
	Teaching Indigenous Languages

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CONFERENCES

Brief History of the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposiums

Goals of the Symposiums

To bring together American Indian and other indigenous language educators and activists to share ideas and experiences on how to teach effectively American Indian and other indigenous languages in and out of the classroom.
To provide a forum for exchange of scholarly research on teaching American Indian and other indigenous languages.
To disseminate through the Internet and monographs recent research and thinking on best practices to promote, preserve, and protect American Indian and other indigenous languages.

The First Symposium focused on creating an agenda for reversing language shift and was held on November 16-18, 1994 at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, and featured some the leading figures in the field of minority language preservation. The symposium had four roundtables. They were on needs and rationale, community issues, education, and policy. It was hosted by Northern Arizona University (NAU) with assistance from the Bilingual Unit of the Arizona Department of Education, The Hopi Tribe, Navajo Community College, The Navajo Nation, Tuba City Unified School District #15, and EAC - West, Las Vegas, New Mexico. The conference was planned by Gina Cantoni, Benjamin Barney, Robert Luis Carrasco, Deborah House, Richard Littlebear, and Gary McLean and facilitated by Robert Arnold, Benjamin Barney, William Demmert, Joshua Fishman, Richard Littlebear, Dan McLaughlin, John Oller, and Jon Reyhner. Dick Heiser played a major role in organizing the symposium, and it was funded with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs. Papers, speeches, and session summaries from this Symposium were published in Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Go to First Symposium Program.

The Second Symposium was held on May 4-6, 1995 at NAU and also included many tribal educators from throughout Arizona. The second symposium was also funded with the grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs. Speeches, session summaries, and submitted papers were published in Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Go to Second Symposium Program. Go to brief overview of first two symposiums

The Third Symposium was hosted by Dr. Richard Littlebear and held in Anchorage, Alaska, in February 1996 and brought together mostly Alaskan Native educators. No proceedings were published from this conference.

The Fourth Symposium on "Sharing Effective Language Renewal Practices" was sponsored by NAU's Center for Excellence in Education and Department of Modern Languages and held on May 1-3, 1997. It was co-chaired by Dr. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie and Dr. Jon Reyhner. A selection of papers was compiled from this conference and published under the title Teaching Indigenous Languages. A short description of the Fourth Symposium can be found in the NABE News.

The Fifth Symposium on "Strategies for Language Renewal and Revitalization" was co-chaired by Dr. Robert N. St. Clair and Dr. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie and held at Louisville, Kentucky on May 14-16, 1998. Dr. Gina Cantoni, Dr. Jon Reyhner, and Dr. Barbara Burnaby served on the symposium advisory board. Papers from the conference were published in Revitalizing Indigenous Languages.

The Sixth Symposium was held on June 3-5, 1999 at the University of Arizona in Tucson and was sponsored by the Twentieth Annual American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI), which was co-directed by Dr. Teresa L. McCarty and Dr. Ofelia Zepeda. Twenty-three papers from this conference were published by the Center for Indian Education, Arizona State University in 2006 as One Voice, Many Voice--Recreating Indigenous Language Communities. This paperback book is available from the Center at P.O. Box 871311, Tempe, AZ 85287-1311 (Phone 480-965-6292) for $22.50 plus $1.50.

The Seventh Symposium on "Language Across the Community" was held on May 11-14, 2000 at The Toronto Colony Hotel in Toronto, Canada. The conference chair was Dr. Barbara Burnaby of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. More than 500 people attended this very successful conference, including indigenous language activists from across Canada and the United States, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawai'i, and South America. Go to the conference proceedings

The Eighth Symposium on "Merging Tradition & Technology to Revitalize Indigenous Languages" was co-chaired by Gary Owens and Jon Reyhner and held on June 14-16, 2001 at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Go to Conference Program (pdf file);

The Ninth Symposium was held at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, June 9-11, 2002. Go to Conference Program

The Tenth Symposium was hosted by the Ho Chunk Nation on June 25-28, 2003 in Wisconsin Dells, WI. Selected papers from the 8th, 9th, and 10th conferences are included in Nurturing Native Languages.

The Eleventh Symposium was held in Berkeley, California on June 11-13, 2004. It was chaired by Leanne Hinton and hosted by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and the University of California at Berkeley.

The 2005 Symposium was held on June 2-5, 2005 in Victoria, British Columbia, at the University of Victoria.

The 2006 Symposium was chaired by Lori Quigley and held on May 18-21, 2006, in Buffalo, New York and was co-hosted by Buffalo State College's School of Education and the Seneca Nation of Indians. An article by Christine Graef in News From Indian Country on this conference is on-line at http://www.indiancountrynews.info/fullstory.cfm-ID=449.htm.

The 2007 Symposium was held in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, on June 1-3 and was hosted by Eastern Michigan University and the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Nation and chaired by Margaret Noori.

The 15th Annual Symposium was held May 2 & 3, 2008 at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. The 16th Annual Symposium is scheduled tentatively for April 30 to May 2, 2009 at Arizona State University and the 17th Symposium is scheduled to be at the University of Oregon on June 17-20, 2010.

For many years the Native American Languages Issues (NALI) group held annual conferences. Go to Information on NALI

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