NILI Northwest Indian Language Institute
2016
Welcome from the Director By Janne Underriner
Welcome to our 2015 NILI newsletter! I hope you enjoy learning about this year’s activities. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to NILI this year. Our strength and success rely on the relationship with the people and communities with whom we collaborate. Please feel free to contact us to learn more about a project you are interested in, or if you would like to become involved with NILI. NILI has grown to be so much more than the communities we serve and the research we do. It has become the place on campus where Native American language learners, Native students, and scholars gather to share their dreams, research projects, and ideas. I never would have imagined 17 years ago that NILI would contribute so substantively to the UO community. This has happened because students are making NILI their own. Students come from many areas on campus—the Department of Linguistics, Editors: Robert Elliott, Joana Jansen, and Allison Taylor-Adams 1629 Moss Street, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403 · Phone: 541-346-0730 Please visit our website at nili.uoregon.edu for other materials and previous newsletters.
the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management, the School of Journalism and Communication, the Department of Anthropology, the College of Education, the School of Architecture and Allied Arts, and the Clark Honors College, as some examples. This year, UO students created internships in which they designed materials and contributed to tribal language programs. Our grants allowed us to offer student research positions that provided jobs for undergraduate student workers to transcribe texts. At our Summer Institute’s Saturday workshop, five School of Journalism and Communication students recorded tribal elders and trained youth in videography skills. UO grads and graduate students affiliated with NILI led courses and the youth program at Summer Institute, and assisted with the Bridge of the Gods Summer Academy program. Students gave freely of their time as UO ambassadors at Summer Institute, working with participants in classes and assisting elders on campus and at NILI evening functions. Student members of the Graduate Linguists of Oregon Student Society (GLOSS) hosted a bake sale and pizza fundraiser at Papa’s Pizza. Some NILI alumni returned to volunteer with Summer Institute and to digitize language materials to return to their tribe.
NILI Online Teacher Development Classes By Robert Elliott
NILI is now in the second year of
Our students hosted Mother Language Day at the Many Nations Longhouse. They had lunches and weekend dinners or get-togethers at NILI to speak together in Lushootseed, Ichishkíin, Tututni, Chinuk Wawa, and Dee-ni’. They enjoyed evening movie nights centered on endangered languages. They came together to write grant proposals and design language programs. They traveled together to Washington, DC, to participate in the National Breath of Life Conference. I would like to thank the students who have contributed to NILI’s mission and have so selflessly given of their time to make us a better institute for them, their communities, and the UO. We benefit from their enthusiasm, intellect, strength, determination, commitment, youth, and generosity. We grow because of them and with them. They are our teachers. Our inspiration. We are grateful for their kindness and patience, and we thank them for touching our hearts as well as our minds.
offering a series of three online teacher development classes. These classes are geared toward teachers of Native American languages working in diverse settings such as traditional schools, immersion classrooms, or even those teaching language in the home. Through the generous support of the UO Academic Extension office, we piloted the classes in the 2014–15 school year. The participants in the classes are quite diverse. At present, we have worked with approximately 25 teachers with more than 15 different tribal affiliations. Including our
Teacher Corner
ask questions of the learner as they describe their object. The objects will change according to what vocabulary topic you are teaching (e.g., foods, family, transportation). This activity works well with children or adults.
Instructions:
By Judith Fernandes
ACTIVITY: LOST-AND-FOUND Materials needed: Markers, pencils, paper, actual objects if desired.
Point of the game: Each learner loses something and must get it back from the lost-andfound by describing it. The person in charge of the lost-and-found can also 2 NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
current class enrollment, we have worked with teachers from across five states who teach the following languages: Ichishkíin (Yakama, Warm Springs, and Umatilla dialects), Lushootseed, Choctaw (Mississippi and Oklahoma), Makah, Tolowa Dee-ni’, Yuki, Cherokee, Kiowa, Takelma, and Wailaki. Although people are working on languages that are quite different from one another—sometimes as different as English is from Japanese —the groups bond and grow close in the online class, sharing similar stories of working with endangered languages, learning from one another, and struggling to teach as well as learn their languages at the same time.
Version 1: Real objects—Animals example • If you have been teaching the names of animals and how to describe them (color, size, movement, number of legs), gather some plastic toy animals that are all different from each other, or use photos of different animals. • Give one to each learner. • Let them study them. If you want to make this guided practice, give the learner time to write down the vocabulary needed to describe the animal. • Take the animals away from the learners and put them in your lostand-found. • Learners must come up and describe the animal well enough to get it back. They are not allowed to say, for example “It’s a horse.” That makes the activity too easy.
Taught completely online, various NILI faculty members are able to offer their expertise in these classes as a team: Judith Fernandes uses her many years of immersion school experience to cover issues of curriculum, lesson planning, and classroom management; Janne Underinner utilizes her vast experience teaching Chinuk Wawa and Klamath, and her linguistic expertise in teaching sound systems; Joana Jansen brings her background as a linguist and teacher of Ichishkíin language, a researcher, author, and analyzer of pedagogical grammars; and Robert Elliott orchestrates the online components and delivery of the course. Registration for the winter 2016 course (beginning January 4) Teaching Your Language to Others is now open, and registration for the spring 2016 course (beginning March 28) Enriching Language Communities will open this winter. More information and links to registration can be found on our website. We’d love to see you online!
