With only 50 speakers left, tribe's language to be preserved by team of IU anthropologists (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

With only 50 speakers left, tribe's language to be preserved by team of IU
anthropologists

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 15, 2009
USA

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The National Endowment for the Humanities' "We the People"
project has awarded a group of Indiana University anthropologists $250,000 to
transcribe, translate and publish the oral literature of the Assiniboine, a
northern Plains Indian tribe with only about 50 living members still fluent in
the tribal language of Nakota.

Raymond DeMallie and Douglas Parks, anthropology professors in the IU College of
Arts and Sciences and co-directors of the American Indian Studies Research
Institute (AISRI), along with former IU anthropology doctoral student and AISRI
research associate Linda Cumberland, will publish two volumes of oral histories
collected from Assiniboine tribal members, some of which DeMallie recorded
during interviews conducted nearly 25 years ago. Also assisting will be native
Assiniboine scholar Tom Shawl of Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. The team
also will publish a dictionary of the language.

Access full article below:
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/11854.html