Anumpa Achukma/Good News
Language Loss Can Be Reversed
01.08
This is a newsletter dedicated to reporting the successes in revitalizing endangered languages worldwide. Share your good news with us by sending us an article about your program or current activity in revitalizing an endangered language.
Please forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested.
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Purposes
Now that you have set up your goal(s), you are ready to define your purpose(s). Purposes may be lesser goals or the why behind the goal.
These two together might look something like this for a group.
Goal—1/2 of all household actively engaged in learning the language and using it in the home
Purpose(s)-(1) to increase language usage, thereby ensuring the survival of the language; (2) to use language as the basis for revitalizing families and community; and (3) to ask all members of the community to take responsibility for revitalizing the language.
For an individual, it might look like this.
Goal—to converse at a basic level (you can always create new goals as you have reached an old one)
Purpose(s)—to ensure the future of the language; (2) to be able to pass some of the language to my grandchildren (or children); and (3) to connect myself to my cultural past.
As you go along, be sure to align all of the steps. That may mean doing some revising in wording as you move through the process.
3rd Annual Voices of the Earth/Threatened Languages Poetry Reading
2008 is the International Year of Languages
This year’s event celebrates with these languages.
Cheyenne, Choctaw, Nahuatl, Keres, Irish, Quiche Maya, Navajo, Quichua, Sesotho, and Maori
Sunday, January 13, 2008
2-4:30 PM
Winning Coffee Company
111 Harvard SE
Albuquerque, NM
CDs of 2007 event now available at hoanumpoli@yahoo.com.
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Success Stories from Various Sources
*The Government of Canada Supports National Michif Language Conference
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=806974
SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN--(Marketwire - Jan. 3, 2008) - On behalf of the Honourable Josee Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, the Honourable Carol Skelton, Member of Parliament (Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar), today announced funding for the Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research. Funding of $60,000 will allow the organization to host the 7th National Michi Language Conference. The goals of the conference are to increase the number of Michif speakers, expand opportunities for speaking Michif, and ensure greater numbers of children and young people learn the language.
The Gabriel Dumont Institute of Native Studies and Applied Research is a not-for-profit organization that provides Metis people in Saskatchewan with the opportunity to obtain training and education.
*Kickapoo Tribe has role in upcoming movie filmed in Kansas
The Hays Daily News
http://www.hdnews.net/wirestories/k1035_BC_KS_KickapooActing_01_03_0446
HORTON, Kan. (AP) -- Despite limited acting experience, Tammy Wahwassuck and about 20 members of the Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas have small roles in the upcoming movie "The Only Good Indian." The movie was filmed in locations throughout Kansas and uses the Kickapoo language. Producers got permission from the Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas to use the Kickapoo language in the film.
The movie is set in Kansas during the early 1900s and is about a young American Indian boy who flees from a school that assimilates Indians into the "white" world. Wahwassuck's played a crazy woman in a mental institution filmed in Topeka. In the scene, she pleads in the Kickapoo tongue for help from Wes Studi's character.
*School board faces Native language issue
December 27, 2007
THE FISHERMAN STAFF
Next year may see the return of instruction in Unangam Tunuu – the Native language spoken by the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands – in the Unalaska City School District.
To access full article, follow the link below.
http://www.thedutchharborfisherman.com/news/show/1049
*Preserving California's native languages
DATABASE TEAM DECIPHERS A MILLION PAGES OF NOTES
By Lisa Krieger
Mercury News
Article Launched: 12/24/2007
Bringing voices from the grave, volunteers at the University of California-Davis are working to decipher nearly a million pages of notes from conversations with long-gone Native Californians, reviving more than 100 languages from the distant past. Word by word, they type the scribbled and cryptic notes left by John Peabody Harrington, an eccentric and tireless linguist who in the early 1900s traveled throughout California interviewing the last surviving speakers of many native tongues, including the local Muwekma Ohlone tribe.
For more information go to http://nas.ucdavis.edu/NALC/JPH.html
*Help With Immersion Camps
We are writing to you under the aegis of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) to ask your help with a CAL project involving Native American languageimmersion camps. CAL is one of several partners in the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages (http://www.cal.org/heritage/index.html), an organization devoted to the preservation, instruction, and advancement of heritage languages in the United States. Part of the Alliance's efforts is the inventory and documentation of US heritage language programs in all their forms - community-based, school-based, independent, etc. -- in order to have a comprehensive database to assist instruction, assessment, research, policy, and advocacy. We are having difficulty locating and documenting Native American language immersion camps, and to make the database as comprehensive as possible, we need information on them.. Please respond to Bill Frawley at bfrawley@cal.org.
