Revitalizing Indigenous Languages

Amar Almasude is the Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Francis Marion University. He has served at Inspirational Films Inc. as a Translator and Dubbing Director. Amar has also served as a Multimedia Developer at Ohio University, where he also taught Multimedia and Video/Television Production. He has worked and studied in Morocco, Spain, France, and the United States. Amar speaks six languages. His special proficiencies and interests lie in linguistics, communication technology, and education.

Stan Anonby holds a Master's degree in linguistics from the University of North Dakota. He is a Kwak'wala instructor at the 'Umista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, British Columbia, Canada. E-mail anonby@usa.net

Ruth Bennett, Ph.D., Shawnee, is an Ethnographic Researcher at the Center for Indian Community Development at Humboldt State University, a California State University in Arcata, CA. Her research interests center on northern California native languages and community language programs. Her recent publications include Language Proficiency Method, It Really Works, Dundi Ne:sing'? Dixwe:di Unt'e:n? (Who Is It? What Are You Doing?), Four Hupa Songs by Alice Pratt, and "It Really Works" in Teaching Indigenous Languages (Northern Arizona University, 1997).

Brian Bielenberg is currently working toward a Ph.D. in education at the University of California at Berkeley. His main areas of interest are indigenous literacy, language revitalization, school/community collaborations for revitalizing languages, and second language acquisition. His interest in these areas arises out of experiences in such diverse places as Cameroon, West Africa, India, Supai, AZ, and on the Hopi Reservation. These varied experiences have led him to focus on how languages are acquired, why some people lose their language while others are able to maintain theirs, and what role schools can play in maintaining language and cultural diversity.

Harold Campbell, Hupa/Tolowa, is a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, a staff member in the Hupa Language, Culture and Education Program and the Johnson O'Malley K-12 Program of the Hoopa Tribe, and a college student at College of the Redwoods in northern California. His special interest is reviving the Indian Stick Game, a men's sport in Native northern California.

Gina Cantoni, Regents' Professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, is currently coordinating NAU's bilingual multicultural program. She is the editor of Stabilizing Indigenous Languages, a 1996 monograph of NAU's Center for Excellence in Education. Her teaching and research interests include language pedagogy, multicultural education, and Native American issues.

Selena Ditmar (Assiniboine), a native of the Fort Belknap Reservation community, is a language instructor at Fort Belknap College, Harlem, Montana, where for the past two years she has taught Assiniboine language and culture. Currently she is working with the Assiniboine language project in developing printed and multimedia curriculum materials for use at the college level.

Francis E. Flavin (B.S. in computer and information science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, M.A. in history, Indiana University) is presently a doctoral candidate in history at Indiana University specializing in Native American history and is a research assistant at the American Indian Studies Research Institute.

Stephen Greymorning taught courses on linguistics, comparative Indian legislation, and aboriginal self-government at the University of Alberta in Canada from 1988 to 1992 and in 1997 at Southern Cross University in Australia. After receiving his Ph.D. in Political Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma in 1992, he accepted a two-year contract to serve as director of the Arapaho Language and Culture Project for the Wyoming Indian Schools (K-12) at Ethete, Wyoming. While his academic interests have focused on Aboriginal sovereignty issues, he has continued to develop programs and strategies toward revitalizing American Indian languages and is the Executive Director for Hinono'eitiit Hoowu' the Arapaho Language Lodge on the Wind River reservation in Wyoming. Dr. Greymorning is currently a professor at the University of Montana in the departments of Anthropology and Native American Studies.

Wallace E. Hooper (A.B. and M.A. in history, University of Calgary, Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science, Indiana University) is currently multimedia projects coordinator and programmer at the American Indian Studies Research Institute (Indiana University). He has been actively involved in development of both the Arikara multimedia language lessons and the Indiana Dictionary Database.

Silish Jackson, Hupa/Yurok/Karuk, is a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, a staff member of the Hupa Language Program and the Johnson O'Malley K-12 Program of the Hoopa Valley Tribe, and a student majoring in Geology in the Indian Teacher Educational Personnel Program at Humboldt State University.

Julia Kushner is a psycholinguist with a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at the Center for Applied Linguistics. Her research interests include the relation between language and cognition, bilingual and language-minority education issues, and second language learning. She is currently working on a national study of schools with Title VII (Bilingual Education) grants, and has a particular interest in Native American bilingual education programs.

Richard Littlebear, Northern Cheyenne, has a B.A. from Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, an M.Ed. from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, and an Ed.D. from Boston University. He works at Dull Knife Memorial College as the Vice President for Cultural Affairs, concentrating on the preservation and continued use of the Cheyenne language on a conversational basis. He is currently working on an oral language development program that will be used by all the teachers of the Cheyenne language on his reservation.

Pamela Mattz, Hupa/Tolowa, is the Program Manager of the "Hupa Language, Culture and Education Program" for the Hoopa Valley Tribe. She directs the Hupa Language Program, the K-12/JOM Education Program, the "Ya'KitLoy" Basket Class, the "XonsiL" Summer School Program, and various other projects.

Mizuki Miyashita is a doctoral student in Linguistics at the University of Arizona. She has worked with the Tohono O'odham language since 1993 and is currently writing an exercise workbook to accompany Ofelia Zepeda's A Papago Grammar.

Laura A. Moll is a doctoral student in Linguistics and Anthropology at the University of Arizona. Her current research focuses on the language and culture of the Tohono O'odham people. She has also worked with the Itzaj Maya language of Petén, Guatemala.

Douglas R. Parks' (A.B. in anthropology, Ph.D. in linguistics, University of California, Berkeley) work focuses on documentation of the Pawnee and Arikara languages and preparation of curriculum materials for teaching them in community schools. Publications include A Grammar of Pawnee, An Introduction to the Arikara Language, and A English-Arikara Student Dictionary, as well as a revised edition of the Arikara textbook and the new multimedia lessons described here. He is also preparing language teaching materials for Assiniboine, spoken on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana.

Jon Reyhner is an associate professor of bilingual and multicultural education at Northern Arizona University. He is coauthor of A History of Indian Education and has edited among other books Effective Language Education Practices and Native Language Survival, Teaching American Indian Students and Teaching Indigenous Languages. He has also written numerous articles and chapters on American Indian education. He has been a teacher, school administrator, and bilingual program director on Indian reservations in Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico. His e-mail address is Jon.Reyhner@nau.edu

Daniel S. Rubin is a Canadian educator who has worked extensively over the past decade with native communities on the British Columbia coast as a teacher, curriculum developer and dramatist. He is currently the principal of False Bay School on Lasqueti Island, an isolated community about 50 miles north of Vancouver, BC. He previously worked for the Prince Rupert School District on the development of programs and materials to support the renewal of Sm'algyax, the traditional language of the Tsimshian Nation. His current e-mail address is drubin@sd69.bc.ca and his phone number is 250-333-8813.

Robert N. St. Clair did his doctoral research on the Eskimo language (U. of Kansas) and also did field work on Skagit and Lummi (U. of Washington). In the Pacific Northwest, he worked on Wanapam and developed the Yakima bilingual education program. His is currently working on Mayan. He is Chair of the 7th International Conference on Cross-Cultural Communication, a coeditor of the Journal of Intercultural Communication Studies, and a Director in the International Association for Cross-Cultural Communication Studies.

Delilah Yellow Bird (Arikara), a native of the White Shield community, is a teacher in the White Shield School on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. She coordinates Arikara language instruction in the elementary and secondary grades and is currently implementing the use of the multimedia lessons described in her paper in this volume.