Background

Background

The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages, including their protection and survival. The American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) at the University of Arizona contributes to the aim of this policy through a pilot project, Documenting Native Language Vitality. This project responds to the fact that there is not a current systematic assessment of the Native American languages of the United States. This project is the initial step in AILDI’s plan to create a model for grass-roots assessment that can be shared with tribal communities throughout the U.S. This project will lead to the documentation of language status aiming to meet a national need.

Goals

The project began with an intensive two-day workshop followed up by course at the annual AILDI summer school, plus additional workshop meetings for the participants to further train and produce a working language survey. Some of the major goals of the project include:

• • Reviewing current assessment tools

  • Promoting team building

  • Examining community-based survey strategies

  • Creating a culturally-appropriate model of language vitality assessment

  • Fostering a state-wide network of community-based researchers

In the follow up course, participants learned data collection and management, data storage and use of assessment data for projects such as grant-writing. The primary participants for the project represent select Arizona tribal language programs that have been working cooperatively with AILDI to envision the project. Participants include representatives from The Tohono O’odham Nation, San Carlos Apache Tribe, Navajo Nation and Ak-Chin Indian Community. This project will inform the development of new and innovative assessment tool(s) shared with project participants and others interested in this endeavor. Participants created their own language assessments that were executed in each of their communities. The project continues through August 2019.

Outcomes

The participants produced a working survey based on the activities of the course and workshops. We have included a sample of one of the activities that helped the participants through the process of creating the survey, as well as sample of the actual survey they used.

The future

We are continuing to work on this project. We also welcome you to have a look at the sample materials! They are ‘open source’, which means you are free to adapt, modify, copy, and distribute. We also welcome any comments or criticisms. If you have any questions, or require any assistance (including the original source files) please feel free to contact us below. You are not required to share your results with us, but we would like to hear from you if you plan on using any of these materials.

For more details and background (in development)

aildi.arizona.edu/content/language-vitality-project

www.facebook.com/COE.AILDI