NILI Newsletter 2014-15

NILI Northwest Indian Language Institute

2015

Welcome from the Director

By Janne Underriner Native youth are challenging us to partner with them to make language learning practical and relevant to their world. They are designing their own materials to use beyond the classroom and are teaching preschool students at school and siblings at home. They are finding their own voice in their communities and inspiring their teachers to share their dreams.

For five years, we have focused our efforts to write proposals and locate donors in support of Native youth. In looking back at projects that have significantly affected tribal youth and their roles in language revitalization, we returned to a model that the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and NILI piloted in 2004–7 in a Demonstration Grant funded by the

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Welcome from the Director

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Nixyáawii Community School and NILI at NIEA 2014

Southern Willamette Valley Project Grant

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Promoting Language Use

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Hawai‘i Connections

Language Materials Sharing Space

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Summer Institute 2014

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Across the Pacific

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A Trip to Town

NILI Family: Where Are They Now?

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NILI Faculty: The Year at a Glance

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Collaborative Work 2014

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Project in Focus

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NILI Graduate Fellows 2014–15

Graduate Student Profile

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NILI Work-Study Students 2014–15

Undergraduate Student Profile

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NILI Goes Online

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Keeping Your Language Data Safe

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Donor Thank You

Editors: Joana Jansen, Holly Lakey, Janne Underriner, and Robert Elliott 1629 Moss Street, University of Oregon Eugene, OR 97403 · Phone: 541-346-0730 Please visit our website at pages.uoregon. edu/nwili for other materials and previous newsletters.

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Oregon Department of Education. The project grew from sensibilities that Tony Johnson, NILI’s advisory board chair and then Grand Ronde’s cultural education manager, and I shared about intergenerational learning, identity, and leadership. We were beginning to see that children and youth learning Chinuk Wawa in the tribe’s immersion and afterschool programs were identifying with being Grand Ronde; the language was grounding them in their elders’ lifeways.

In that pilot project we worked with four Grand Ronde high-schoolers, mentoring them in Chinuk Wawa, tribal lifeways and science, and in teaching and curriculum development skills.

They in turn mentored children in the Chinuk Wawa Immersion Preschool.

One young woman from the project, Ali Holsclaw, went on to college at Western Oregon University and returned home to Grand Ronde to teach in and develop the tribes’ immersion elementary program.

Our project on Ichishkíin culture and language as protective factors, previously funded by the Native American Center for Excellence and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, continues to grow this year with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Their support will expand our work at the Yakama Nation to include Robert Elliott teaching technology skills to youth. Their gift brought me to the foundation for three days of meetings and workshops in August. I left with the sense that the future we desire is not something to wait for but rather it exists now in the youth we are working with. They are ready to lead. Finding inspiration in youth, taking their cues about learning, putting them central to restoring their communities’ language, and finding funding to support them so they can make their language dreams a reality is core to our work at NILI. Already we have seen benefits come out of these projects that strengthen other academic and life skills in youth.

Two youth from Nixyáawii High School, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla

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Indian Reservation’s charter school, presented with Robert Elliott, their Ichishkíin teacher, and their school counselor this October at the National Indian Education Association’s (NIEA) annual conference in Anchorage, Alaska. They spoke about their e-book and mentoring project.

Inside you will learn about NILI’s summer youth program; our work with Umatilla, Grand Ronde, and Yakama Nation youth; more from Robert about NIEA; our collaboration with the Springfield School District and Lane Education Service District project from Judith; and our work on protective factors. Ultimately, all the work we do benefits youth and future generations.

In training teachers, we touch youth; documenting language serves future learners; creating curriculum provides needed learning materials in schools; developing books teaches design and technology skills and builds a literary arts library for students still to come.

I hope these stories and individuals inspire you.

In closing, I would like to bring your attention to the colors of this year’s newsletter. We have decided to honor our partners yearly by choosing the colors that they have identified for their communities. We honor the Plateau People with this edition.

Thank you for supporting NILI’s work this year. We are grateful and look forward to the year ahead. Best wishes and health to you and yours in 2015.

Nixyáawii Community School and NILI at NIEA 2014

By Robert Elliott

Over the 2013–14 school year, one exciting project NILI partnered in was the Youth Become Language Leaders project. The project took place at the

Confederated Tribes of Grande Ronde (CTGR) and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). Robert Elliott worked with Kathy Cole and high school students in the Chinuk Wawa class, and Damien

Totus and students in the Umatilla language class, to build a small library of e-books. These e-books will be used by young learners in preschool and afterschool language programs. Youth from both communities met while attending Summer Institute, further taking on the roles of language leaders for the next generation.

One of these groups, Nixyáawii Community High School at CTUIR, collaborated with Robert to present at the National Indian Education Association Conference in Anchorage Alaska. Damien and Robert, along with students Teata Oatman and Lennox Lewis, gave a workshop for approximately 75 attendees.

Says Elliott, “We are hoping other communities are able to replicate and adapt this model to their language programs.”

The students had the opportunity to talk about their experience to the audience of education professionals from around the country. It was the students’ first time attending a national conference, and the first trip on a plane for Damien and Lennox. “Taking part in the project and the presentation is an amazing opportunity for these students,” says Michelle Van Pelt, Nixyáawii instructor and college counselor. “It helps open the door for them to many future opportunities, including university.”

