Plenary and Models Talks

Nanna Ittonchololiꞌ Ilaliichi (We are Cultivating New Growth):
Seventeen Years in Chikashshanompaꞌ Revitalization 

Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson)

Monday 6/3 10:15 - 11:45 MU Arizona Ballroom (Room 221)

The talk is derived from his 2019 dissertation—an autoethnographic examination of twenty-four years in Chikashshanompa' revitalization. Dr. Hinson will be sharing a portion of that narrative wherein the language workers of the Division of Language Preservation undertook a seventeen-year quest to bring Chikashshanompa' back to prominence among their people.

Artificial Intelligence for the Documentation of Cook Islands Māori: Present and Future 

Rolando Coto-Solano

Monday 6/17 10:15 - 11:45 SCC Red Mountain Room 

In this talk we will present an overview of our work to accelerate the documentation of Cook Islands Māori, a Polynesian language from the South Pacific. We will describe ongoing projects (e.g. speech recognition) and we will take inspiration from Indigenous data sovereignty principles (e.g. relationality) to ponder where we need to go in future to design artificial intelligence that is safe for and that promotes the use of Indigenous languages.

Natasha Warner

Quirina Geary

Aftab Ahmad is the program director at Idara Baraye Taleem wa Taraqi (IBT). He is also the co-founder of IBT. He has presented research and papers in international conferences. He is going to deliver a presentation on the Torwali language education model in Bangkok, Thailand the coming October. Mr. Aftab has also compiled the Torwali-Urdu-English dictionary which is also available online now. He has been an active researcher in the development of the teaching and learning materials in Torwali

Zubair Torwali is a leading scholar of North Pakistan with his main fields of interest as endangered languages, history of the marginalized communities and in culture and decolonization. He has written several books in Torwali, Urdu and in English. He led the team IBT in developing the course books in Torwali for primary education. He is also the first one who wrote the first every Torwali Alphabet book.  He has written more than 40 research papers on languages, cultures and social issues of the communities of northern Pakistan. He also complied a Torwali-English Dictionary for Students which has more than 1200 pictures as well. Three of his books are now in the editorial process which are in Urdu, English and in Torwali. The Torwali book is the first ever novel in the Torwali language. Zubair Torwali has written more than 500 media articles in English and about 200 articles in English on the issues of languages, colonization/decolonization, language policies, language in education and peace. He has presented papers and led workshops and seminars which number more than 100. He has presented papers and research in 20 international conferences and several seminars in Pakistan. Mr. Torwali has delivered lectures at well-known platforms in Pakistan and abroad. He is the co-founder and executive director of Idara Baraye Taleem wa Taraqi ((IBT).

Ofelia Zepeda is an academic, author and poet. Her published works include the first-of-its-kind effort to document her native language, A Tohono O'odham Grammar, and several books of poetry including Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert, and Where Clouds are Formed. She is the Director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) and a Regents Professor in Linguistics. She is the P.I. for the West Native American Language Center.

Sheilah E. Nicholas is a member of the Hopi Tribe located in Arizona.  She is a Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies (TLSS) at the University of Arizona. She teaches courses in Indigenous Culture-Based Education, Language and Culture, Oral Traditions, Language Minority Education, and Teacher Research.  She is also a Faculty Instructor for the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI). Along with colleagues Dr. Teresa McCarty and Dr. Michael Seltzer at UCLA and Dr. Tiffany Lee at UNM, she is the UA Co-PI of a national study, Indigenous-Language Immersion and Native American Student Achievement, funded by the Spencer Foundation. Dr. Nicholas is the Director of the West Native American Language Resource Center.

Robert Elliott has worked as a classroom based instructor, online instructor and teacher trainer at the University of Oregon’s American English Institute and the Language Teaching Studies MA program. He has contributed at the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI) since 2009 as a technology specialist and instructional designer. He has coordinated the NILI online education classes, has lead several youth outreach projects training tribal High School students to develop digital language materials for younger learners, and is currently overseeing the development of the NILI Resource Center, an online source for materials for Indigenous language teachers.

Janne Underriner is the former director of the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI). She is a linguist and holds a doctorate in linguistics from UO. She is a co-founder of the Northwest Indian Language Institute. Underriner first became active with language revitalization in 1996 when she was asked by the Klamath Tribes’ language program to assist Elders and apprentices in developing Klamath language curriculum and teaching materials for their community and schools. She is a curriculum, assessment and materials developer, teacher trainer, and language and program evaluator. She works with the Tribes and the State to develop Native language policy: the NW Indian Language Benchmarks (2000), the American Indian Language Teaching License (2001) and Native language policy in the Oregon University System (2011). She is a consultant to Oregon’s Department of Education. Her research interests include the relationship between language, culture and health; collaborative research models that strengthen Tribal communities and academic institutions; teaching and assessment strategies for Indigenous languages; and the relationship of pragmatics, word order and intonation.

