All the fluent informants are gone.’ Virginia Beavert is widely acknowledged to be the best of the remaining speakers, and certainly the most qualified to translate her mother (given their shared life experiences). 

Joel Barnes – Shawnee Tribe
Shawnee Tribe Community Language Preservation Program (CLP Program)  - Shawnee (sjw)
The Shawnee language connects who we are today with how our ancestors viewed their surroundings in their time. It makes our culture and ceremonies more meaningful. It is the language that nature understands, and it ties our kinships to all living beings and plant life. It allows us to speak to our Creator and give thanks for all that is provided for us. With this significance in mind and with the uptick in international interest for preserving Indigenous languages (i.e., UNESCO's International Decade of Indigenous Languages), the Shawnee Tribe has developed a comprehensive ten-year strategic plan to revitalize the Shawnee language and achieve fluency among tribal citizens. The strategic plan involves many language-based cultural projects and programs—from digitizing archives and community social events to new word creation and curriculum development. Funding from the Endangered Language Fund will provide much-needed support to the inaugural years of the Shawnee Tribe's Community Language Preservationist (CLP ) Program.

Robert E. Lewis Jr. – Citizen Potawatomi Nation
Building Potawatomi Verbs Project - Potawatomi (pot)
Bodwéwadmimwen, also know as Potawatomi, is a critically endangered Algonquian language spoken in northern Wisconsin. The goals of this project are (1) to create a list of the components of verbs, (2) to identify how verb stems are constructed, (3) to identify the (near) cognate forms in neighboring Algonquian languages (Ojibwe, Menominee, and the Fox branch languages), and (4) to publish the findings in a book form for posterity. This project is intended for Potawatomi language teachers and leaners as a curriculum tool, but linguists and researchers of neighboring Algonquian languages will find this project of interest too. 

Patty Timbimboo-Madsen – Northwestern Band of Shoshone Nation and 
Daan Newe Daigawa'nna (speaking the Shoshone language)​ – Shoshone (shh)
Today, the dialect of the Shoshone language spoken by the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWB) remains endangered. With no more than four speakers of our dialect of the Shoshone language in our region, we are in a race against time to maintain our language and teach it to future generations. Because of this, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation is using an Endangered Language Fund’s Native Voices Endowment (NVE) grant to support our project, Daan Newe Daigawa’nna, ‘speaking the Shoshone language’. This grant supports our program activities over three years, encompassing program development, piloting a Shoshone language immersion camp and finally, a Summer Shoshone language immersion camp. Our goal is to create new pathways for tribal members to learn the Shoshone language. 

Dr. Marvin M. Richardson – The Monacan Indian Nation and The Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe (in collaboration with Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages) 
The Tutelo-Saponi (Monacan) Living Dictionary: Launching a Web App to Support Language Revitalization and Education – Tutelo-Saponi (Monacan) (tta)
The objective in creating the first-ever Tutelo-Saponi (Monacan) Living Dictionary is to provide enrolled members of the Monacan Indian Nation, as well as other indigenous people of Tutelo, Saponi and Monacan descent, with a comprehensive mobile-friendly digital language resource. It will house over 3,000 words and phrases alongside accurate audio recordings paired with engaging and culturally relevant images and videos. It will serve as a basis for language revitalization in the Monacan Indian Nation in Virginia as well as the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, and Sappony Tribe in North Carolina, as well as the Ohio Band of Saponi.

Angel Kay Sobotta – Nez Perce Tribe
The Stories, Niimíipuu People’s Language, Land: Investigating The Nez Perce People’s Way of Thinking and Knowing – Nez Perce (nez)
The purpose of this research is to broadly examine the Indigenous knowledge within the traditional Niimíipuu, the People (aka Nez Perce) oral stories, or Coyote and the Animal People stories, and the traditional Niimíipuu language within the stories and to explore how that knowledge is significant to the Niimíipuu relationship to place. Although there are a number of documents and books on Niimíipuu Coyote and the Animal People stories, lacking in the literature is the Niimíipuu knowledge within the stories. Niimíipuu knowledge includes cultural teachings that help one understand the significance of parts of the story, and language within the story, and the story site (besides morals and ethics). In order to be responsible for teaching the stories, Niimíipuu educators need to have access to that knowledge. This research will provide the tools needed to restore the relationship of story, language, and land to Niimíipuu students, family, and community, as being the impetus for this study.