•
Rotate the person in charge of the lost-and-found for each round of the activity.
Version 2: Learners draw on paper what they will lose—Geography example • If you have been teaching words like river, mountains, sun, moon, forest, hills, lakes, and roads, ask the learners to draw a landscape on a piece of paper. • Tell them to draw five of the eight vocabulary items in their pictures. • Take away their pictures. • They must now try to get their drawing back by describing it. Other possibilities for lost-and-found objects: family photos, lunch boxes, backpacks, cell phones, purses, coats, shoes.
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DC Conference Breathes New Life into Languages
NILI Tech Tip— Think Audio
English Free Longhouse for Mother Language Day
By Robert Elliott
PHOTO: JAECI N HALL
Digital audio recording is getting
Manuscript 4800 Dorsey Papers: Tututni (43) [398], National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institute.
By Jaeci Hall
The National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages, held in Washington, DC, in June of 2015, was a two-week institute in which Native community members were paired with a linguist to search national archives for language materials. It was developed to support language communities that are working from previously documented materials to revitalize their languages. These materials are typically field notes and word lists of earlier anthropologists and linguists, and in some cases, audio recordings and sketch grammars. Three Tututni community members, Carson Viles and Jerome Viles, along with Jaeci Hall as their linguist, attended the conference with support from NILI. While there, they attended classes
supporting language revitalization and went to the National Anthropological Archives to access language materials. Tututni is an Athabaskan language originally from southern Oregon; Tututni people are affiliated with Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, Coquille Indian Tribe, and Confederated Tribes of the Lower Rogue. There are no living elders who were raised as fluent speakers of Tututni; the last one known died in 2010. Nevertheless, there has been a large push for language revitalization from various community members, and
4 NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
there is a vast wealth of linguistic notes and recordings collected between 1850 and 1960. Although this treasure is important for successful revitalization, there are barriers to accessing the materials because notes are scattered across archives and are in various orthographical and digital states. For over a year, Carson, Jerome, and Jaeci have been working to digitize and create a database of Tututni language materials. Attending the Breath of Life institute allowed them to gather materials that they had not had access to previously. A highlight of their findings included boxes of handwritten notes by James Owen Dorsey from 1884. These notes covered characteristics of Tututni and related dialects. The team took more than 2,000 photographs of these notes to include in their database project. Their experience and the materials they gathered will be extremely beneficial to language revitalization efforts.
easier and easier. Listed below are some of our favorite, easy-to-use resources for making digital audio recordings. For high quality and easy portability, NILI has been using a Zoom audio recorder. This company has an entire line of recorders, starting from the H1, costing roughly $100, up to the H6, which retails around $400. There is even a video recorder, the Zoom Q4, now offered at about $300, that includes built-in, high-end audio capture. We recommend a highquality audio recorder for any work with elders, native speakers, or for documentation. For teachers who are not focused on capturing high-end audio, but looking for a place where students can make and submit recordings, Vocaroo (vocaroo.com) is an easyto-use option. From any computer, students can record an assignment, listen to themselves, and save the recording. A link can be created for the audio which can be sent or saved. The audio can also be downloaded or even embedded in a website or blog. Also, if you have an audio recording you want to share, you can upload it to Vocaroo and it will store your file and create a link for you to share. For editing your audio, Audacity (a free download from audacityteam. org) is still our favorite choice. But there are many browser-based options as well these days. For example, TwistedWave (https://twistedwave. com) and Audio Cutter (https:// mp3cut.net) offer two alternatives for free “on the go” audio editing. Whatever you are recording, we wish you luck, as well as no unexpected interference or annoying background noise!
By Jaeci Hall
On February 21, 2015, the UO Many Nations Longhouse became designated as a no-English zone for eight hours in celebration of International Mother Language Day. This day was designated by UNESCO in 1999 as a day to promote, preserve, and protect all languages spoken around the world. The celebration at the UO was intended to support and promote endangered languages of the Americas as well as to provide time and space to practice conversing in our languages. Speakers and learners of Ichishkíin, Chinuk Wawa, Choctaw, Tolowa Dee-ni’, Tututni, Chumash, and Lushootseed gathered, committing to speak no English for the entire afternoon. To facilitate communication, organizers prepared games, stories, and song-sharing time to help the participants actively communicate with each other, even when they did not speak the same language. Traditional food was prepared and shared. Those
who participated spoke later of the challenge of not using English, but also of the value of being able to practice speaking in their Native languages. NILI students are planning for our second annual Mother Language Day observance on February 21, 2016. Come and join with us in celebrating your language!
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Summer Institute 2015 NILI’s Summer Institute 2015 was a success, and as always, we are grateful for the support of departments and individuals from across the UO campus and beyond. You make the institute possible. As we begin planning for next year, our thanks and deep appreciation go to our colleagues and supporters.