Southern Willamette Valley Project Grant

By Judith Fernandes

NILI has extended its boundaries in joining forces on a new grant called chaku-kəmtəks pi hayu-kəmtəks (to learn and be in the process of learning): Southern Willamette Valley Project.

The project provides a unique and historical opportunity for Lane County school districts to work with federally recognized tribes.

Funding originates with the Oregon Department of Education and is channeled through Lane Educational Services District. Key players are the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians

and Springfield School District with public schools of Lane County and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde as participants.

At the heart of the grant is the desire to improve pedagogical practices and teaching strategies both for and about Native Americans, starting from local resources and expanding outward. Focus groups combine the expertise of Native students and parents, representative members of Siletz tribes, curriculum specialists, teacher trainers, university specialists, and Title VII specialists. The project will result in workshops and graduate

courses for public school teachers.

These courses will address how to best teach Native youth and how to ensure that curriculum incorporates multiple viewpoints, for example, that students learning about Oregon waterways will learn about their present and past importance to Native people. A website and resource bank will be created, as well as materials for Native American Month. For those involved, it provides a pathway to dynamically changing current pedagogical practices and teaching strategies in local public schools with the hope that all students, not just Natives, will benefit.

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Promoting Language Use

RECLAIMING DOMAINS PROJECT

Reclaiming domains involves taking on tasks that you do on a daily basis and self-narrating the process. For example, getting a cup of coffee: “I take the cup. I take the coffee pot.

I pour the coffee into the cup. I put the coffee pot down.”

This process builds vocabulary, pronunciation skills and grammar.

It also grounds language within our environment and daily activities.

GAMES PROJECT

Games make language fun and involve family and friends. Games such as Go Fish (see NILI Newsletter 2013) also have finite language that is repetitive. Novice learners can use it with little instruction and stay in the language for long periods of time.

By Zalmai ʔəswəli (Zeke) Zahir

Language revitalization or stabilization involves using language for daily communication. Some programs put a great deal of focus on language learning in the hope that those who learn a language will use it outside the learning environment.

In fact, this does not always occur.

Students rapidly forget what is not used regularly, and even fluent speakers resort to a dominant language when surrounded by dominant language speakers.

A process to counteract this is to highlight language use as a separate program from language learning, thereby promoting its status and importance. The approach begins with identifying simple and achievable steps, and then grows in complexity.

For example, communication requires conversation, connecting language to the environment, and involving others. Turn these elements into separate, smaller projects, such as 1) a conversation project, 2) a reclaiming domains project, and 3) a games project. You now have identifiable projects that can be broken down into even smaller steps that are actionable.

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CONVERSATION PROJECT

In the beginning, conversations are one or two lines and are scripted: A: How are you?

B: I am fine. How are you?

A: I’m well.

Conversations are often led by a fluent speaker, and the novice learner is cued for yes/no or oneword answers: A: What did you do today? Did you work?

B: No. A: Did you read?

B: Yes. I read (too).

The goal is not perfect pronunciation and grammatical syntax. Rather, it is to get the learner to practice and get comfortable with communication.

The novice learner may only understand a portion of what is being said, but they are building their conversation skills. Allow the conversation to go where it goes.

Try to do it every day. Begin with five minutes at a time for the first week.

Then add five minutes each week until you are at an hour per day.

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BEING IN THE LANGUAGE

Language revitalization and stabilization can be measured by a variety of techniques. One technique is to measure the time of language use. With just the three projects outlined above, the total time spent using the language can start with 15 minutes per day.

Next week, add five minutes more to each day, and so on, until the language is used one to three or more hours per day.

BUILDING MULTILANGUAGE DOMAINS

Here I discuss only three projects.

As your knowledge base grows, your capacity to take on new projects will also grow. Other language domains to consider are raising children, going for walks, bathroom domains, classroom immersions, creating multimedia content, and so forth. By expanding language domains, you build your language world, and incorporate the many functions and purposes all languages have.

Language Materials Sharing Space

By Jaeci Hall

This summer, NILI initiated collaboration with the Digital Scholarship Center at the

Hawai‘i Connections

By Janne Underriner

In January, Joana, Judith, Robert, and I presented at the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium hosted by the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Motivating the trip was also the desire to partner with the university to expand opportunities for our students to receive instruction and training in Indigenous language revitalization of the Pacific Northwest and Hawai‘i. Collectively, our students need more opportunities to experience language revitalization and maintenance work taking place in tribal and Hawaiian communities. Our starting point is to provide student internships through NILI-UO and the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke’elikōlani.

We have drafted a memorandum of understanding between the institutions. This year, the first student, Grace Bezilla (Mamo), was hosted by the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, spending time in their Chinuk Wawa immersion school and later joining us at NILI. Mamo was supported through scholarships from the Division of Student Life and the Office for Research and Innovation. See the article on page 7.

UO Libraries to create a language archive for NILI materials. The project supports a Graduate Research Fellowship funded by the Graduate School and Knight Library.

Together with speakers and tribes, we are creating a web portal through Mukurtu, an online content-management system designed originally to support culturally sensitive materials, currently being used for the Plateau Peoples Portal project at Washington State University (plateauportal.wsulibs.wsu.edu). This project is a continuation of work done at NILI last year by fellow Megan Walker, who worked to organize and catalog NILI’s language materials.

