Breath of Life (language restoration workshops)
In Breath of Life workshops, linguists help members of Native American communities access and use archival material documenting their ancestral languages in the interest of language restoration and revitalization. This is particularly important for the many communities that no longer have fluent speakers of their languages. They are held biannually in June at U.C. Berkeley and at the University of Oklahoma in Norman in even-numbered years, and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC in odd-numbered years. The project was initiated in the early 1990s at the University of California Berkeley, in part by linguist Leanne Hinton.[1]
Berkeley, California
The “Breath of Life – Silent no more” California Indian Language Restoration Workshop at the University of California at Berkeley is sponsored by Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS) and by the University of California at Berkeley. The participants are California Indians whose languages have few or no speakers, and the goal is to help the participants to access, understand, and do research on materials on their languages, and to use them for language revitalization. There are several archives at UC Berkeley that together form the greatest collection anywhere of published and unpublished materials on indigenous languages of California. The participants create language projects based on those materials that they report on publicly at the end of the week. Each language group is assisted by a faculty or graduate student linguistic mentor.
The aims of the Breath of Life workshop are:
- To guide participants to the university resources available for their use
- To help the participants identify and locate the published and unpublished notes and audio recordings made by linguists and anthropologists on their languages
- For participants to learn how to read phonetic and phonemic writing, and other fundamentals of linguistic analysis
- For participants to learn ways they can use linguistic materials and publications to create materials for language restoration
Each language group is assisted by a linguistic mentor, who accompanies the group to the archives and helps them learn how to read and analyze linguistic materials. These materials include recordings and documents created by their own ancestors, and a rich array of books, recordings, and fieldnotes of use for language restoration. Perhaps the most positive benefit of all is the opportunity to network with other people with the same interests and goals.[2][3]
Norman, Oklahoma
The Oklahoma Breath of Life, Silent No More Workshop is held at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History on the campus of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. It has been funded by grants from the "Documenting Endangered Languages" (DEL) program, a joint project of the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
It is a week long (Sunday through Friday), intensive workshop in linguistics and language renewal. The workshop is especially designed for indigenous people from communities who no longer have any fluent, first language speakers. It has been demonstrated that with motivation from community members, archival documentation, and training in how to use this documentation, these languages can have a new breath of life and can be spoken again.[4][5]
The purpose of the workshop is to teach participants how to:
- Find archived language materials
- Read phonetic writing
- Understand how their language works
- Start a database to manage and access their language information
- Begin the process of language and cultural revitalization
- Create fun and interactive teaching materials from old sources
Washington, D.C.
The goal of the Breath of Life Institute for Indigenous Languages is to help Native Americans involved in language revitalization find and make use of materials on their languages that are in the National Anthropological Archives and Library of Congress. It promotes active collaboration among people with a wide range of perspectives about language and culture, including technical linguistic knowledge and cultural expertise. In this two-week workshop, teams of participants (Native American heritage language learners, teachers, and activists) are paired with linguists (experts in linguistics who assist the participants in their research). Team members actively work together, mentor one another, and share their expertise throughout the program and beyond. They explore archives and museum collections at the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution. Morning workshops on linguistics, language teaching and learning, archival research, and language revitalization are held at the National Museum of the American Indian. The two weeks of study culminate in a research project and presentation that uses archival or museum resources for linguistic research or language teaching. Participants stay in the dorms at George Washington University, where they can network and study together in the evenings. BoL pays for participants’ rooms, and partially subsidizes food and travel.[6][7][8]
The Breath of Life Institute has been supported by "Documenting Endangered Languages" (DEL), a joint program of the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Partners include the National Museum of Natural History, The National Museum of the American Indian, the Library of Congress, The Endangered Language Fund, and Yale University.
References
- ↑ Gugliotta, Guy (20 January 2014). "Smithsonian archives preserve lost and dying languages". Washington Post. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
- ↑ AICLS description of workshop., augmenting that on the AICLS website.
- ↑ U.C. Berkeley description of workshop.
- ↑ Museum description of workshop
- ↑ "Documenting Endangered Languages". National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation. Retrieved 17 March 2014.
- ↑ Description in a professional newsletter for linguists.
- ↑ Smithsonian Institution press release.
- ↑ Description by the Endangered Language Fund.