Journalism Students Collaborate on Film Workshop
Our thanks to the following: • Academic Extension • Conference Services • Office of the Assistant Vice President and Advisor to the President on Sovereignty and Government-to-Government Relations • Department of Linguistics • Department of Native American Studies • Department of Parking and Transportation • GLOSS (Graduate Linguists of Oregon Student Society) • Many Nations Longhouse and Longhouse Steward • Mountain Rose Herbs
By Joana Jansen
NILI’s 2015 Summer Institute brought with it a number of exciting new classes and events, along with our biggest group ever of dedicated Native American language teachers and learners. It was a time of renewal and enthusiasm for all involved. Participants supported and learned from one another as we built longterm relationships around Native language vitality, and experienced the results of months of planning. Including students, faculty and staff members, and volunteers, we welcomed 95 participants. The 60 students took Ichishkíin, Tolowa Deeni’, or Lushootseed language courses, or studied their own languages as an independent study. They represented 18 tribal nations, and came from across the Pacific Northwest—from Kotzebue, Alaska, to Fresno, California, to Blackfoot, Idaho. We had support from colleagues across the campus. Our volunteers demonstrated their dedication in all manner of tasks—from sprucing up the office porch and delivering water and snacks on 100-degree days to assisting
in classes. NILI participants and Bridge of the Gods Summer Academy participants, young and old alike, shared a meal at the Many Nations Longhouse. Students and faculty members from the School of Journalism and Communication as well as our dedicated colleagues at the Yamada Language Center helped us make the best use of technology. The Department of Parking and Transportation and the Access Shuttle kept the elders on the move.
6 NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
• Office of Academic Affairs • Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation • Office of the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion • School of Journalism and Communication
By Torsten Kjellstrand
• Yamada Language Center
The weekend of Summer Institute,
• Taylor Fithian, BS ’65, and Family • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation • Virginia Beavert, PhD ’12 • Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
NILI Summer Institute 2016
Speaking Every Day—Everyday Speaking
June 20–June 30, 2016
Gain new skills in Native language learning, teaching, and technology.
we—five student volunteers and I— arrived from the School of Journalism and Communication (SOJC) to be a small part of the two-week efforts for Native American language learning and survival. Working with members of the NILI faculty and staff, we decided to try having three workshops that Saturday. SOJC student Melanie Burke ran a blogging workshop, asking learners to work on Tumblr (https://www.tumblr. com), a blog creating and hosting site, to post small stories, thoughts, interviews, and other bits of language knowledge to a communal site. Her idea was that learners could take this to their communities and use the tool to generate excitement and spread knowledge in a digital space. The blog is at nilisi2015.tumblr.com.
While Melanie worked with an auditorium full of people sending blog messages out to the wide world, Shuo Xu and Kara Jenness worked with high school students to shoot a film. Earlier
in the week, the high school students had written a script for a video, explaining why learning their native language mattered to them. In their short video, each of the students spoke their lines in their own language. Meanwhile, Maria Kjellstrand and Jen Jackson worked with elders to record stories and messages about the importance of language and identity to Native American peoples. Initially, a few of the elders were wary of letting young students they had not met record their stories and thoughts. A thorough discussion of the aims and ownership of the recordings led to an understanding of how and when the recordings would be used. Soon, we had moved to a big conference room in Straub Hall, where SOJC students and Native learners worked together to learn how to use DSLR cameras, digital recorders, and boom microphones to record the elders’ thoughts. Three hours later, the arms of students holding microphones were tired, batteries were dangerously low, and we had found a way to use new technology to help pass along some beautiful ideas in both English and Native American languages.
For more information visit nili.uoregon.edu.
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 7
New Discoveries: Participant Report from Summer Institute By SimHayKin/Sḿxikn Jack way̓ p isnqsílxw, iskwíst, greetings my relations I am originally from Inchelium/ ŃcaɁlíwm, Washington, and I am San Poil, Nez Perce, Moses-Columbia, and Lakota. I am working on language revitalization as a graduate student at the University of California at Davis. It was a great pleasure to be involved in NILI this summer. I was introduced to Summer Institute (SI) through my professor, Justin Spence, this spring. I had no previous acquaintance with NILI or the event beforehand. I was in disbelief that a program such as this could exist in the world without my having been made aware of it! I was beyond excited at the prospect of being involved. There
was quite literally nothing that could have kept me away, up to and including being hit by a car two weeks prior to the event. I was desperately looking forward to meeting other people as passionate about language revitalization as myself, and was most assuredly pleased by the classes, course work, and peer collaborations, although perhaps the cafeteria food and atmosphere got a little old. My experience at NILI is one that I will not soon forget. It was amazing. The practical skills and teaching and learning techniques that I acquired through SI have served and continue to serve me well in my current work. I thought a lot about creating digitalage language materials, learned how to author on several platforms, and even created an iBook to take home (thank you to my instructor, Jeff Magoto!). I took incredible classes with very passionate educators as well as avid learners. People were kind enough to make accommodations for me because of my accident, and they made me feel welcome despite being the only representative of my tribe and language, Nsǝĺxcin. I learned more than I thought humanly possible. I made a number of lovely connections and have maintained contact with these new connections over the months following SI. This summer was an incredible experience that I look forward to repeating next year with eager anticipation. way̓ liḿlḿt, thank you and goodbye
8 NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
Teaching Lushootseed Math
A Conversation with Stephanie Tabibian I needed a language credit to get into a university. Teachers, fluent speakers from the community, would teach the class. I took Paiute one year with Yolanda Manning, and my senior year I did Shoshone with elder Marjorie Puela. She handed me a letter one day and told me to go check out this program at the University of Utah called the Shoshone Youth Language and Apprenticeship Program (SYLAP).
