Working with top officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), members of Congress, and leading Washington DC-based tribal advocacy groups, Cultural Survival's endangered language campaign director Ryan Wilson has been pushing for $5 million in federal funds for "shovel-ready" projects to support repairs and renovations at American Indian language immersion schools throughout the U.S. Watch for more news next week as the economic stimulus package moves through Congress to President Obama. While federal school construction funds have been cut from the current version, funding for immersion schools was included in the BIA's Office of Economic Development Workforce Development Program, Commercial Construction Training Program, administered at the local level by Tribal Employment Rights Offices.
In other national language news:
Letters of Intent to apply to the First Nations Development Institute's Youth and Culture fund are due February 27th for tribal projects ranging from $5,000-20,000.
Proposals up to $100,000 are due next month, March 11th, to the federal Administration for Native Americans Native Language Preservation and Maintenance Assessment program.
This April PBS will premiere a five-part documentary series on Native American history, tribal sovereignty, and the struggle to maintain spoken languages after centuries of suppression. To hear Cultural Survival's Executive Director Ellen Lutz and series advisors discuss the critical state of Native American languages click here to view the We Shall Remain: Languages Overview.
To view more video coverage of Native languages--a short film on the Sauk language, and testimony from the United Nations Indigenous Youth Caucus visit here.