*The Government of Canada Supports Manitoba Métis Federation
http://news.gc.ca/web/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=369569
The Manitoba Métis Federation will receive two contributions totaling more than $980,000. The $607,691 contribution for 2007-2008 will support 15 community-based projects for Aboriginal young people in all regions of Manitoba, centred on the themes of youth leadership, community involvement, and cultural, social, and health activities. The $375,000 contribution for 2007-2010 will go toward eight projects to preserve and promote the Michif language.
Information: Dominic Gosselin, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages
819 997-7788
*For Silent Night in several American Indian languages go to
http://silentnight.web.za/translate/.
Some of the language versions are for Cheyenne, Cherokee, Hawaiian, Inuit, and Lenape.
*The Iiwas Katrutsini Learning Center (IKLC), a non-profit based in New Mexico, is launching a unique online fundraiser. This event will provide monies to help the Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblo Indians build a school for the preservation of their indigenous language.
To access full article, just follow the link below.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,235100.shtml
*Nunavut's minister of culture, language, elders and youth says the territory is on the brink of enacting the toughest protection yet for an aboriginal language in Canada.
To access full article, just follow the link below.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/12/06/lang-bills.html
*Aboriginal Languages Slowly Making Way into Australian Schools
By Nicola Fell
Sydney 04 December 2007
In schools with a large indigenous population, learning an aboriginal language will be available to all students.
To access full article, just follow the link below.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-12-04-voa15.cfm
*Yup’ik degree approved by UA Board of Regents
Staff Report
Published December 7, 2007
A new bachelor’s degree in Yup’ik language and culture has been approved by the University of Alaska Board of Regents. The four-year program will be offered at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Kuskokwim Campus in Bethel.
To access full article, just follow the link below.
http://newsminer.com/2007/12/07/10277/
*Collaboration Between Lakehead University Faculty and Aboriginal Community Partners Leads to Substantial SSHRC Funding Research Initiatives to Benefit Aboriginal Language and Learning
THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO—( Dec. 6, 2007) - In partnership with two Aboriginal organizations, four members of Lakehead University's Faculty of Education are pleased to announce a collective total of $436,000 in Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funding for partner-based research which aims to benefit Aboriginal communities.
To access full article, just follow the link below.
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=800453
*Anadarko woman last fluent speaker of the Wichita language
By S. E. RUCKMAN (AP) 12/5/2007
Oklahoma had been a state for only two decades when Doris Jean Lamar was born in 1927. Her first spoken words were not English, but an American Indian language taught to her by grandparents. Today, Lamar is the last fluent speaker in the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, a tribe of 2,300. Wichita is one of the languages classified as Caddoan, but is only similar in stock to the Caddo language, scholars said. Lamar's tribe is one of a handful indigenous to Oklahoma with a present-day jurisdiction in Caddo County.
Lamar's journey was not unlike other girls in southwest Oklahoma in the years right before the Great Depression. Her full-blood maternal grandparents worked a farm and raised their grandchildren. She recalls fewer cars, more thriftiness and no electricity back then.
Around 1962, Lamar met an earnest young linguist who followed tribal members in order to listen to them speak, she recalled. That young linguist was David Rood from the University of Colorado. The linguist tried to organize a conversation among the last few fluent Wichita speakers in the early 2000s, he said..''
Hope exists for the Wichitas' dying language. An immersion class for children has been soldiering forward, as is an adult-oriented language class, both subsidized by federal grants. The next step will be to get the language into homes.
*A panel of Navajo translators and linguists converged on Window Rock to begin a project to develop new Navajo language learning software. Rosetta Stone Ltd., based in Harrisonburg, Va., produces language- learning software in 30 languages. The company takes its name from an ancient stone artifact that provided the key for modern people to understand Egyptian hieroglyphics. Rosetta Stone does not use English translation at all but instead uses visual images to convey the word or phrase being taught.