Many of the materials housed at NILI are curricular in nature. These include prekindergarten through second grade Chinuk Wawa immersion curriculum taught at the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde’s Chinuk Wawa immersion courses, and materials used in teaching UO’s Ichishkíin language courses. The archive will support the educational value of these materials by making them available to both learners and teachers; also the archive itself will serve as a model for others wanting to develop a language resource.

Among Mukurtu’s useful features is the ability to control access by assigning cultural protocol constraints to material. Mukurtu allows for storage of a wide variety of file formats such as audio, video, image, and text files. It allows categorical marking of documents making them accessible from different domains— for example, the content category basketry will contain descriptions, traditional knowledge and cultural narratives of basketry materials, processes, weaving types, and narratives of basket weavers. Typing in any of these descriptors can access the category. In addition, there is a place for comments from the community. Mukurtu supports standard and creative commons licenses as well as traditional licensing and labels, making even clearer the rights of viewers to access and use the materials housed in this web portal.

We will work closely with each community represented to ensure that materials are shared with deference to cultural protocol and tribal preferences. It is the hope and intention of NILI and the Digital Scholarship Center that this project supports broader language revitalization efforts by creating access to valuable materials that can assist language programs and language learners.

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Summer Institute 2014

By Holly Lakey

Participants in 2014’s Summer Institute came to NILI from Mississippi, California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Nevada, Alaska, and Hawai‘i. Courses included six Native language classes.

We continued our Youth Program, with students creating materials for their language programs and learning about being a language mentor.

A weekend workshop featuring a

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humorous simulation of daily language use by Stan Rodriguez was a big hit with participants. We hosted a lunch for the elders who attended, greatly appreciating their words and laughter.

Summer Institute participants were excited to get together and share their own experiences as well as learn new tools to assist in their language teaching. Elements from the institute that participants stated they would

NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

implement in their own classes included reclaiming domains of language use, practicing situational fluency, the creation and singing of songs, and, of course, using the materials they were able to develop, including e-books and language websites.

We have been able to reach so many participants over the years due to the generous support of our donors. In 2014, NILI was able to provide scholarships for 14 participants. We would like to thank the UO Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, the Taylor Fithian Family Fund, the UO Office of the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, the John and Robin Jaqua Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation, the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration, the Wildhorse Foundation, Spirit Mountain Community Fund, and Virginia Beavert.

Across the Pacific

By Grace Bezilla

Making about 40 new friends; getting an introduction to a new Native language; hearing bits of different Native languages; studying language learning strategies; living with elders and youth; creating a project that will be put into use at home in Keaukaha, Hilo, Hawai‘i—that’s a snapshot of what I gained from NILI’s 2014 Summer Institute at the University of Oregon.

Colleagues from tribes across the US came together at the institute this past summer for two weeks, and my perspective changed forever. Many of their languages are highly endangered, and lots of them are holding on due to these colleagues that put all of their effort into gathering words, phrases, and cultural aspects and teaching others.

To be together with these amazing, accomplished trustees of language was a gift that I will never forget. I got to hear about their trials, which are really still the trials of my people 30 years later, and they got to hear how we’re doing, or what we’ve been through. It’s really inspiring. If you feel like you don’t know what to do at times and that you just want to give up, you should really go to NILI. I’ve realized that I’m not alone, and that’s huge.

I never really looked at language learning from outside of the classroom.

I never analyzed immersion strategies in a class before, but I work in an immersion classroom for a career, and I experienced Hawaiian immersion as

a student in grades K–2 about 20 years ago. As a Hawaiian immersion teacher, I really appreciated NILI's immersion methodology class. It affirmed what I had been thinking and analyzing on my own, and it’s nice to see my own thoughts validated with peers working with the revitalization of different Native languages. Reclaiming domains was also a huge idea that I’ve never heard of, but for anyone who is trying to master a language in the home, this is a key concept to learn about.

NILI is different. It’s not your normal “come and do what I propose, and then maybe you’ll pass” experience.

For me, it was “come, and I’ll teach you concepts, then I want you to use those concepts to create something useful for you at your home base.”

Creating a new perspective for teaching

American history to my fifth graders is just one thing that I’ve brought home to Keaukaha, Hilo, Hawai‘i. This has resulted in focusing on self-confidence, and now, in our second term, conducting a Native American band research project. Next term, we will focus on colonization, and at the end of the year, we will study the effect of colonization on Native Americans today.

What everyone gained at NILI was different, but it is really worthwhile to be among professionals in the same line of work, teaching an endangered or very endangered Indigenous language that not much is known about. The classes are challenging, the time is short, there is a lot of stress, but there is also a lot of personal growth and collaboration.

The coolest thing is that you get to hear the truth about language revitalization from colleagues in the field, you get to hear about how things were done by elders, and you get to hear the feelings of youth that are being immersed in the languages today. It’s hard, it’s nights short on sleep, it’s lots of thinking, and it’s crazy-hot, too, but it’s so worthwhile—no pain, no gain. Plus, it’s only two weeks. Thank you, NILI! Mamo (Grace) teaches fourth and fifth grade at Ka ʻUmeke Kāʻeo (Hawaiian Immersion School) in Keaukaha, Hilo, Hawaiʻi. She is also a master’s student at Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani, College of Hawaiian Language, University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.