By Zalmai Ɂǝswǝli Zahir
During Summer Institute 2015, I had the extreme pleasure of teaching a methods course in Lushootseed mathematics. The course was taught almost entirely as a full-immersion in Lushootseed—say, 95 percent— because during some of the breaks, I checked in with the students using English to make sure they weren’t too overwhelmed with the material. Although I had to slow down the planned curriculum to meet the needs of my students, some of whom were beginning learners of the language, they all did very well in learning the material and displaying their ability to use it. The course covered the topics of counting, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Each subject was broken into beginning, intermediate, and advanced, meaning the counting and math problems became more complex as the students learned the vocabulary and strengthened their math skills. The course included solving problems on the board, working in small groups to solve problems, and daily homework. The intended students were classroom teachers in communities who teach math. The goal was to teach them Lushootseed math so that they could increase language use in the classroom. The language proficiencies and teaching backgrounds of the 17 students varied. Some were already using some Lushootseed, while others were just starting to learn. Some were classroom teachers and some were community teachers working for tribal language programs. None of the students had learned or done math in Lushootseed before. This class was enjoyable to teach and met one of my personal goals to actually use Lushootseed to teach a topic, rather than just teaching about Lushootseed.
Joana: What’s that program like?
Stephanie (right), with Bryan Hudson and Zelphia Towersap at Summer Institute 2015 By Joana Jansen
Stephanie Tabibian has been learning and documenting Shoshone since she was in high school. She is a member of the Shoshone Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation. Stephanie recently graduated from Oregon, and her degree in planning, public policy and management is supporting her and her collaborators in establishing Tepa Conservation, a nonprofit that works with Shoshone-speaking communities on language projects. She’s been a counselor at the Bridge of the Gods Summer Academy, a program for Native American high school students, and last year, along with UO and NILI alumnus Bryan Hudson, was a part of our Summer Institute team. She recently began working at the UO as the Native American student retention specialist and academic advisor at the Center for Multicultural Academic Excellence. I talked with her about her language and dialects, songs, and work.
Stephanie: I worked at SYLAP for four years, as a student on the Shoshone project for two years, and as an advisor for two years. You go to linguistics courses and work on your language with facilitators and elders from many Shoshone communities with different dialects. That’s how we got to learn about regions: Shoshone is a language that spans five states. You can tell what region someone is from based on their dialect. So that was a huge part of it, too, seeing the differences in where we come from. We had a lot of lessons with music involved. And that’s a cool thing, that I know where people are from when they are singing like that, or that this song comes from this region. When you start to travel between communities you identify where a family is from, and you can sing songs from their area out of respect. Nobody is better than the other; we are just doing it differently. Going to SYLAP was a place where a really young population connected with the older population and they found each other interesting and cool. That’s something I sometimes see, that elders are impatient when we start to ask questions. The singing is a base for us to have something in common, and elders open up and see that you are making an effort.
Joana: How did you get started with learning your language?
Joana: When you and Bryan worked with the elders from the ShoshoneBannock Tribes [Fort Hall Reservation] at Summer Institute, whose languages and dialects are different from yours, how did that go?
Stephanie: I started to study both Shoshone and Paiute in high school.
Stephanie: We shifted our teaching because of them, tried as much as we
could to use their dialect. And I got to teach linguistics to fluent speakers! They soaked up six weeks of intense linguistics in two weeks. They wanted to learn about it and they got it. I think the linguistic terms sound confusing and intimidating, but if you can describe it in simple English, people realize that they are really smart and understand it. Joana: How did you end up working at the NILI office over the summer, and what did you work on? Stephanie: After I graduated, I wanted to do more language work. I have worked with three others on language and we formed a nonprofit, Tepa Conservation. Tepa means “pine nut.” We travel into different Shoshone communities and meet with whoever is doing a language program and wants support, to see if we can add to what they already have. We don’t want to tell anyone what to do, we want to show up and see what folks need, and formulate a plan based on that. That support can be anything, from compiling and creating materials, coming up with ideas for community engagement and participation, designing programs for all ages or a targeted age group, creating budgets and funding plans, digitizing materials. Each community has a specific situation. I needed a work site in Eugene and some funding, and so I found that through the Siletz Tribe’s Work Exchange program. This funds tribal members and descendants from any federally recognized tribe to be at a work site and gain skills. I didn’t want to work at just anything, but at something I liked, so I had to design my own job. Janne Underriner agreed to be my worksite advisor, and I worked on Shoshone materials. That’s how I got to NILI. Joana: Is there a word or a phrase you want to share? Stephanie: Here is one people can use: napisai em puinnuhi—“See you later!”
