Research Guides: Native American and Indigenous Studies: Language Revitalization

Training

National Breath of Life
Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages
Institute on Collaborative Language Research
A gathering for people to learn about language documentation, descriptive linguistics, and language revitalization.
American Indian Language Development Institute
The AILDI mission is to provide critical training to strengthen efforts to revitalize and promote the use of Indigenous languages across generations.
International Conference on Indigenous Language Documentation, Education, and Revitalization
Bringing together Indigenous communities, educators, linguists, and scholars from around the world to share their knowledge and experiences, and in turn inspire future language revitalization efforts.
Indigenous Language Institute
The Indigenous Language Institute provides vital language related service to Native communities so that their individual identities, traditional wisdom, and values are passed on to future generations in their original languages.

Reading

The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Edited by Leanne Hinton and Ken Hale. New York: Academic Press, 2001.

How to Keep Your Language Alive: A Commonsense Approach to One-on-One Language Learning. Leanne Hinton with Matt Vera and Nancy Steele. Heyday, 2002.

Language Revitalization at Tribal Colleges and Universities: Overviews, Perspectives, and Profiles, 1993-2018. Edited by Bradley Shreve. Foreword by Richard Littlebear. Tribal College Press, 2019.

Bringing Our Languages Home: Language Revitalization for Families. Leanne Hinton. Heyday, 2013.

Mohican Primary sources

American Philosophical Society
Written records of language spoken in northern Pennsylvania or "Moravian" communities, recorded by missionary Johann Schmick.
Moravian Church Archives
The Moravian Church Archives in Bethlehem, PA, houses written records of Mohican language recorded by Moravian missionaries.
Jameson "Sot" Quinney and other speakers
Records of Jameson "Sot" Quinney, William Dick, Lucius Dick, Edwin Miller, Alfred Miller, Sterling Peters, Agnus Butler, and Bernice Robinson, Mohican speakers of Brotherton. Recorded by Truman Michelson.
Edwards, Jonathan. Observations on the language of the Muhhekaneew Indians, 1788.
This short treatise includes a basic description of the language and reflects Edwards's worldview in which Native people were possibly related to one of the lost tribes of Israel.
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Images of this work from the John Carter Brown Library are available in the Internet Archive.

Masthay, Carl, ed. Schmick's Mahican Dictionary. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. ISBN 9780871691972

Advocacy

Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival
Helping Native communities create new speakers.
The Language Conservancy
Supporting language communities worldwide.
Council of Indigenous Language Organizations
CILO's mission is to unite Indigenous community members, heritage language speakers, and educators through the spirit of collaboration, sharing knowledge and best practices to strengthen the efforts of language revitalization within communities around the globe.
First Nations Native Language Immersion Initiative
Supporting new generations of Native American language speakers, and helping Native communities establish infrastructure and models for Native language immersion programs.
United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Languages