This month WE STILL LIVE HERE: Âs Nutayuneân travels with director Anne Makepeace, to Sarajevo and four other cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, taking the incredible story of Cultural Survival's Endangered Languages Program advisers at the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP) to new audiences. The film will also screen on October 27 as part of the United Nations Film Festival at Stanford University.

This year’s call for grant proposals from the U.N. Trust Fund for the Second Decade highlights funding opportunities for “education (such as language revitalization)” for Indigenous organizations or organizations working for Indigenous peoples, noting that the “Trust Fund for the Second Decade was established to promote, support and implement the objectives of the Decade [for the World’s Indigenous People]” proclaimed by the U.N.

The community radio station Snuq' Jolom Konob' is located in the town of Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, nestled high in the Cuchumatan mountain range.   The station was founded 13 years ago, after the signing of the Peace Accords brought an end to the Armed Conflict in Guatemala and guaranteed Indigenous communities the right to their own forms of media.

During a busy summer that included film screenings, summer youth camp sponsorships, and funding two Sauk Language apprentices’ attendance at programs like the Canadian Indigenous Languages Literacy Development Institute at the University of Alberta, Cultural Survival’s Endangered Languages Program also collaborated in-house with the Community Radio Project to help the Smithsonian Recovering Voices initiative in hosting a conference for Indigenous language radio producers.

At the Euchee Language Project, a partner of Cultural Survival's Endangered Languages Program, second language learners and fluent elder speakers in Sapulpa, Oklahoma are already preparing to resume their fall afterschool programming, after a busy summer of field trips, a well-attended Euchee Knowledge Bowl competition, and daily activities at the Yuchi House, sponsored in part by the Endangered Languages Program.

More than two years had passed since Cultural Survival last visited the Arapaho Language Lodge immersion classrooms in Ethete and Arapahoe, Wyoming, and program manager Jennifer Weston was eager to meet with elder fluent speakers, tribal leaders, educators, and youth on the vast 3.2 million acre reservation in west central Wyoming held in common by the Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes. 

Cultural Survival’s Endangered Languages Program kicked off June with Makepeace Productions and the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP), hosting packed screening and panel discussion of WE STILL LIVE Here: Âs Nutayuneân at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian at the two-day conference, “Language Revitalization in the 21^st Century: Going Global, Staying Local,” held at the City University of New York’s Endangered Language Initiative and Auckland University of Technology.

By Meg Holladay

August 9 was first proclaimed International Day of the World's Indigenous People by the United Nations in 1994 to promote and protect the rights of the world's Indigenous population. This day also commemorates the achievements and contributions that Indigenous people make in the world.

This summer Cultural Survival's partners in the community radio network in Guatemala have embarked on a new initiative of local exchanges among radio stations. This past weekend, on July 21-22, two pairs of radio stations visited each other to get to know their work models.

Stations were paired up for exchanges based on shared languages, regional proximity, and a good match of skills and weaknesses.  One pair of stations included Radio Doble Via, of San Mateo Quetzaltenango, with Stereo La X Musical, of Cajola Quetzaltenango.