For many Indigenous communities, revitalizing a lost or nearly lost language is often the first step to rejuvenating the community as a whole. The Myaamia Center at Miami University has seen great success since its inception as a language revitalization effort. Now, a foundation that grew alongside that work is expanding to help other communities across the country.
The National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages has been awarded a $2.1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.
"What we're doing is training other Indigenous communities on how to revitalize their languages from archival documentation," explains Stella Beerman, communications specialist with the Myaamia (pronounced: me-AHM-me-uh) Center. "Different communities visit archives around the United States; they collect data on their cultures and languages. We then train them on digitizing those and analyzing them so that they can then create educational materials to be used in their communities."
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Beerman says the grant — awarded in November, 2024, but not announced until now — will be used three ways:
- The Community Archivist Apprenticeship Program is increasing from 10 apprentices to 20.
- A newly created fellowship program will allow for advanced research, outreach, and training.
- A full-time technology team is being added to help communities create their own digital language archives — similar to the Myaamia Center's Indigenous Languages Digital Archive (ILDA) — and education portals.
The National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages is a collaboration of several universities and institutions, and housed at the Myaamia Center. It's based on the model of the Breath of Life Language Restoration Workshop for California Indians, which began in 1996.
"This work is really important because, historically, within the United States, Indigenous communities have been losing their languages at increasing rates," Beerman says. "As years go on, Indigenous communities are losing the speakers of their languages. Being able to document and teach those languages to people in their communities is really what's going to keep them alive and being used."
The institute currently has 13 apprentices from 10 tribal communities. Since its inception, it's worked with 141 individuals from 65 language communities. The group typically works with federally recognized tribes, Beerman says, adding they're willing to work with other communities around the world, such as in Canada, South America, and Australia.
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"This is mostly for communities whose languages have reached the point of dormancy or near dormancy," explained Gabriela Pérez-Báez, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Oregon and co-director of National Breath of Life, in a 2024 statement after receiving national recognition for the institute's programing.
Miami University and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma partnered in 2001 to launch what would become the Myaamia Center. The purpose (initially — it quickly grew into a much larger cultural revitalization) was to "awaken" or bring back the Miami language, and much of that work depended on researching archival documents and performing linguistic analysis.
Now, people actively learn and speak the Myaamia language, and there's an online dictionary.
Kate Pewenofkit Briner is a National Breath of Life apprentice who's creating a dictionary for the Comanche people. She says she's frequently stopped on the streets of her community.
"I go to the dictionary every day to hear my grandma's voice," one person told her.
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National Breath of Life is also working with another set of tribes who, like the Miami, were forcibly removed from Ohio in the 1800s: The Shawnee, Eastern Shawnee, and Absentee Shawnee.
Shawnee Tribe Citizen Terry Hinsley has spent hours as an apprentice creating an online dictionary, using curriculum from National Breath of Life. He says the three tribes now are able to offer classes in Miami, Okla., for "our languages to get back into the mouths of our people all across the country."