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A Trip to Town

NILI Family: Where Are They Now?

By Holly Lakey

One of NILI’s core missions is the training of teachers to pass on Native languages to future generations. Many members of our NILI family are continuing this mission in their communities.

Jesse Blackburn has been teaching English language learners at Portland State University and within the community and has also served as a Head Start representative.

Cassy George (Suquamish) is now teaching her language to middle schoolers at Chief Kitsap Academy in Suquamish, Washington.

Roger Jacob (Yakama) is teaching Ichishkíin at Wapato High School and Wapato Middle School.

“I learned that it’s okay to let go of feeling inadequate and making mistakes when speaking my language; and that it takes practice to do that. I’m going to use the speaking town-community in my class!”

By Joana Jansen

The Saturday between the two weeks of Summer Institute was a bit more exciting than some years. The UO Many Nations Longhouse was filled with all of the 10plus languages represented at Summer Institute. We debated current events: gay marriage, the war in Afghanistan, and veterans benefits. The afternoon featured blackjack games at the casino and a gambling recovery intervention. Some participants fit in a strenuous workout or spa visit, while others went shopping for clothing, fabric, and groceries. We had a choice of restaurants when we were ready for a break. Later in the afternoon, the police were called, resulting in several participants being arrested and booked into jail.

Our guest presenter for the Friday afternoon and Saturday workshop was Stan Rodriguez. Stan is Kumeyaay, from the Santa Ysabel Reservation. He teaches at Kumeyaay Community College and is a board member of the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS). A bonus of having Stan with us is that it further strengthened our ties to AICLS. The focus of the workshop was situational fluency and immersion—being able to use Native languages throughout the day, outside of classrooms, in contexts where we typically use English. Stan stressed that as learners, we are often hard on ourselves, but that we need to support one another and give ourselves permission to make mistakes as we use and learn language. On Saturday afternoon, we set up a “town” in the longhouse, with various language groups choosing businesses to develop and run. Participants then communicated multilingually to frequent the businesses—but when a desire for more fabric led to a robbery at the casino, the Northern Paiute–speaking cops came in. This was a Summer Institute first!

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NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

Lindsay Marean (Potawatomi) is the practical linguist for the Pakanapul Language Team (Tübatulabal) in California and a fieldworker for a Documenting Endangered Languages project on Potawatomi.

Greg Sutterlict (Yakama) is the director of the Heritage University Language Center as well as the Mellon Endowed Chair of the Sahaptin Language Department at Heritage.

Carson Viles (Siletz) is continuing to learn Dee-ni’ Wee-ya’ at home and is expanding the “language world” of Deeni’ in Eugene.

Jerome Viles (Siletz) started the master’s program in nonprofit management at the UO. Megan Walker (Grand Ronde) is presently a graduate student in the UO Teach Sapsik’ʷałá (Teacher) Education Project.

Racquel Yamada has been settling into her role as an assistant professor of anthropology and liaison to the Native American Languages Program at the University of Oklahoma.

For a longer sketch of our NILI family’s current goings-on, please visit our website at pages.uoregon.edu/nwili/ news/nili-family-where-are-they-now.

NILI Faculty: The Year at a Glance Janne, Joana, Zalmai, Pyuwa, NILI staff member Jerome Viles, and Michelle Jacob (director, Center for Native Health and Culture, Heritage University) presented at the UO’s Alternative Sovereignties Conference.

JANUARY Joana Jansen, associate director of project development and coordination, presented a paper at the Society for Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas–Linguistic Society of America (LSA) annual conference in Minneapolis. She is a member of the LSA’s Committee on Endangered Languages and Their Preservation, chaired by past NILI instructor Tim Thornes.

Joana, along with Janne Underriner, NILI director, Judith Fernandes, NILI language teaching consultant, Robert Elliott, NILI associate director of educational technology, and Kathy Cole, cultural education and outreach program manager from the Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde, presented at the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium in Hilo, Hawai‘i. Janne, Judith, and Joana extended their stay to present in a colloquium and a class, and meet with students and teachers at Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language at UH Hilo and Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu Laboratory School. See articles about our Hawai‘i connections on pages 5 and 7.

FEBRUARY Joana and graduate research fellows Zalmai ʔəswəli “Zeke” Zahir and Regan Anderson facilitated a weekend retreat and strategic planning session for the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival in Berkeley, California.

MARCH Janne coorganized a special session for the American Association of Applied Linguistics annual meeting in Portland, titled “Supporting Maintenance and Revitalization of North American Indigenous Languages: Collaborations between Communities, Applied and Theoretical Linguists.” Virginia Beavert, research associate and Ichishkíin

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professor, Joana, and graduate research fellows Zalmai and Pyuwa Bommelyn presented, as did colleagues from the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University.

Joana, Regan, Robert, and Ichishkíin class students traveled to the Yakama Nation to meet with other language learners and teachers and tour the museum and murals. The trip gave students an opportunity to be at the homeland of the language.

APRIL Janne presented at the 39th Annual Oregon Indian Education Association Conference at Warm Springs.

