Thanks in part to Cultural Survival's efforts, both appropriations committees of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives have recommended a fourfold increase for endangered Native American languages funding.
The House committee recommends spending $11 million in the upcoming fiscal year, while the Senate committee recommends spending $12 million, with $4 million reserved for language immersion schools. While the final amount still needs to be resolved in conference, this promises to be a huge advance that will significantly transform the capacity of tribal language programs to achieve their missions while elderly speakers can still pass their languages along directly to young people. Last May's Language Summit at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), which Cultural Survival co-hosted, clearly contributed to this change, as have the long-standing efforts of former CS staffer Ryan Wilson and the National Alliance to Save Native Languages, and the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) under the leadership of Lillian Sparks.