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Projects 2015
chaku- kǝmtǝks pi hayu-kǝmtǝks (to learn and be in the process of learning): Southern Willamette Valley Project This project is an initiative of Lane ESD with funding via an American Indian/ Alaskan Native Culturally Relevant Teaching, Learning, and Pedagogy Grant through the Oregon Department of Education (2014–15). NILI, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and public schools of Lane County also participated. The project, which ended this summer, designed an intensive five-week teacher training course for teachers and school leaders focused on Native American pedagogy and teaching practices. It addressed how Native American people and topics are positioned in the larger education system with the goal of increasing educational outcomes for all students, and especially American Indian, Alaska Native, and indigenous students. Another result of this project is that Oregon’s Springfield School District has traveling trunks to enrich classrooms. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde created the trunks, which contain historical information, photos, maps, tribal language, song and story CDs, cultural items, background information, and some lesson plans for teachers to use. This project is designed as a concrete means of influencing Native pedagogy in public schools by increasing teacher
awareness of the unique needs and issues related to Native students. One of the benefits of the trunks is that they contain materials that relate to the specific culture of local Native Americans rather than generalized Native American culture. In the process of building them and choosing what materials to include, it became apparent that all schools near tribal communities would benefit from having such trunks available to classroom teachers. The Grand Ronde Chinuk Wawa Kindergarten–Third Grade Immersion Project NILI is working on a newly awarded Administration for Native Americans (ANA) Esther Martinez Language Immersion Grant with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. The key foci of this three-year grant are curriculum development, language instruction through third grade, and masterapprentice language development. To develop more adult speakers and teachers, the tribe will hire two apprentice workers. The K–3 school is a half-day blended Chinuk Wawa immersion school that works with the Willamina School District. Chahta Anno̱pa Isht A _ ya Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians In this, the last year of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians’ ANA project, Chahta Anno̱pa Isht A _ ya, NILI faculty members participated by teaching in the tribe’s Choctaw Language Instructor Certification Program, reviewing curriculum and serving as project evaluators. NILI staff members made two visits to Mississippi to work with teachers on immersion and other language-teaching strategies, and also offered class segments online. The successful products of the project are the teacher certification program, Choctaw language curriculum, and having certified Choctaw language teachers in Choctaw Tribal Schools. Creating Ichishkíin Speakers The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs This project is now in its second year. The language interns are building their language proficiency and their teaching skills, and will become tribally certified as language teachers. NILI is pleased to
10 NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
collaborate with the language program and their skilled elders and teachers on teacher training. NILI staff members travel to Warm Springs quarterly for trainings, and Warm Springs staff participate in Summer Institute. Numlh-ts’vt Tr’vn’ Naa-tr’aa-’a (Turning the Tide toward Fluency) Smith River Rancheria Culture and Language Department NILI has a long history of collaboration with the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language program, and we will begin work on their new ANA project soon. The project will expand and enhance access to language resources by developing and launching a Wee-ya’-dvn (Language Place)—an operational interactive website, which will house a variety of digital language resources. It will also provide increased opportunities to use language and practice culture including producing a Dee-ni’-dvn (People’s Place), a physical location to house resources. The Role of Native Language and Culture in Decreasing Discipline Problems and Increasing Academic Achievement for American Indian and Alaska Native Students NILI is working with colleagues from the UO College of Education and the Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior on a project that explores the role of Native American language and culture in increasing academic achievement and decreasing behavioral problems for students from American Indian–Alaska Native backgrounds. The project is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of Education (Grant # R305A140162). We hope to learn more about the overall benefit of including Native language and culture in school settings, and about the effectiveness of specific strategies. Ichishkíin-Sahaptin: Language Documentation of Yakama Natural and Cultural Resources This project, a collaboration between the Yakama Nation and NILI, documents the knowledge of the elders speaking about places, and cultural and natural resource management and preservation within the Yakama Nation as well as transcribing and translating these recordings. This work
will support and strengthen natural and cultural resource management and add to efforts to teach and preserve Ichishkíin. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation’s Documenting Endangered Languages Program (Award # 1064459). Distance Education Now in its fourth year of development, the NILI Distance Education program continues strong. We are in our second year of online teacher training courses and are incorporating some improvements, such as a streamlined course management system and an easier course enrollment process. This past year, through the work with the Mississippi Choctaw language program, NILI developed an online protocol for delivering workshops remotely with the help of Jason Lewis, who served as the local collaborator and instructor on the ground. And we continue to add to the library of language materials that can be used with mobile devices such as iPads or smart phones within communities.
Project in Focus
Gates Yakama E-Book Project Since the fall of 2014, NILI has been partnering with schools on the Yakama reservation in a project designed to build new language leaders. NILI has worked with high
Páwyak’ukt Ichishkíin Sapsikw’ałáma Teachers’ Gathering The third annual Páwyak’ukt Ichishkíin Sapsikw’ałáma (Gathering of Ichishkíin Teachers), sponsored by NILI and Heritage University’s Center for Native Health and Culture, took place at Heritage University in August. This event highlights language teachers sharing materials and learning from one another. This year Rosemary Miller (Yakama) was awarded the Center for Native Health and Culture’s Community Leader Award. Language Class The Chinuk Wawa language program, supported by Lane Community College in Eugene, is a collaboration among LCC, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and NILI. In its ninth year, the program serves the UO, LCC, and Portland State University undergraduate and graduate students, and also community members on the Grand Ronde Reservation and in the Portland and Eugene areas with 100-
school youth in the Toppenish and Eagle High Schools’ Ichishkíin language classes to build a small library of e-books in the Ichishkíin language that can be used in the preschool immersion classes. The high schoolers have learned new technology skills, expanded their language use, and contributed to filling the great need for materials in their language. Two Yakama students, Ethan Miller and Kyle Davis, received scholarships to attend NILI
and 200-level courses. At the UO, Ichishkíin 100-level courses are being offered this academic year, with the 200-level course to repeat beginning in fall 2016. Last spring, students traveled to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation to volunteer at the Language Knowledge Bowl. This year, students will travel to the Yakama Nation. Puyallup Tribal Language Project This project supported graduate research fellow Zalmai Zahir in the 2014–15 academic year to work on txwǝlšucid language revitalization. Funded by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, the project involves videoconferencing and language support between Zalmai and project staff members in Washington, in between Zalmai’s travels to the language program in Washington. As a result of the project, teachers in Chief Leschi schools and tribal employees are incorporating language into their classrooms and workplaces.