NILI, the Many Nations Longhouse, the Department of Linguistics, and the student linguistics organization Gloss hosted filmmaker Walt Wolfram and the public premiere of the film First Language: The Race to Save Cherokee, a collaborative production of the North Carolina Language and Life Project and the Eastern Band of Cherokee.

Judith and Robert presented a Skype guest lecture on assessment to William O’Grady and Kamil Deen’s graduate seminar on language revitalization at the University of Hawai‘i, Manoa.

MAY Robert and graduate research fellow Megan Walker presented at UO’s Foreign Languages and International Studies Day.

Joana, Zalmai, and Rhonda Malone of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians attended the Breath of Life workshop hosted by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival at the University of California at Berkeley.

Our annual Summer Institute was June 23–July 3. See the articles on pages 6 through 8.

Janne and Judith presented at the Native Language Policies and Practices webinar sponsored by Education Northwest.

Janne and Michelle Jacob gave a workshop for staff members at the Lane County Juvenile Justice Center, John Serbu Youth Campus.

AUGUST Virginia, Joana, and Regan attended the Páwyak’ukt Ichishkíin Sapsikw’ałáma (Gathering of Ichishkíin Teachers) at Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington.

OCTOBER Robert presented at the National Indian Education Conference in Anchorage, Alaska, along with language teacher Damien Totus and youth from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation’s Nixyáawii Community High School. See the article on page 13.

NOVEMBER Virginia, Janne, Joana, and Robert attended the Umatilla Dictionary publication release in Pendleton. A number of UO graduates also were in attendance.

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Collaborative Work 2014

Administration for Native Americans (ANA) Projects Chahta Anno̱pa Isht A̱ya In this year of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians’ ANA project, Chahta Anno̱pa Isht A _ ya, teachers are in training to receive their Choctaw language instructor certification. NILI is providing training for the certification, and instructing online via Google Hangouts. A group of teachers attended the Summer Institute, and we are planning two visits to Mississippi in 2015. The project goal is to train and certify Choctaw language instructors and produce language learning materials for prekindergarten and elementary school learners in Choctaw tribal schools.

Creating Ichishkíin Speakers The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs’ ANA project, now in its first year, will develop teachers for the Autni Ichishkin Sapsikwat preschool.

Teaching apprentices will build their language proficiency and their teaching skills, and will become tribally certified as language teachers. NILI is pleased to collaborate with the language program and their skilled elders and teachers on teacher training for the new group 10

of teachers. NILI staff members will travel to Warm Springs for trainings, and Warm Springs staff members will participate in UO online courses and attend the Summer Institute.

National Science Foundation Documenting Endangered Languages Program Projects 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. We are recording elders speaking about places and cultural and natural resource management and preservation within the Yakama Nation, then 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.

High School Youth Programs With funding from the AMB Foundation and the Sociological Initiatives Foundation as well as tribal funding from Spirit Mountain Community

NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

Fund and Wildhorse Foundation, NILI has involved tribal youth from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in classroom projects to design and create teaching materials, which they then share with younger learners in their communities. Youth from these communities also attend the Summer Institute. See the article on page 3.

Funding from the Gates Foundation supports our continued work with the Yakama Nation Language Program, the Yakama Reservation Wellness Coalition, and the Toppenish-Eagle School District. The goal is to increase self-esteem, cultural pride, and drugand alcohol-free lifestyles for at-risk teenagers while building language and technology skills. Youth and families will discuss language loss and language use within their own households. Youth will develop culture-based e-books and teaching materials and will attend the Summer Institute.

Oregon Department of Education and Lane Education Service District chaku-kəmtəks pi hayu-kəmtəks (to learn and be in the process of learning): Southern Willamette Valley Project is an initiative of Lane Education Service District with funding via the Oregon Department of Education. NILI, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and public schools of Lane County also participate. The project will improve pedagogical practices and teaching strategies for and about Native Americans. See Judith Fernandes’ article on page 3.

The Takelma Language Restoration Project Takelma is being spoken by a new generation of learners and speakers at the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. The language restoration project is based on recordings, publications, and notes from decades ago, shared by Mrs. Frances Johnson with linguists Edward Sapir and John Harrington. In this third year of the

project, we are continuing work on a database, dictionary, language class curriculum, and materials and events to raise awareness and support. Rhonda Malone and Joana participated in Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival’s Breath of Life workshop in June. Language has become an important part of tribal events, such as the yearly Culture Camp.

the Portland and Eugene areas with 100and 200-level courses.

At the UO, Ichishkíin 200-level courses are being offered this academic year, with the 100-level course to repeat beginning in fall 2015. Last spring, students traveled to the Yakama Nation with a stop along the Klikitat River to

meet with mural artist Janet Essley, who painted a mural of food gathering and preparation that students had studied and viewed. They shared their classroom projects with Ichishkíin teachers at the Teacher’s Gathering. This year, students will again travel to one of the areas where Ichishkíin is spoken.

NILI Distance Education Initiative NILI is in its third year of developing and offering distance education opportunities for Native language and teacher communities. With thanks to the continued generous support in funding from the Fithian Family Foundation and UO Academic Extension, NILI is addressing the needs of language teachers by creating online environments and practice opportunities for increasing fluency and confidence in their speaking beyond the intermediate levels. Mobile applications are also being incorporated into our creation of materials, to enhance “anytime, anywhere” learning models for Native languages.

