Award Abstract # 1601738
Workshop: Assessing and Documenting the Vitality of Native American Languages

NSF Org: BCS
Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
Recipient: UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Initial Amendment Date: March 11, 2016
Latest Amendment Date: August 2, 2016
Award Number: 1601738
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Joan Maling
BCS
 Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
SBE
 Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Start Date: March 15, 2016
End Date: May 31, 2019 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $49,999.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $59,936.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2016 = $59,936.00
History of Investigator:
  • Tyler Peterson (Principal Investigator)
    t.peterson@asu.edu
  • Ofelia Zepeda (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: University of Arizona
845 N PARK AVE RM 538
TUCSON
AZ  US  85721
(520)626-6000
Sponsor Congressional District: 07
Primary Place of Performance: University of Arizona
AZ  US  85721-0001
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
07
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): ED44Y3W6P7B9
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): Tribal College & Univers Prog,
DEL
Primary Program Source: 01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
04001617DB NSF Education & Human Resource
Program Reference Code(s): 1311, 1744, 7556, 7719
Program Element Code(s): 174400, 771900
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.075

ABSTRACT

The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. All Native American languages are endangered, although they vary considerably in terms of 'vitality,' that is, who, how and where the languages are in use. Currently, there is no systematic assessment of the Native American languages of the United States and their vitality. Through a workshop followed by a summer course, this project will review existing assessment tools and survey methodologies with the goal of enabling participants to create new and innovative assessment tools that address this need. Participants will Native Americans who are currently engaged in language work, as citizen scientists, educators, and staff and students at tribal colleges and universities. This project has the potential to inform policy decisions and implementations in national and international contexts. In addition, it will create a cohort of indigenous citizen scientists well-versed in scientific activities that include research protocols, assessment design and use, data analysis and more.

The American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) at the University of Arizona is in its fourth decade serving as a training institute for Native Americans in descriptive linguistics, language documentation, and assessment and more. Through this pilot project, Documenting Native Language Vitality, AILDI researchers and workshop participants will begin the long term goal to create a model for grass-roots assessment for tribal communities. In the summer course, participants will learn best practices in data collection, management and archiving, as well as how to deploy assessment data. Participants will come from eight Arizona tribal language and four tribal colleges and universities, the latter of whose involvement will test the viability of the national network of tribal colleges for future assessments. The NSF Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUP) program in EHR is providing support for tribal college participation in this project. Assessing language vitality and the collection and analysis of data in language surveys are the empirical cornerstones for language documentation and revitalization projects in Native American communities. Importantly, this innovative approach has implications and potential utility for endangered language scientists and communities worldwide. Results will be published online and in print to promote an ongoing discussion with a wide audience.

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

This project responds to the fact that there is not a current systematic assessment of the Native American languages of the United States. The American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI, University of Arizona) conducted a three-year pilot project to document the vitality of the Indigenous languages of the state of Arizona and to create a model for grass-roots assessment, with the general goal that this tool can serve as a working modal and be shared with tribal communities throughout the U.S. This project departs from traditional language documentation research in that it will lead to the documentation of language vitality. With the help of Native American community-based researchers, a model of language vitality assessment was developed and piloted, creating a cohort of community researchers experienced in

  • research protocols,
  • assessment design and implementation,
  • data collection and management,
  • best practices in data storage and use of assessment data for grant-writing, and
  • preparing and sharing the results of their work with their member communities (tribal councils, etc.)

Another important aim of this project is to broaden participation and empower the language activists who are undertaking language revitalization work in their own communities. As such, there were two specific objectives to this pilot project. The first was to develop a set of training and research opportunities for indigenous community language activists. We had no set criteria for selecting our tribal participants, other than in interest in exploring the central questions our project proposed:

  • Language vitality: what is language vitality, as defined by the community?
  • Assessment: how can we assess, using formal tools such as a survey, language vitality?
  • Practice: how might the results of these questions be deployed in the community
  • Adaptation: how can the above inform how surveys are designed for other communities?

 

The second objective is to synthesize the results of the first objective, with the aim of creating what we are calling a 'toolkit' for investigating language vitality in the indigenous communities in the USA and perhaps beyond. We have a first draft of this toolkit, and we also presented our results and experiences, as a group, at International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019: Perspectives Conference. We are also preparing a more extensive report in the form of a journal article for Language Documentation and Conservation, which is publishing a selection of papers from IYIL 2019. 

Based on this, we put the tools and methods of survey design and data analysis into the hands of the people who need or want this information: the indigenous language activists who work in their communities. As such, the focus of this project was on training, both in a formal context, such as for-credit university course, and a series of intensive workshops. To our knowledge, this the first time this approach has been taken with survey work. The results of this exceeded our expectations: our core participants immediately devoted themselves to the tasks of learning what can be fairly dense, technical, and abstract information. The evidence is in the quality of the results they produced, both in terms of the surveys they designed and how they applied standard analytical methods to their data. 

Related to this objective was the plan to have our participants transform themselves from learners to teachers. This aligns with a current trend which leverages specialists (university professors), concepts (involved in designing a survey), methods (how to design one) and resources (federal assistance like this) in the service of community empowerment and a decreased reliance on outside assistance in carrying out some of the more technical aspects of language revitalization work. Given the successes that were emerging from our original pilot project, we applied for and received supplemental funding and two no-cost extensions which we devoted to training our participants to take what they've learned and train others in this kind of work. This also exceeded our expectations: in the final two workshop our participants took the lead in presenting their work and training the workshop participants in the methods they developed.

Our hope is that this approach developed in this pilot helps us take another step in not only contributing another tool that can be adapted for the purposes of language revitalization efforts, but also in creating a sense of autonomy in how these tools are developed by indigenous researchers.


Last Modified: 09/26/2020
Modified by: Tyler Peterson

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