MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Location: file:///C:/6A68E238/CSILWAnnualReport0708.htm Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" CSILW Annual Report (Fiscal Year 07-08)

CSILW Annual Report (Fiscal Year 07-08)

 

1. Grants, Fi= nancing, and Graduate Student Support:

 

The second year of David Rood’s NSF Lakhota graduate students grant was active in 2007-08= . The three Lakhota students arrived on campus for the first time in the fall, 2007, to pursue their Masters studies. They also received documentation training, and will be returning to South Dakota during the summer of 2008= to record Lakhota language data. The grant is also funding another Native American student to work as a TA in support of the project.

 

Andrew Cowell has received funding from the Hans Rausing Endangered Language Documentation Program (EL= DP), to do a video database of Arapaho conversation. The grant will fund two yea= rs of work with the Northern Arapaho Tribe, and the project will begin in fall, 2008. The grant will fund one graduate student RA for the two year period.<= /p>

 

The Center has also received a small grant from CU’s Kayden Manuscr= ipt Fund, in order to develop a book out of a series of Arapaho narratives reco= rded and locally published on the Wind River Reservation by Andrew Cowell. The narratives focus on the reservation era, and especially on Arapaho-White interaction, as opposed to more common collections of narratives which focu= s on traditional topics. Former CU/CSILW student Hartwell Francis, now at Western Carolina University= , will collaborate on this project.

 

The Center has also received a commitment of funds fro= m Carbon County, Wyoming, to prepare a Native American place names map for that area of Wyoming. Additional funding is being p= ursued in order to cover the entire state, and also to do fieldwork to record additional information about some of the sites.

 

During the summer of 2007, the Center employed one gra= duate student RA at 50%, to investigate and test methods for improving database production, including integrating XML and XSL programming into database des= ign and construction. As a result of this work, a number of Arapaho-language da= ta collections are now publicly available via the CSILW website, including lis= ts of animal names, place names, and material culture items, and Arapaho conversations.

 

During summer 2007, graduate student Brent Nicholas digitized a number of Arapaho and Gros Ventre reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, in a project = funded by the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Fund. The Center has purchased a new external hard-drive to ho= st this material.

 

2. Research a= nd Publications:

 

Major publica= tions appearing this year include:

 

The Arapaho La= nguage, by Andrew Cowell, University Press of Colorado, 2008. This is a comprehensive reference grammar of Arapaho, totaling around= 550 pages.

 

Healing the We= st, co-edited by Patricia Limerick, Andrew Cowell, and Sharon Collinge, University of Arizona Press, 2008. This volume features several essays on Native-American-related topics, including a gene= ral chapter on the state of Native American languages in the west.

 

“Arapaho Imperatives: Politeness, Deference and Communal Face.” Andrew Cowell, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2007.

 

Other publica= tions and presentations:

 

Dr. Barbra Meek, of Univers= ity of Michigan, presented a talk in February 2008 outlining her research with the Kaska Athabaskan language in the Yukon, where she has focused on langua= ge preservation and revitalization processes.

 

CSILW Associate Regina Pustet presented a talk on some of her research into the Lakh= ota language, which is part of a grammar project, in October 2007.

 

Graduate Student Finn Thye presented her first paper this year, at the Univ= ersity of Utah’s Conference on Endangered Languages of the Americas in March, 2008. It was on change and evolution in the = Gros Ventre language during the twentieth century. T= wo other graduate students attended this conference as well.

 

The Center made a presentation at the Cheyenne-Arapaho Studies Conference in Denver in March, 2008. Two Lakhota students, as well a= s Lakhota elder and language assistant Della Bad Wound,= and Lakhota project TA Chuck Thode, all joined Andrew Cowell in making a presentation on reasons for learning i= ndigenous languages.

 

Several new Center publications are available for sale= to the public on the Center website.

 

3. Other ongo= ing projects:

 

Graduate student Chuck Thode is developing reading materials in the Dakhota lan= guage, based on updated versions of 19th-century publications.

 

Graduate student Finn Thye= is collaborating with Andrew Cowell on a survey of changes in the Gros Ventre language betw= een the earliest major documentation around 1900 and the current language.

