The revitilization of Indigenous languages has long been of interest to me. I have very personal ties to the success of Indigenous peoples who are working to protect their sacred languages. I have been working with my people, the Menominee, to teach the young basic phrases and conversational Menominee. This project has helped me to focus on the important resources that are out there and has given me a foundation to start deeper research into the worlds of language revitalization processes and funding.
Indigenous language revitalization is a very tricky process because of the diversity of languages as well as the difficulties that some communities have accessing information on the Internet. Some of these communities may still be accessing the Internet using a dial-up connection, if they can access it at all. This may pose problems for the use of this web page by community members. This may have to become purely a personal reference for my own studies and a foundation for future work for other Indigenous communities. I am hoping that I will be able to create a more accessible web page with these resources.
I always ask myself before writing a paper or starting a project, "Who is my audience?" Am I writing this for myself, for my teacher, for my people? The communities that this information is meant for may have trouble deciphering the data collected and tagged. I had a lot of difficulty trying to make sense of the way in which cataloging terms applied to websites. The terms themselves are very confusing and I am afraid I may have to spend more time trying to explain what these tables are and what they contain than utilizing these resources for the advancement of my people through our Menominee language. So my next thought was how exactly do I take this information I have collected and present it in a way that anyone young or old, educated or not, may access it.
That being said, I think my research into valid websites dedicated to Indigenous Language Revitalization was sucessful. I tried to find a wide variety of knowledge on language protection, documentation, grant resources, and ideas for growth. I did find more resources than needed for this project and this is only a sample of some of the best. I would like to expand this to include the other sources and maybe add another category that would include a personal analysis of the content with an Indigenous perspective and audience in mind.
Indigenous Language Revitalization
Bilingual Research Journal Volume 16 1992
Bilingual Research Journal Volume 15 1991