Joana Jansen focuses on the overlap of Native American language documentation with language revitalization, and her work integrates research, teaching, and outreach. She is a linguist, teacher trainer, curriculum developer and project manager, and is the coordinator of the Northwest Indian Language Institute's (NILI) yearly Summer Institute. She works with speakers and learners of Native languages at the University of Oregon and beyond to support language documentation, description, archiving and teaching goals. She holds a doctorate in linguistics from UO. Research interests include language teacher education, collaborative research models for mutually beneficial work involving academic institutions and Tribal communities, and linguistic description, analysis and revitalization of the Ichishkíin/Sahaptin language.

Ronald Geronimo is Director of the O’odham Ñi’okĭ Ki: and is an O’odham language instructor at Tohono O’odham Community College. He received his Master’s degree in the Native American Languages and Linguistics program from the University of Arizona and has been involved in language revitalization efforts for many years. 

Angela Wallbank began her coaching career over 26 years ago in sports, honing transferable skills for fostering high-performing teams within organisations. She has excelled in facilitating Māori and Pasifika leadership programs, strengthening public, private and nonprofit sectors. Alongside this, Angela is passionate for Health and Safety in the workplace, complementing her expertise in cross-cultural engagement and enhancing leadership effectiveness for individuals and organisations.

Angela’s coaching style embraces an indigenous lens, fostering leadership through a holistic approach that uses Māori and Pacific models. Backed by an Executive and Organisational Coach Certificate (ICF) Bachelor of Sport Coaching BSpC her value-add stems from her deep understanding of the importance of relationships, community, and spirituality to Māori and Pacific peoples and in relation to working in mainstream organisations. Through skilful guidance, she empowers individuals to achieve their goals authentically, enriched by their cultural heritage, fostering a profound and meaningful impact in personal and professional journeys.

Deeply committed to helping individuals transform their lives through culturally resonant coaching methods that honour their unique backgrounds while promoting growth and success she sets herself an ambitious but clear: to coach 10,000 people and make a meaningful impact by closing equity disparities in both personal and professional spaces.

Dr. Melanie McKay-Cody earned her doctoral degree in linguistic and socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. She has studied critically endangered Indigenous Sign Languages in North America since 1994 and helps different tribes preserve their tribal signs. She also specialized in Indigenous Deaf studies and interpreter training incorporating Native culture, North American Indian Sign Language, and American Sign Language. She is also an educator and advocate for Indigenous interpreters and students in educational settings.  

Audra Vincent

Michelle Clark

Amy Fountain (Associate Professor of Practice, Linguistics, University of Arizona). Amy is the convenor of the Advancing Indigenous Language Technologies (AILT) Working group at the University of Arizona. She teaches mostly undergraduate courses in linguistics and works to support the goals of the American Indian Language Development Institute. She has been working on a web-accessible database development project with the Coeur d'Alene Language Programs for more than 15 years.  Amy is from Eastern Washington State.  She has previously taught for AILDI and CoLang.

Wilson de Lima Silva

Since 1999, the Native American Languages & Linguistics Master of Arts (NAMA) program of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona has been serving Native American students interested in linguistic training, language documentation, and language revitalization. In this talk, I discuss how the NAMA program contributes to addressing the challenge of broadening the participation of Native American students in language sciences, social sciences, and STEM.

Robert Henderson (University of Arizona) is a Professor of Linguistics. His work focuses on the documentation, description, and revitalization of Mesoamerican languages, especially in the domain of meaning.

Juan Ajsivinac Sian is a linguist who has focused on the syntax and morphology of the Kaqchikel language, as well as on the linguistic analysis of texts and oral tradition. He has worked as a technical linguist on multiple projects, including with Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’ Ajtz’iib’ (OKMA), Kaqchikel Cholchi’, and the Mozilla Foundation. He has published multiple books as well as developed language technology for the Kaqchikel language.

Jeremy Kuhn is a linguist based at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France. He studies meaning in language, with a particular focus on sign language.

Sybil Vachuadez is a PhD candidate at the CNRS/ENS-PSL in Paris, France. In the past, she has worked on phonology and the syntax-semantics interface, with a focus on sign languages. Now, for her PhD, she is focusing on classifiers and distributivity in the Indigenous sign languages of Guatemala, as part of the project Meaning, Sign and Gesture in Mesoamerica.

Samantha Prins is a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona. Their training is in Indigenous language revitalization, North American languages and linguistics, and morphosyntactic theory. Her current work focuses on morphology in Algonquian and the intersections of linguistics and community language work.