The software program will not take the place of Navajo language teachers in reservation schools, Long added, but will provide a valuable supplement to existing courses.
said, "but we've been using old materials because there's nothing
available that uses the current technology"
Donations are tax-deductible and can be sent to Navajo Language Renaissance, P.O. Box 1111, Cornville, AZ 86325.
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Conferences
*The plans for the 15th Annual SILS Conference on May 2nd and 3rd are moving along. You can read about the confirmed keynote speakers, look at the conference schedule, and download registration andother forms by going to our web site at http://nau.edu/TIL and clicking on “conference” on the menu bar at the top of the page. The deadline for submitting presentation proposals is January 30, 2008, and the pre-registration deadline isMarch 15, 2008. For more information you can also contact me at Jon.Reyhner@nau.edu
*SAVE THE DATE- SAVE THE DATE- SAVE THE DATE- SAVE THE DATE-
Live Your Language Alliance (LYLA) Invites you to join us in our 1st Annual Native Languages Conference:
Shut Up & Talk*: Gathering The Tools To Live Our Languages
March 17-19, 2008 @ Humboldt State University-Arcata, CA
More information, call to conference and call for presenters available online after 12/01/07
* This theme was chosen not to offend but rather as an attempt to challenge people to make a commitment to developing the skills, knowledge and resources needed to preserve the vitality of our Native languages and to speak them in our daily lives.
*The Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa is pleased to announce. CALL FOR PROPOSALS.
31st Annual Second Language Research Forum (SLRF)
October 17-19, 2008
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, Hawaii
http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/slrf08/
Call begins: December 2007 (online proposal submissions - open mid-January, 2008)
Call deadline: April 15, 2008
Notification of selection: Mid-May 2008
Theme: EXPLORING SLA: PERSPECTIVES, POSITIONS, AND PRACTICES
Plenary speakers:
- Dr. Harald Clahsen (University of Essex)
- Dr. Alan Firth (Newcastle University)
- Dr. Eva Lam (Northwestern University)
- Dr. Richard Schmidt (University of Hawai'i at Manoa)
We welcome all areas of second language research, including, but not limited to
- Instructed SLA
- Acquisition of grammar and phonology
- Child SLA
- L2 Processing
- Language and learner characteristics
- Language and cognition
- Discourse and interaction
- Language and socialization
- Bilingualism and multilingualism
- Language and ideology
- Literacy development
- Learner corpora
- Language learning and technology
- Second language measurement
1) PAPERS:
Individual papers will be allotted 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes for discussion).
2) POSTERS:
Posters will be displayed for a full day. Posters are intended for one-on-one discussion or reports of work in progress.
3) COLLOQIUA:
The colloquia/panels consist of individual paper presentations that relate to a specific or related topics of interest. They are offered in 2-hour sessions.
Please see our website for submission instructions and additional updates:
http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/slrf08/.
Deadline for submissions is April 15, 2008.
For any proposal submission questions, please contact the SLRF 2008
Program Chairs at slrf2008program@gmail.com.
N National Foreign Language Resource Center
F University of Hawai'i
L 1859 East-West Road, #106
R Honolulu HI 96822
C voice: (808) 956-9424, fax: (808) 956-5983
email: nflrc@hawaii.edu
VISIT OUR WEBSITE! http://nflrc.hawaii.edu
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Fellowship
The John Hope Franklin Dissertation Fellowship
http://www.amphilsoc.org/grants/johnhopefranklin.htm
Deadline and Notification
Applications are due April 1, 2008, with notification in May.
Scope
This fellowship, named in honor of a distinguished member of the American Philosophical Society, is designed to support an outstanding doctoral student at an American university who is conducting dissertation research. There are two special features to this fellowship.
First, the objective of the John Hope Franklin Dissertation Fellowship is to help remedy the serious shortage of faculty of color in core fields in the arts and sciences, by supporting the Ph.D. projects of minority students of great promise (particularly African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and Native Americans) as well as other talented students who have a demonstrated commitment to eradicating racial disparities and enlarging minority representation in academia.
