National Breath of Life

An exciting new opportunity for language revitalization is scheduled for summer 2011. The National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Endangered Languages is designed to help language learners and language activists make use of existing documentary materials for their languages.

Many Native American languages--including most of those in Alaska--are actually quite well documented from a linguistic point of view. However, much of this documentation is written for a specialist audience, making use of jargon and obscure terminology. Anyone who doubts this claim should consider the case of Tlingit, which is extremely well documented in the works of Constance Naish (1966), Gillian Story (1966), and Jeff Leer (1991). While those descriptions are quite extensive they are very difficult to read.

Breath of Life has been held on a local level in California for several years (see the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival). In 2011 Breath of Life becomes a national level event, and participants will have access to the extensive collections of the National Anthropological Archives. Participants in the Breath of Life Institute work in a team with a mentor/linguist to learn how best to access and make use of existing materials for their language.

The institute takes place in Washington, DC, June 13-24, 2011.

The application deadline is March 1, 2011.

http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/BOL/