Tribal language programs nationwide have begun summer program preparations for a range of community language immersion and teacher training opportunities. Among Cultural Survival’s advisor programs, the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project and Euchee (Yuchi) Language Project, will offer multi-week language camps for youth focused on building conversational skills and ceremonial vocabulary to engage students as future community cultural leaders.
The team-based master apprentice project based at the Sac and Fox Nation has completed a multi-year effort to significantly boost the language proficiency of three second language learners. Funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Native Americans, the project was jointly administered by Cultural Survival’s Endangered Languages Program and the Sauk Language Department in Stroud, Oklahoma.
The Ellen L. Lutz Indigenous Rights Award will be given to a courageous advocate who is pursuing the rights of Indigenous Peoples' with an Indigenous community. The Award is intended to recognize Indigenous activists for their dedication, passion, and commitment to human rights and their struggle for Indigenous Rights.
This month Cultural Survival's Endangered Languages program manager Jennifer Weston met with six Innu tribal members from Sheshatshiu, Labrador to discuss Native American language revitalization programs in the U.S., and the status of the Innu language in the Canadian provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Quebec. Three students, two teachers, and a community-based artist from the Sheshatshiu Innu School visited Cultural Survival’s offices while taking time off from an exhibition they helped develop with the Phillips Academy Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Massachusett
The Makepeace Productions documentary WE STILL LIVE HERE: Âs Nutayuneân, produced with the assistance of Cultural Survival’s Endangered Languages Program, travelled this month to a series of ten workshops in Bosnia and Herzegovina with director Anne Makepeace as part of the U.S. Department of State’s American Film Showcase program that hosts screenings and discussions at international embassies, universities, and diverse community organizations.
Christopher Columbus arrived as an immigrant to "the New World."
Seven co-sponsors in the U.S. House and Senate this month introduced reauthorizing legislation funding for The Esther Martinez Native American Language Act, first passed by Congress in 2006 and funded in 2008 through amendments to the Native American Programs Act of 1974 in order to provide support for Native language immersion and restoration programs in tribal communities.
This month WE STILL LIVE HERE: Âs Nutayuneân travels with director Anne Makepeace, to Sarajevo and four other cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, taking the incredible story of Cultural Survival's Endangered Languages Program advisers at the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP) to new audiences. The film will also screen on October 27 as part of the United Nations Film Festival at Stanford University.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.
