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In 1994-1995 ILI (then known as IPOLA) collaborated with the Hotevilla Bacavi Community School on the Hopi Reservation to help create two award-winning Hopi/English bilingual textbooks that were illustrated by the second graders of the school. We also collaborated with the Santa Ana Pueblo Education Department of New Mexico on the ‘Youth Language Assessment Project’ in May 1995. An outgrowth of this project was the September 1996 cultural education trip of the Santa Ana Youth to Japan. We assisted in initiating the ‘Onondaga Summer Language Camp’ in August 1996. ILI co-sponsored the 7th Annual Conference of the Keepers of the Treasures in June 1998, the topic being ‘Native Languages: Repatriating the Spirit of Nations’. A limited edition ‘Native Languages Revitalization Resource Directory’ was published in June 1998. In 2002, ILI hosted the Native Youth Language Fair. The Nambe Youth Video Project was completed in 2005, and the digital story for the Pojoaque Community Garden Project was produced at the ILI’s Language Materials Development Center.
Impact/Outreach
We organized a national Planning Conference for the Clearinghouse of Indigenous Language Programs on March 19-21, 1997, in Santa Fe with funds from the Educational Foundation of America and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to counter the trend of language and cultural erosion. The 27 participants (mostly Native Americans) included linguists, community language advocates, national/regional language institute representatives, information technology experts, and media experts. The result of the conference was a commitment form the participants to immediately begin planning a national networking center and to seek input from others, especially elders, to further define the center objectives and programs. In June 1997, a task force of ten members was formed to design the blueprint and develop a budget for the center. In the spring of 1998 the Task force finalized both of those tasks, culminating in the creation of the Indigenous Language Institute (ILI).
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