Summer Institute this past summer, where they joined youth from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs and Tolowa Deeni’ Nation. While at Summer Institute, the youth worked closely with Visiting Assistant Professor Torsten Kjellstrand and several of his UO undergraduate students in the School of Journalism and Communication to learn more about film and video editing (see article page 7). They also interacted daily with leaders in language revitalization from around the nation. In October, Kyle and Ethan, along with Teata Oatman and Desiree Maddern, two high school students from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, had the chance to present some of their work on the project at the national National Indian Education Association conference in October. They did a fantastic job talking to a packed audience.
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NILI Graduate Fellows 2015–16
NILI Work-Study Students 2015–16
Regan Anderson
Lorraine Goggles
Regan Anderson has worked with NILI since 2009. She is in her first year of the PhD program in linguistics and teaches Ichishkíin language courses with Yakama elder Virginia Beavert (Tux̱ ámshish) through a graduate teaching fellowship (GTF). She collaborates with members of the Yakama Nation on Ichishkíin curriculum development and language documentation, and assists Tux̱ ámshish in organizing, archiving, and transcribing previous and current work. Regan holds a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a master’s degree in language teaching. Her culminating project for her master’s
was titled “Reclaiming Home Domains in a Yakima Ichishkíin Language Classroom” (see article on page 15). As often as possible, Regan integrates current issues within the field of language revitalization into her studies. After completing her PhD, Regan hopes to continue her work in linguistics and language revitalization with NILI and the Ichishkíin language community.
Allison Taylor-Adams Allison Taylor-Adams is the administrative graduate research fellow for NILI. She is a first year PhD student in the Department of Linguistics, having previously received BAs in religious studies and international studies from
the University of Oklahoma and an MA in applied linguistics from the University of Massachusetts at Boston. She is interested in endangered language documentation and revitalization, and is looking forward to doing research in collaboration with speaking communities someday. She worked as the administrator for an academic department in Washington, DC, for eight years, and is thrilled to be able to use those skills to work at NILI. She loves languages of all shapes and sizes, and has studied Russian, French, Ancient Greek, and Arabic. Her hobbies (other than learning languages) include knitting lace shawls, exploring new places, and going for hikes with her husband.
the Department of Linguistics PhD program. Her main interest is in language revitalization of her own Native American language, Tututni, an Athabaskan language that was spoken along the Rogue River in southern Oregon. Jaeci’s interest in linguistics and language revitalization came about as a result of her father, Jerry
Hall’s, participation at NILI’s Summer Institute in 2001. There, he met with one of the last speakers of Tututni, Gilbert Towner, and they codeveloped a two-week-long Tututni language camp that was held every summer for five years. Jaeci attended each language camp and played an important role in organizing, planning, and operating the camp.
12 NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
Aubrey Jacobus Aubrey, originally from Central Oregon, is a UO senior working toward her BA
Brittany Parham
Janne Underriner in the spring of 2014. The following summer, she began studying the Ichishkíin language with Regan Anderson, and has been involved with NILI ever since. She has continued to study Ichishkíin, attended two years of the Summer Institute, and is currently working to edit and finalize e-books for the various communities that NILI is in collaboration with. She was the volunteer coordinator for Summer Institute 2015, and oversaw the team of more than a dozen volunteers. She says she feels very privileged to be part of the NILI family!
Brittany is a senior in the linguistics program at UO. She first came to know of NILI after taking a class taught by
Undergraduate Student Profile: Tracie Jackson
Graduate Student Profile: Jaeci Hall
Jaeci Hall is in her second year in
Lorraine is a junior majoring in sociology and minoring in Native American studies. She is from the Wind River Reservation (Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone) in Wyoming. This is her third year working at NILI, where she is a big help to both Judith Fernandes and Jaeci Hall in particular as they prepare curriculum and organize the NILI server. She enjoys outdoor activities, beading, and spending time with her friends and family.
in linguistics, and a past student of Ichishkíin. At NILI, she has worked on many different projects that involved transferring education and curriculum tools to a digital platform. Currently, she is creating artwork for a children’s educational book. She enjoys fashion and art in all forms and spending time with her friends and cat at home. After graduation, she hopes to find a job or internship in linguistics and eventually join the Peace Corps before heading to graduate school.
Tracie Jackson, a UO junior majoring Jaeci’s interest in linguistics was further supported by her own attendance at NILI in 2003 and 2004. After receiving a master’s degree in Native American linguistics at the University of Arizona, Jaeci worked at NILI developing a language-teaching curriculum. For some years, life pulled her away from linguistics, but in 2014 while working on the Takelma language project at NILI, Jaeci remembered her love for language and was inspired to pursue another degree in linguistics. Her goals with this degree are to further the revitalization of her language and to support Native language revitalization processes in general. She currently is working as a graduate research fellow at NILI. Jaeci is the second generation in her family to be inspired and supported in language revitalization work by NILI. As she continues her education, she says the people at NILI have become an essential part of her support system, her community, and ultimately, a reason she continues to succeed.
