Indigenous Languages on the Web

Page Name: The Alaska Native Language Center
http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/index.html

Description: This is a really wonderful place to meet interesting people and to see the work that is being done in Alaska and the Yukon. Tlingit and Eyak, categorized in the NaDene family, are both studied here at ANLC. They have a wonderful map of the area, with each differently-colored locale named for its language. When you click on the locale, you can read something about the language, its people, or those who studied and documented it.

Page Name: Anishinaabe
http://first-ojibwe.net/links/

Descriptions: "Translations Forums References and more. . ." The music, and the spiritual sentiment, are so beautiful that even if you are not an Ojibwe student or speaker, you might want to go here for the peace and serentity, maybe enjoy the Ojibwe presentations. But for Ojibwe devotees, there are different language tools and references, and a page of Anishinaabe and Cree radio programs

Page Name: Apsáalooke Cultural Landscape Project
http://www.lbhc.cc.mt.us/crownames/Default.asp

Description: This is a very interesting place names project on the web, produced by Little Big Horn College in Montana. The people have provided both a translation and the English name for the Crow place name, and where known, given the description of the cultural aspect of the each place.One can search by district or by state. There is also a Crow Agency Area Map. This is fun site to explore, and it provides interesting ideas for how languages and cultures can be approached.

Page Name: Three Lipan Apache Songs
http://www.indians.org/welker/lipsong.htm

Description: Daniel Castro Romero, Jr. has, with appropriate permission, made available these three, very old Lipan songs, recorded by a BIA agent in 1910.

Page Name: Cheyenne Language Web Site
http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

Description: This page provides information, both detailed for the language itself, and other references, plus a link to Dull Knife TCU. Other links provide access to both Native American and general language resources, plus links to important preservation statements for Native languages by the Linguistic Society of America, the American Anthropological Association, and the Federal Native Language Acts http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language/langlinks.htm. Someone put a lot of time, and very excellent effort into this page, and it is a comprehensive and interesting resource site for people working in preservation, documentation, and funding.

Page Name: Klamath/Modoc Linguistics Page
http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/klamath.html

Description: This is Scott Delancey's page on Klamath and Modoc language information. Dr. Delancey is a professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Oregon. He is also very active in SSILA, the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages, and with which we are very actively involved. For those who may want to know more about Dr. Delancey, this is a link to his extensive and impressive CV (http://www.uoregon.edu/~delancey/cv.html).

Page Name: Ethnologue
http://www.ethnologue.com

Description: This is a comprehensive page of the world's languages. Languages may be found by name or by family; data here shows all the relationships in a language family, and current estimates of speaker populations. Here you will also find tools for language analysis and learning materials development, as well as specialty fonts. http://www.ethnologue.com/tools.asp Be aware that the specialty fonts are generally non-portable and not distributable. This means that people will not be able to read your document unless they have the font installed, and most people won't have it because it is a "specialty font". "Not distributable" means that you cannot send the font to those you want to have read your document, because this is a violation of the copyright laws. However, you can use specialty fonts freely within the organization that purchased it. For those who would like to further investigate Intellectual Properties issues, there is this link for Intellectual Property at the National Academies, a major group for research and study: http://ip.nationalacademies.org/.

Page Name: Mayan Hieroglyphics
http://halfmoon.org

Description: The Mayans were a beautiful civilization in Mexico whose destruction was facilitated by the Spanish invasion of the country. This page provides some fun things to do with Mayan hieroglyphics. It has a pronouncing syllabary, which unfortunately uses Windows Media Player, a kind of slow and unresponsive way to do language sounds, but is interesting nonetheless. This site also has some virtual models that might be fun to explore and adapt for other languages and cultures.

Page Name: Omaha Indian Music
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/omhhtml/omhhome.html

Description: This page at the Library of Congress has digitial reproductions of the 44 wax-cylinder recordings made by Francis Le Flesche and Alice Cunningham Fletcher between 1895 and 1897, and 323 songs and speeches form the 1983 Omaha harvest celebration pow-wow. There are many options on this page, but "Pow-wow Audio In Sequence" will take you to the sound clips. There are excellent notes with each recording. For example, notes for the Grand Entry Song (first of 8 groups), say, "Dancers included David Blackbird (head dancer/whipman), the four tail dancers (Quanah Parker, Peewee Lonewolf, Rudi Mitchell, and Howard Wolfe), Rick and Ron Thomas (Santee Sioux), Morgan Lovejoy, Harry Thomas, Joe Hallowell, Joe Snowball (Omaha and Winnebago), Winston Stabler (full-blooded Omaha), Todd Wolfe (Lincoln, NE), Howard Wolfe, K.D. Edwards, Edgar Harlan (Oklahoma), Melanie Parker (pow-wow princess), and the San Juan Pueblo." This is interesting to us because Quanah Parker is Depree's brother Kevin's great grandmother.

There are also photographs, documented, some with relatives of people who may be reading this page. There are options on the photo pages to email the photos. . .

Page Name: Wellpinit School District
http://164.116.21.67/index/easy_nav.php

Description: This school district on the Spokane Reservation in Eastern Washing ton state provides a comprehensive area for learning technology, and for learning what questions to ask. There are links to Macromedia Flash information (we use Flash extensively, because we can present words, pictures, and sounds Together, and this is very important in learning languages). The important technology link is here http://164.116.21.67/atech/training.php; and the links for the Spokane Tribe are here: http://164.116.21.67/spokan/spokan.html, links to the Spokane language information here: http://164.116.21.67/spokan/language/language.php.

Page Name: Yukon Native Language Center
http://www.yukoncollege.yk.ca/ynlc

Description: This page has a stunning picture of the Yukon, and the sad disclaimer: "Due to the limitations of this electronic medium, many characters in Native Language writing can not be properly reproduced. As a result, some diacritics may be left out, barred-l may be written with plain l, and there may be unintended spelling variations." Thus this site is both a joyful celebration of the beauty of the landscape, the languages and the people who speak them, and a commentary on how technology has left Native languages out of its frenzied, commercial charge.

Page Name: Denaqanage': Our Language Career Language Program for Athabascan
http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/dena/

Description: This is a short page about the Athabascan language teacher program. There are some great links to pages for the local Yukon schools, and to the Athabascan Language Development Institute (ALDI).

Page Name: Harry Hoijer's Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Texts
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/apache/index.html

Description: This web site is a complex attempt to put Harry Hoijer's original Apache texts on the web. The overall design is good, but the buttons take a long time to load, and there are major font problems. We have contacted the site administrator, to no avail. However, as a reference site for difficulties with Apachean texts in the current state of technology, this is a good place to look.

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