 

Andrew Cowell is collaborating with Terry Brockie of the White Clay/Gros Ventre Tribe and Hays-Lodgepole<= /span> Schools in Montana to retranscribe, retranslate, edit and publish = four Gros Ventre narratives wr= itten down by Alfred Kroeber around 1900, which have remained in the National Anthropological Archives up to this time. A volunteer from Boulder High School= , Emily Woods, has also been contributing to this project.

 

Graduate Student Armik Mirzayan has been recording Lakh= ota conversational data for his dissertation project.

 

CSILW Associate Regina Pustet is nearing completion of her monumental grammar of the La= khota language, which will exceed 1000 pages.

 

Andrew Cowell, with help from <= st1:PlaceName w:st=3D"on">Boulder High School= volunteer Emily Woods, has been converting Allan Taylor’s Gros Ventre dictionary pr= oject from 1994 into a database format, which will eventually be available as an = XML file, displayed via XSL style sheets. As part of this project, Gros Ventre data from ear= lier published sources is being integrated with the dictionary data. The Center = has acquired copies of the manuscripts of  both the Gros Ventre dictionary and Gros= Ventre grammar produced in the early 1900s by mission= ary John Sifton, and around one thousand new forms = from those sources have already been integrated into the database.

 

David Rood and the three Lakhota<= /span> graduate students have helped with a project to collect and translate names= for bird species from various Plains Indian languages.

 

Graduate student Michael Thomas is investigating argum= ent structure and incorporation in Algonquian languages, particularly Arapaho.<= /p>

 

Graduate student Peter DeHaas has begun preliminary investigation into new ways of recording and analyzing Pl= ains Indian sign language.

 

Andrew Cowell and CU Ethnomusicology professor Brenda = Romero are working on a paper about transcribing Arapaho music.

 

Graduate student Brent Nicholas has helped digitize a significant collection of Arapaho music, from reel-to-reel tapes. We will be working to make sure that all Arapaho language on the tapes is adequately transcribed and translated.

 

4. Teaching a= nd Outreach:

 

A number of articles and features about the CenterR= 17;s work have appeared recently in the press, including a front-page story in t= he Boulder Daily Camera, a forthcoming article in Boulder Magazine, and a forthcoming feature on Colorado Public Radio. An article on the Wichita language, prominently featuring David Rood’s work over the years with that Trib= e, appeared in the Dallas Morning News and on their website.

 

Dr. Barbra Meek, of Univers= ity of Michigan, presented a talk in February 2008 outlining her research with the Kaska Athabaskan language in the Yukon, where she has focused on langua= ge preservation and revitalization processes.

 

Andrew Cowell has taught a class on Hawaiian language = for the Pi’ilani Hawaiian Civic Club, and wil= l be teaching a course this fall on “The Natural World of the Plains Indians” for Boulder County Nature Association. Fees from both courses are being donated to the CSILW gift fund at CU Foundation.

 

Graduate student Finn Thye= did an independent study in which she digitized two Arapaho conversations recorded= in the 1980s and 1950s, then annotated one within ELAN database software, exploring how best to maximize documentation quality while maintaining efficiency in database production. This work was preliminary to the ELDP-fu= nded conversation database mentioned in section one above.

 

Graduate students Jennifer Davis and Chuck Thode did an independent study which focused on ways = on enhancing endangered language learning and status within communities. Both = have produced draft versions of what we are tentatively calling “Why Your Language is Interesting,” which are designed for non-linguists, as introductions to the language and linguistic culture of the language in question. The two languages done were Chickasaw and Da= khota, with Coast Miwok and Sierra Miwok also under experimental development.

 

Andrew Cowell will be presenting on Arapaho language a= t the Northern Arapaho Language Summit in June, 2008 on the Wind River Reservatio= n, Wyoming.

 

David Rood continues to collaborate with the Lakhota Consortium on the development of K-12 curricu= lum for Lakhota immersion schools.

 

Andrew Cowell continues to work with the Yavapai Tribe= of Arizona on a language attitudes survey project.

 

5. Other News= :

 

Andrew Cowell was promoted from Associate Professor to Professor, effective Fall, 2008.