Ichishkíin Teachers’ Gathering and Website NILI and Heritage University’s Center for Native Culture and Health sponsored the second annual Páwyak’ukt Ichishkíin Sapsikw’ałáma (Gathering of Ichishkíin Teachers) at Heritage University in August. This event highlights language teachers sharing materials and learning from one another.

The shared materials, as well as other Ichishkíin language teaching units, will be posted on a website and made available to those attending the event.

Language Classes The Chinuk Wawa Language Program supported by Lane Community College is a collaboration between Lane, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and NILI. In its eighth year, the program serves the UO, Lane, and Portland State undergraduate and graduate students, and also community members on the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation and in

Project in Focus

Puyallup Tribal Language Project: Helping People Speak Lushootseed This project, funded by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, supports graduate research fellow Zalmai ʔəswəli “Zeke” Zahir to work on txʷəlšucid language revitalization. The project involves daily video conferencing and language support between Zalmai and project staff in Washington three weeks per month, with one week per month when Zalmai travels to the language program in Washington. The team is engaged in a variety of activities to build language use. They are establishing txʷəlšucid language within the infant room at the early learning center, with the goal of establishing language use in all the classes. Classrooms at Chief Leschi schools include txʷəlšucid. Tribal government is increasing language use. In short, more people are speaking and using the language.

A key feature is to increase the specific domains in which txʷəlšucid is used, topics such as giving commands, pleasantries, greetings, speeches, storytelling, arguing, and entertaining. By choosing specific domains within an individual’s world, learners begin to use language in “actionable” and attainable increments. See as well the article “Promoting Language Use” on page 4.

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NILI Graduate Fellows 2014–15 Regan Anderson

noir fiction, and watching bad horror movies. Currently Holly is the NILI administrative GTF and loves the struggle of keeping things in organized chaos. She is also working with NILI and the Department of Linguistics toward the creation of an endangered language revitalization certificate program.

Graduate teaching fellow Regan Anderson is in her second year of the master’s language teaching specialization program through the Department of Linguistics at the UO. She is coteaching the second year Yakima Ichishkíin Language course as a GTF with Yakama elder Virginia Beavert. Her hobbies include playing the piano and playing with her dogs.

Zalmai ʔəswəli “Zeke” Zahir

Jaeci Hall Jaeci Hall is a first year PhD student in the linguistics department. She is currently working with a team to build an archive of language materials that can be easily accessible through a web portal to language learners and community members, as she writes in the article on page 5. She focuses her studies on the revitalization of her own heritage language, Tututni, an Athabaskan language from southwest Oregon. She spends her spare time with her beautiful daughter and by being musical in any form that she can, from playing the bassoon to singing Native songs.

Holly Lakey Holly has a BA in linguistics and Latin from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and is presently a PhD candidate in the UO linguistics department. Her research looks at the intersection of morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics, especially in the context of language change. She also enjoys raising awareness about the wonders of linguistics and the importance of language preservation.

Holly enjoys hiking, camping, reading

Graduate Student Profile: Marnie Atkins language program coordinator, as well as with the Northwest Indian Language Institute. She continues to work with her ancestral language Sulótalak (commonly known as “Wiyot”) as a student and community language worker and advocate. Marnie has a master of arts degree with a Native language teaching specialization from the University of Oregon and is currently working toward her doctorate in anthropology.

Marnie Atkins is from Northern California and is a citizen of the Wiyot Tribe. She has worked in language revitalization for many years with her tribe as the cultural director and 12

Marnie is excited to be working with the NILI staff and tribal communities again.

In the past, she has worked on notable projects such as the 17th Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium, InField 2010, and other Indigenous language conferences at

NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

Zalmai ʔəswəli “Zeke” Zahir has been working with the Lushootseed language and culture for more than 35 years.

He teaches, studies, and researches Lushootseed, and is currently working with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians on language learning and teaching. His main goal is to see the Lushootseed language revitalized through people speaking and using the language every day. Zalmai uses Lushootseed every day, encourages NILI colleagues to speak their languages, and meets with others in Eugene who are making their languages part of their lives. See his article “Promoting Language Use” on page 4.

the UO. Marnie has been the NILI Summer Institute GTF for the past three years. She says that this is one of her favorite positions at NILI because she is able to work with and learn from Native language teachers, learners, and advocates who never cease to amaze her with their hard work and dedication to the endurance of Indigenous languages.

This year, Marnie is working with NILI staff members to build curriculum for an online Native language teacher training course; assist with creating culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy and practices for school and community educators that aim to improve Native student academic achievement; work with others on the Native language revitalization specialization project; and develop curriculum for NILI’s 2015 Summer Institute.

NILI Work-Study Students 2014–15 Stephanie Evers

Mary Johnson

Stephanie is a senior in linguistics and comes to us from Portland, Oregon. She is working on the Takelma language, specifically on verb-stem changes, for the eventual development of materials to aid in the language’s revitalization. In her free time, Stephanie enjoys solving word puzzles, reading surrealist fiction, and learning to play the violin.

Mary, a freshman, is considering majoring in education. She comes to us from Raymond, Washington, and is a member of the Shoalwater Bay and Chinook tribes. Mary is working on digitizing tapes of Ichishkíin language classes to add to the NILI archives.

