NILI Summer Institute Extended Scholarship Deadline

The deadline for 2019 Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI) scholarship applications has been extended to Monday, April 8, 2019. See the links to the applications below:

• adult
• youth

For more information on the program, costs, and classes offered this year, visit the NILI website.

Post-hearing testimony on Native language revitalization

Below is a message from Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada and Michal Temkin Martinez, co-chairs of the LSA Committee on Endangered Languages & Their Preservation (CELP).

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank those of you who were able to provide testimony ahead of the senate oversight hearing on "Examining efforts to maintain and revitalize Native languages for future generations" this past Wednesday. For those who are still interested in doing so, the post-hearing testimony submission period ends on Tuesday, September 4^th. You may submit your testimony by email to testimony@indian.senate.gov.

You can download the hearing summary here, and the testimonies of the five panelists who addressed the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (Jeannie Hovland, Jessie Little Doe Baird, Namaka Rowlins, Christine Sims and Lauren Hummingbird) here. There is also a detailed write-up of the hearing, along with recordings of the testimonies here. The LSA was approached to contribute to this hearing through the JNCL-NCLIS. For more information about the kind of work that the Joint National Committee for Languages and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (JNCL-NCLIS) does, please visit https://languagepolicy.org/.

Thank you for your help with this,

Jorge & Michal

CELP Co-Chairs

Update: Senate Hearing on Revitalization of U.S. Languages

Post updated on 8/21/18 with additional information about providing testimonies.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is having an oversight hearing on "Examining efforts to maintain and revitalize Native languages for future generations" on Wednesday, August 22, 2018 @ 2:15 P.M. EDT.

If you work with Native American languages and communities, we urge you to consider submitting official testimony ahead of the hearing. To do so, you can email your testimony to testimony@indian.senate.gov and specify that you are sending the testimony to this hearing, and the date and time of the hearing.

The overall goal of the hearing is to highlight the diversity of languages that exist throughout Indian Country and the various resources and programs needed to support the revitalization of these diverse and unique languages. The LSA Committee on Endangered Languages & Their Preservation (CELP) have invited witnesses who represent languages that are in different stages of revitalization and hope, with the goal of showing the diversity of need throughout the various stages of revitalization.

The witnesses for the hearing are listed below:

• Jeannie Hovland, Commissioner, Administration for Native Americans, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC
• Jessie Baird, Vice Chairwoman, Mashapee Wampanoag Tribe, Mashapee, MA
• Namaka Rowlins, Strategic Partnerships and Collaboration Director, Aha Pūnana Leo, Hilo, HI
• Lauren Hummingbird, Graduate, Cherokee Nation Immersion School, Tahlequah, OK
• Christine Sims, Director, American Indian Language Policy Research and Teacher Training Center, University of New Mexico, ABQ, NM

CELP organizers also wish to add that personal testimonies are allowed and encouraged. If you are sending personal testimony, please include your full name, title and association. Below are a few examples:

• Testimony on Behalf of the National Indian Health Board
• Testimony from Lillian Sparks Robinson on Indian Language and Education

Thank you for contributing your time and effort to provide supporting testimonies in favor of the revitalization of Native American languages! Please share this announcement with anyone else that may be interested in providing testimony.

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Announcement from Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada & Michal Temkin Martinez, Co-Chairs of the LSA Committe on Endangered Languages & Their Preservation (CELP)

SSILA 2019 - Call for Organized Session Proposals

Annual Meeting, New York City, NY

January 3-6, 2019

Call for Organized Session Proposals*

*Please note that there will be a call for regular papers and posters in the coming weeks.  This call is only for organized session proposals.

Deadline for Organized Session Proposals: May 1^st, 2018

The annual winter meeting of SSILA will be held jointly with the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New York City, NY on January 3-6, 2019.

Call for Organized Session Proposals

SSILA welcomes proposals for organized sessions.  This is an opportunity for researchers to present a series of presentations that revolve around a single typological, methodological or areal theme.  The presentations must be based on original research focusing on the linguistic study of the indigenous languages of the Americas.

Organized sessions involve more than one scholar and are expected to make a distinctive and creative contribution to the meeting. Proposals for organized sessions are NOT reviewed anonymously. These sessions may include several presentations focused on a specific theme, a major presentation with invited discussants, and other types of sessions with a clear, specific, and coherent rationale.

Abstract Submission

The deadline for receipt of organized session proposals is midnight (the end of the day) May 1st.

Authors of successful SSILA session proposals may wish to submit their proposals to the LSA for co-sponsorship.  Please note that the LSA deadline for organized sessions is on May 15^th.  The SSILA committee will make a decision about these proposals before the LSA submission deadline.  For more information on submitting organized session proposals to the LSA 2018 Annual Meeting, see the LSA website (http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/lsa-2018-annual-meeting-call-organized-session-proposals).

All organized session proposals should be submitted electronically by e-mail to SSILA Program Committee Administrator Martin Kohlberger (conferences@ssila.org). Any queries prior to the submission deadline can also be sent to this e-mail address.  Proposals should be submitted in English.

The proposal must indicate whether it is intended to be a joint SSILA/LSA session or a SSILA session, and should include:

(1) a session abstract outlining the purpose, motivation, length (maximum: 3 hours), and justification for the session;

(2) names of all participants, including discussants, and titles of papers;

(3) a complete account, including timetable, of what each participant will do. Note that organized sessions do not have to follow the 20-minute paper + 10-minute discussion format. However, the presentation format should be clearly described;

(4) a maximum one-page abstract for each participant, 11pt or 12pt font, 1-inch margins; references can be on a second page.

The entire proposal should be submitted in a single PDF document.