We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân, Anne Makepeace's award-winning documentary about the reawakening of the Wampanoag language in southeastern Massachusetts, continues to engage and move diverse audiences, while bringing hope and inspiration to Indigenous communities struggling with language loss and the challenges of revitalization. The film was produced in collaboration with Cultural Survival's Endangered Languages Program as an education tool about Indigenous language reclamation and revitalization, and to benefit the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project.
Tsi-Akim Maidu Tribe and John Trudell host Native American Night Tonight
Maidu language students, instructor Farell Cunningham, and renowned activist, poet, and artist John Trudell (Santee Sioux) are presenting a special evening of opening night screenings in Nevada City, California, at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival: Where Activism Is Inspired. The audience will enjoy a Maidu language skit, Anne Makepeace'sWe Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân and Heather Rae's Trudell, followed by question and answer with Trudell.
Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting Hosts We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân
Five thousand strong, the Linguistic Society of America's membership last week met concurrently in downtown Portland, Oregon with the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages in the Americas, the American Dialect Society, the American Name Society, the North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences, and the Society for Pidgin and Creole Languages. Conference attendees and the general public were invited to attend the opening reception, which closed with a free screening of We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân, followed by a question and answer session with linguist jessie little doe baird (Mashpee Wampanoag), who co-founded and currently directs the Wopanaak Language Reclamation Project featured in the film. Baird, a key advisor to Cultural Survival's Endangered Languages Program, also gave a presentation entitled "From Our Ancestors Hands to Ours," followed by a team of language teachers from the Elwha Klallam Tribe in Washington state, who discussed the twenty-year history of their language program's productive collaboration with a linguist from the University of North Texas. Language advocates working with the Tohono O’odham, Yurok, Coast Salish, and Myaamia-Illinois languages, also presented sessions during the panel discussion, co-sponsored by the LSA's Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation, and the Society for the Studiy of Indigenous Languages of the Americas. To read the presenters' abstracts and more about We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân click here. Be sure to visit Our Mother Tongues, our companion website to We Still Live Here featuring twelve tribal language communties' revitalization efforts, and send a postcard in an endangered Native American language to your friends and family to alert them to the monumental efforts underway to revitalize the Alutiiq, Cherokee, Crow, Dakota, Lakota, and Sauk languages--among others!
Free "MLK" Community Cinema Screenings This Month
In honor of the upcoming federal Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday Independent Lens and the Independent Television Service have scheduled five free community-based screenings at Naropa University in Boulder, CO (Jan. 15, 5pm); the Destined and Designed by Faith Outreach Miniseries in Richmond, VA (Jan. 15, 5pm); Emerge-MN in Minneapolis, MN (Jan. 15, 6pm); the Cornell College Civic Engagement Office in Mount Vernon, IA (Jan. 18, 3:30pm); and the Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington, D.C. (Jan. 29, 3:30pm). Visit Makepeace Productions for full details. Download the discussion guide.