Her hobbies include watching movies, spending time with friends and family, and hanging out with her Canoe family.

Tracie Jackson Tracie, a sophomore in the art program at the UO, is from Flagstaff, Arizona, and is a member of the Navajo tribe.

At NILI, she is contributing to several projects, including curriculum organization and filming speakers for NILI’s online language teaching classes. Her hobbies include painting, performing volunteer service, and hanging out with friends.

A. J. Kazarian A. J. is a senior in the linguistics program and comes from San Jose, California. A. J. is working on the EuroBABEL project, funded through the

Department of Linguistics, by digitizing and transliterating texts in the Nez Perce language. A. J. is a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, enjoys visiting the Cascade Raptor Center here in Eugene, and also plays guitar.

Rachel Pappadis Rachel, a senior in the advertising program who comes from Wilsonville, is in her second year of working at NILI. She is currently assisting with our multimedia projects, including developing a new NILI brochure and helping to design this newsletter.

Rachel enjoys painting and reading in her free time, and hanging out with her cat, Clio.

Aubrey Jacobus Aubrey is a junior in the linguistics program and is from Redmond, Oregon. She is working at NILI on the EuroBABEL (Better Analyses Based on Endangered Languages) grant, funded through the Department of Linguistics, and digitizes and transliterates books in the Klickitat and Cowlitz languages. Her hobbies include all forms of art, and her favorite class is Ichishkíin.

Undergraduate Student Profile: Lorraine Goggles Lorraine Goggles, a UO sophomore specializing in preeducation, is a workstudy student at NILI this year. As one of a team of workers who help us keep the institute running smoothly, Lorraine supports us in many ways—creating bilingual storybooks, archiving files, and doing whatever else comes along.

She is from the Wind River Reservation (Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone) in Wyoming. She speaks Arapaho and a little Shoshone. Growing up with horses, she has a special love for them. One of the highlights of her

summer was acquiring her new horse, Windy Bay. An active Native student, Lorraine has had leadership roles in the Native American Student Union and is involved with the Native Opportunities program. She does beading and participates in traditional ceremonies as well.

She enjoys working at NILI because of the flexibility of the work and its focus on Native languages. This is her second year at the institute. We enjoy having her with us!

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NILI Goes Online

By Robert Elliott

For several years, NILI has been asked to explore new ways to deliver more content online. Our language communities are distributed over a wide area throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond. While gatherings like the NILI Summer Institute are an invaluable experience, time, distance, and cost are very real hurdles that prevent many from participating. Teachers who want to build community and professional networks while thinking about important issues that affect their job skills are not always able to get the support they need.

NILI ACADEMIC EXTENSION COURSES

Beginning September 2014, NILI launched its first online course offering, Lifelong Language Learning, which is part of a series of courses for teacher development.

These are 1-credit courses offered through Academic Extension. The classes are fully online (no face-to-face meetings) and participants work through weekly thematic units, delving into resources, taking part in discussions, performing tasks, and keeping a learning log.

Currently, there are 10 students from six different communities in the pilot class, each working with their own language. One of the biggest benefits, many participants say, is the chance to interact with colleagues in faraway places working with the same struggles and concerns.

More classes will be offered in the winter and spring terms. The next course in the series, Teaching Your Language to Others, will be of interest for program administrators, classroom teachers, home-schoolers, parents raising children in a language, and language mentors—basically anyone involved in the teaching process, either formally or informally. The final course, Action Research for Language Revitalization, will offer participants a chance to affect a change in their teaching or language community. While the courses build on each other, it is not required to take them in sequence.

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NILI—THE NORTHWEST INDIAN LANGUAGE INSTITUTE

NILI-CHOCTAW WORKSHOP SERIES

Another NILI online program this year is in collaboration with the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians language program Friday workshop series. Based on a model first tested in 2013 while NILI was working with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, we offer live workshops from our offices in Eugene to a group of 50 language teachers gathered in Mississippi. Important to the model is having a facilitator “on the ground” at the location. Jason Lewis from the language program serves that role in the current project; he coplans the workshops, helps with technology, aids in discussions, and orchestrates group work, all serving to make the workshops run more smoothly. Using a live connection through Google Hangouts, we share video feeds, slides, and even screens from afar, and the sessions can be recorded for future viewing.

These online workshops will be supplemented with several visits to Mississippi for in-person workshops.

While nothing substitutes for face to face meetings, through the recent improvements in streaming video technology NILI is able to offer options for professional growth from a distance.

Stay tuned as NILI works to develop and extend more online models!

Keeping Your Language Data Safe

By Joana Jansen

THE IMPORTANCE OF METADATA

HAVE A PLAN

Each project at NILI is unique. Some

Metadata refers to information about a recording session, such as who the speakers are, who the recorder is, the language you are recording, and the date and location of the recording session. An easy way to keep track of the basic metadata is to make a statement at the beginning of the recording. A sample script might be as follows:

Backing up means you have a secure copy in a separate place. You should do this throughout the analyzing and distribution process. Back up whenever you finish an important step in your work, even if it is not the final finished product. Some files are never finished. Develop and write a backup strategy appropriate for your language materials. Consider what is feasible based on your situation. What kinds of external storage can you afford?

Do you have access to a central server?

At what locations are you and your collaborators comfortable storing data?