NILI Board Report NILI’s Advisory Board met last November to review our institutional goals and activities and get an early look at plans for an archive and sharing space. Board members shared thoughts about NILI’s sustainability and growth. On the evening of cultural sharing at NILI's Summer Institute, we were privileged to have in attendance the majority of our board members, along with their families and young adult children, who, in their turn, are building the institute. As we go to press we are planning for our next in-person meeting.
in product design and art with a minor in business, is a member of the Navajo Nation. In the two years she’s been with us, she has worked on converting storybooks to tribal languages, designed a brochure, and edited Native language videos. She says her work at NILI has broadened her exposure to other tribes and given her an interest in helping in language revitalization efforts, both for her own language and others. She plans
to take Navajo classes and linguistics when she returns to the southwest. She is a third-generation artist and loves to travel with her family to Native American art shows. This also introduces her to other tribes, artists, and art. She sells her paintings and other artwork at shows, and has a career goal of designing apparel for Nike’s N7 collection. Tracie is always upbeat, and brings talents and skills to our office that we very much appreciate!
We rely on our board members for their insights and support, and we thank them for all they do. Our current board members are Virginia Beavert, PhD, elder representative, research associate UO–NILI, Yakama Nation; Marnie Atkins, UO Department of Anthropology, citizen of the Wiyot Tribe; Sheila Bong, cofounder and vice president of sales, Avant Assessment, Blackfeet Tribe; Scott DeLancey, UO professor of linguistics; Tony Johnson, chair and community education director of the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation; Jeff Magoto, director, UO
Yamada Language Center; Leilani Sabzalian, graduate teaching fellow in the UO Teach program, doctoral student in critical and sociocultural studies in education, Sugpiaq; and Drew Viles, instructor, Language, Literature, and Communication Division, Lane Community College, Confederated Tribe of Siletz Indians. Their individual goals around language revitalization, teaching and learning, and Native American student success overlaps with NILI’s mission, and their skills and experiences enrich our work. We are grateful for their guidance and service. UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 13
NILI Faculty: The Year at a Glance JANUARY
SEPTEMBER
Joana Jansen, along with Andrew Garrett of the University of California at Berkeley, organized a session at the annual meeting of the Linguistics Society of America and the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages in the Americas titled “Dictionaries, Text Editions, and Corpora: Ensuring Value for Multiple Stakeholders.” The session included presentations by teams and scholars from academic communities and speech communities, including NILI faculty members and attendees Virginia Beavert (UO and Yakama Nation), Merceline Boyer (Shoshone-Bannock Tribes), Ruth Lewis (Burns Paiute Tribe), and Tim Thornes (Boise State University).
Back to school! Our online distance education class began, a new cohort of Ichishkíin learners started studying with Regan Anderson, and Chinuk Wawa students returned to class at Lane Community College.
APRIL The Yakama Nation Higher Education Program’s new building was named in honor of Virginia Beavert (Tux̱ ámshish). Regan Anderson, Robert Elliott, and UO Ichishkíin class students attended and volunteered at the Ichishkíin Language Knowledge Bowl, held at the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
MAY Joana and Janne Underriner presented a training workshop and worked with teachers of Iñupiaq and Yup’ik at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. Robert, Regan, and Jaeci Hall presented at UO’s spring Foreign Language and International Studies Day about languages of Oregon. The Ichishkíin class students also taught phrases and words in a presentation called Mish pam sɨnwitát’asha Ichishkíin? Ichishkiin Culture and Language.
Reclaiming Home Domains in a Yakima Ichishkíin Language Classroom
OCTOBER Virginia Beavert (Tux̱ ámshish) was honored as the elder of the year at the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) conference in Portland, Oregon. Robert presented a workshop and a paper at CALICO—the ComputerAssisted Language Instruction Consortium in Boulder, Colorado, along with Jeff Magoto from the Yamada Language Center.
JUNE Jaeci, Zalmai Zahir, and Carson and Jerome Viles attended the Breath of Life workshop in Washington, DC. Robert presented alongside Damien Totus from the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation at the Native American Student Advocacy Institute at Washington State University. Our annual Summer Institute was held June 22–July 2. Please see the articles about the Institute on page 8.
AUGUST Janne, Joana, and Robert attended the Native Student Success Convening at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle. Virginia, Joana, and Regan attended the Páwyak’ukt Ichishkíin Sapsikw’ałáma (Gathering of Ichishkíin Teachers) at Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington. This event was cosponsored by NILI and Heritage University’s Center for Native Health and Culture.
14 NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
Robert presented at NIEA, along with language teachers Damien Totus and Rose Miller and their students from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Yakama Nation. The team spoke about their project and work creating e-books and sharing them with younger language learners (see Project in Focus, page 11). Joana and Rose Miller also presented. Their presentation focused on the role of Ichishkíin language and culture as protective factors that support academic success and positive identity in youth.