Second, the John Hope Franklin Fellow is expected to spend a significant amount of time in residence at the APS Library and therefore all applicants should be pursuing dissertation topics in which the holdings of the Library are especially strong, such as quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, computer development, the history of genetics and eugenics, the history of medicine, Early American political and cultural history, natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries, the development of cultural anthropology, or American Indian linguistics and culture. The APS Library's extensive collections in these and many other fields are fully described on our website at
Eligibility
Candidates must have completed all course work and examinations preliminary to the doctoral dissertation and be prepared to devote full time for twelve months-with no teaching obligations-to research on their dissertation projects or the writing of their dissertations. The John Hope Franklin Fellow will also be expected to spend a minimum of three months in Philadelphia, in residence at
the APS Library with full encouragement to conduct research at other libraries and archives in and around the city. Attractive office space will be provided for the Fellow.
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Postions
CURATOR, ANTHROPOLOGY (LINGUIST)ùDRAFT DESCRIPTION
Department of Anthropology
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
The Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History is seeking a curator to develop and lead an endangered language program that will engage in research, documentation and preservation. Community engagement will a major component of this position. In addition to conducting research, both in the field and drawing upon archival collections, the curator will develop strong interactions with communities faced with language loss while also addressing major research themes within linguistics and anthropology.
This curator will join a large and diverse department, currently with 72 full-time staff members, including 17 curators. The Department is organized into three research divisions: archaeology, physical anthropology and ethnology, along with Collections Management, the National Anthropological Archives, the Human Studies Film Archives, and the Repatriation Office. There are a number of programs within the three research divisions, including the PaleoIndian Program, the Asian Cultural Heritage Program, the Archaeobiology Program and the Arctic Studies Center. Some of the current research in the Department centers on humankind’s earliest beginnings, the domestication of plants and animals, the rise of state-level societies, expressive culture in Africa and Polynesia, North American ethnohistory, circumpolar ethnology and the human dimensions of global climate change. Several staff hold teaching appointments as adjunct faculty with area universities. The Anthropology collections hold over 2.3 million archaeological objects and over 200,000 ethnology objects, over 9,000 linear feet of archival documents (which translates into 15 million pages), and 8 million running feet of film and video. The Department’s webpage can be viewed at http://www.nmnh.si.edu/anthro/.
The successful candidate will need to combine skills in field- and collections-based research, outreach and public programming, and experience securing external funding. This position will be offered as a four-year Federal term position, which may be converted to permanent.
The four-year term position is comparable to tenure-track positions.
U.S.citizenship is required.
This position should be announced sometime in early December, and will be listed on USAJOBS.gov or at http://www.si.edu/ohr.
08-NG-293573-DEU-NMNH Anthropologist (Linguist) GS-0190-12 DC
http://ohrweb.si.edu/d/vacancy/current/08-NG-293573-DEU-NMNH.pdf
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Software
The 3.1 release of ACORNS language revitalization software is now available at http://cs.sou.edu/~harveyd/acorns. This software can be freely downloaded for non commercial use. Our hope is that many tribes will find it useful as they work to revitalize their language and culture.
This release corrects some bugs that came up and adds new features. The download web page also contains an alternate install procedure to avoid the security issues that come up on some systems. We've greatly improved the on-line documentation and added an ACORNS user manual in pdf format.
Among the new features are
1) Recognition of all indigenous keyboards as long as they are properly installed on your system in ttf format.
2) An easier way to create web pages out of ACORNS lessons.
3) Automatic association of files with an '.lnx' extension with the ACORNS application.
4) Ability to launch ACORNS from a command line to open selected files.
4) Improved integration with MAC systems.
We plan to release version 4.0 this coming summer. It will include, among other things, a talking dictionary, with the ability to import electronic formats created by linguists. It will also include a couple of games making use of the dictionary.
Please let me know of any problems you might run into. We welcome your feedback. harvey@sou.edu
Training Opportunity
The 29th Annual American Indian Languages Development Institute
Creating Spaces for Indigenous Languages in Everyday Life
June 4-July 2, 2008
Contact AILDI at
The University of Arizona
College of Education, Room 51
PO Box 210069
Tucson, AZ 85721
520-621-1068
FAX 520-621-8174
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~aildi/
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Ho Anumpoli! is a New Mexico non-profit organization. For more information about us, go to http://www.oocities.org/hoanumpoli
Send your success story to us at holabitubbe@gmail.com
For previous issues of Anumpa Achukma, go to http://www.oocities.org/hoanumpoli/anumpa.html