Can you share resources or storage space with other people or programs?

are focused on curriculum, some on teacher training, some on technology.

We are engaged in several language documentation projects: recording elder speakers, analyzing those recordings, and developing products to distribute the elders’ teachings. Throughout all of our projects, we need to think about making adequate backups so that we will not lose our work or, more important, precious recordings of our elders. With digital materials and inexpensive and easy-to-use storage devices, developing and using a data backup plan has become in some ways easier, but still an important responsibility we need to meet. Have a schedule and a plan, and allocate time for data management— keeping our materials safe takes time.

COLLECTING YOUR LANGUAGE MATERIALS Backing up your data can and should start as soon as you collect it. For example, recording both audio and video gives you two files for the same event, very useful in case your equipment or recording techniques fail. Think about keeping both physical and digital copies.

If you have pieces of paper associated with the recording session—images or notes—scan these or take a photo of them so you also have them in a digital format.

We don’t make many recordings onto tapes anymore, but you may choose to take your digital recording and burn it to a CD—making a physical copy. Physical copies will survive hard drive crashes and computer viruses, and tend to be hardier than some digital media. You can store them in a location separate from your computer. However, they degrade over time, and as technology changes, may become obsolete—reelto-reel tapes and 5¼-inch floppy disks are hard to access! Some computers no longer have CD drives. Because physical and digital copies have different strengths and weaknesses, it is a good idea to keep both.

Today is (date) and I (name) am at (place) with (elder’s name), a speaker of (dialect, language). (She or he) has agreed to take part in the (project name). Our elder will talk about (topic).

By recording this information and keeping it with the recording, you’ve taken a step to ensure that if the recordings get misplaced, forgotten about, separated from your metadata file, or whatever else, you or whoever listens next will have this information.

NAMING AND WORKING WITH COMPUTER FILES When you transfer a recording from your camera or audio or video recorder, it probably has a name that is not very useful for identifying the recording.

Develop a template and rename these files right away. For our NSF project with the Yakama Nation, we name files with the speaker’s initials, project name, date of recording, and type and number of the recording. The file extension tells us the type of file.

A single recorded event can have many associated computer files. Keep these together in a folder, and keep the file name the same, or similar, so it is evident that they belong together.

If it is a file that you are working with frequently and editing, add the date to the file name each time you work, so you will know what is most recent.

This can also be useful if more than one person is working on the file or project.

MINIMAL SUGGESTIONS FOR BACKING UP YOUR DIGITAL FILES • After moving audio or video data onto your computer, back up an untouched copy of the files. Keep this untouched file in at least two separate locations.

Use a third copy as your working copy.

Remember the acronym LOCKSS: Lots of copies keeps stuff safe.

• After every work session, back up that day’s work onto a thumb drive or e-mail it to yourself (if e-mails are kept online), or put it onto online storage such as Google drive.

• Back up to an external hard drive at least weekly.

• If you are using special software and fonts, back up a copy of these.

Versions change, or they may stop being made.

• Files can be lost by flood, fire, and theft, not just machine failure. One set of backups should be kept in a different location or building than the originals.

These are first steps, and just a part of best practices for data in language documentation. Long-term archiving and access require further steps.

Contact us with questions, and read the article on Mukurtu (page 5) for more on NILI’s steps towards long-term archiving and access.

Thanks to Chris Doty, who contributed to this article.

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Thank You NILI could not do the work we do without your generous support. This year NILI donors supported the following: • Ichishkíin language—Donor gifts supported Ichishkíin language scholarship and tutoring.

• Graduate fellowship—Gifts provided a Graduate Research Fellowship to archive NILI materials and create a Native language resource bank to serve learners and scholars of Native languages.

• Scholarships—14 Summer Institute participants received scholarships.

Thank you for your generosity!

Margaret and James Bean Virginia Beavert, PhD ’12 Lynne Bonnett, BA ’69 Mary Deiters, MS ’80, and Thomas Faxon Linda Danielson, DA ’74 Taylor Fithian and Family

• Research and outreach—Gifts for graduate student conference expenses made it possible for two students to present papers.

• Elder involvement—Elder stipends brought two elders to the Summer Institute.

• Distance learning—Gifts for expanding NILI’s distance learning program allowed Robert and NILI faculty members to design a three-term teacher training course (see Robert’s article inside). These courses were an answer to a request from tribes, as not all of their language instructors can leave their homes to study at the UO. 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 Summer 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.

Your giving benefits individuals, preschool to university students, families, and tribal communities. Your gift to NILI ensures that Native languages, culture, and history, regionally and beyond, are alive and strengthened.

John and Robin Jaqua Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation Carla, BS ’91, and Andrew Viles, PhD ’97 University of Oregon, Academic Extension University of Oregon, Division of Student Life University of Oregon, Office of the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion University of Oregon, Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

I would like to contribute to the Northwest Indian Language Institute, fund 20-6150.

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Signature Check enclosed, payable to “UO Foundation” Please mail payment to University of Oregon Foundation, 1720 E. 13th Ave., Suite 410, Eugene OR 97403-1905

An equal-opportunity, affirmative-action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This publication will be made available in accessible formats upon request. Accommodations for people with disabilities will be provided if requested in advance. © 2014 University of Oregon. MC1214-214b-K52191