By Regan Anderson
Time is of the essence when it comes to language revitalization work. Formal education of endangered languages often occurs in school settings, but language must thrive in the home if it is to become vitally spoken. The project described in this article, a course design with a focus on reclaiming home domains, is designed to bridge the gap between home language use and classroom teaching. I completed it as part of my work in the language teaching specialization (LTS) for the master of arts in linguistics. The project focuses on reclaiming language associated with small home domains (e.g., making breakfast, washing dishes), one step at a time. Each of these domains serves as an “actionable step” toward building language nests, which, we have seen, can make significant strides in language revitalization. I also chose this topic because learners of Ichishkíin, the language of focus, identified developing language nests as a long-term goal. Ichishkíin is endangered; few fluent elder speakers remain, and children are not widely learning it as their first language. Many community members and language activists are working to document,
learn, and teach their endangered language. Researchers (such as Fishman 1991, Hinton 2013) and others working on revitalization tell us that bringing endangered languages into the home is imperative to increasing the number and quality of speakers. Because support often comes through school settings, it is ideal to bring these two worlds together. To gain insight about needed support, I consulted with Yakama community members and teachers about what might be meaningful to them, because it was important to me to design a project that could be useful. Virginia Beavert (Tux̱ ámshish), first-language Ichishkíin speaker, linguist, and educator, identified a need to produce practical materials that would support community members assuming the dual role of teacher-learner, a common challenge among teachers of languages with few fluent speakers. This need is what sparked this project. It is intended to contribute to curriculum and, in addition, generate materials for Ichishkíin speaking and learning communities. Support for teacher-learners is provided through the inclusion of detailed lesson plans and classroom language as well as samples of lesson materials. Teacherlearner interviews and learner surveys gave me additional insight into the kind of support that would be most useful. The course was piloted with a small group of learners during spring term of the 2014–15 academic year at the University of Oregon. Of course, this project is not without limitations. It relies largely on input and language support from fluent elder speakers. Although elders are still with us and willing to contribute to efforts in teaching their first language, it would be wise to continue to seek their advice to prepare for a time
when we are no longer able to rely so heavily on them. In this way, we celebrate their presence, knowledge, and contributions. Courses must be adapted and resources developed to more adequately support teachers and learners as they become increasingly responsible for preserving and revitalizing Ichishkíin. Because projects and the quality of project-generated materials depend on a high level of student motivation, limitations might come from a class with less motivated students. However, project-based learning has been shown to increase motivation among students. Students of the pilot course reported that motivation was enhanced by the opportunity to contribute to materials and resources available for other Ichishkíin language learners. This course will continue to be taught at the University of Oregon and revised according to learner, teacher-learner, and community needs based on feedback regarding project design, supporting lessons, and materials generated. Lesson materials and Google documents will continue to be created and made accessible. For more information or materials from the project, I can be contacted via NILI. It is a privilege to learn and teach Ichishkíin, and I am humbled every day by the opportunity to do so. I look forward to the day when I can adequately express in Ichishkíin what this work has brought to my life. Tuxámshish, my elder, mentor, and friend, has taught me to live, speak, and work from my heart, and I am a better person for it. For this gift, I will give back as long as I am welcome, by speaking, teaching, and documenting Ichishkíin in all the ways Tux̱ ámshish has taught me to do. Kw’ałanúushamatash (I thank you all).
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 15
Thank You
Your generosity is appreciated!
NILI could not do the work we do without your generous support. Many of our achievements during 2015 were made possible by contributions from individuals and UO departments. Contributions to NILI in 2015 helped support continued work on NILI’s archiving project, a joint effort with the Digital Scholarship Center of the UO Libraries. University support allowed us to offer a Saturday workshop during Summer Institute, in conjunction with the School of Journalism and Communication, which explored ways to incorporate technology into language learning and preservation. NILI was able to offer a total of 19 scholarships to Summer Institute this year—the most we have ever given. Several of those scholarships were to high school students who took part in NILI’s Youth Program, which is growing each year. Scholarships also helped bring participants from Alaska, Idaho, California, and Washington. With University support, NILI was able to develop and pilot a threeterm distance learning program with classes on lifelong language learning, teaching language to others, and improving language teaching and learning through action research (see article page 3). With your gifts we were able to support NILI staff members’ attendance and presentations at conferences. Your tax-deductible gift of any amount has an impact on our work. For example, your gift can support teachers to become more skilled; provide scholarships for Su-mmer Institute participants; support undergraduate and graduate student research and conference presentations; help purchase iPads for youth to create e-storybooks to use in preschools and to bring language home to families; support language documentation and curriculum development; and advance our distance learning outreach into tribal communities. To all those individuals and departments who have donated money, time, and resources, we thank you.
Virginia Beavert, PhD ’12 Lynne Bonnett, BA ’69 Linda Danielson, DA ’74 John Curtis, BS ’88 Taylor Fithian, BS ’65, and family John and Robin Jaqua Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation Carla, BS ’91, and Andrew Viles, PhD ’97 Mountain Rose Herbs Graduate Linguists of Oregon Student Society University of Oregon, Academic Extension University of Oregon, Department of Academic Affairs University of Oregon, Department of Native American Studies University of Oregon, Many Nations Longhouse University of Oregon, Office of the Assistant Vice President and Advisor to the President on Sovereignty and Government-to-Government Relations University of Oregon, Office of the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion University of Oregon, Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation University of Oregon, School of Journalism and Communication University of Oregon, Yamada Language Center
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