Indigenous Language Institute Received Grant for Native Youth Language Project
February 4, 2010
Santa Fe, NM, February 1, 2010 – The Indigenous Language Institute (ILI) received a $15,000 grant from the First Nations Development Institute of Longmont, Colorado. This award supports ILI’s “Native Youth Language Project: Ancient Voices, Modern Tools”.
The Native Youth Language Project will train 30 students from the Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) on the use of ILI’s technology tools to create audiovisual materials in Indian languages. The students will learn to create 3-minute digital stories, short films using the computer and open source application software. 75% or more of the narrative of the digital stories are to be in the Native language, fostering youth to research language content and collaborate with speakers – usually the elderly – in their home communities. The topics for the digital stories will be relevant to the SFIS Senior Honors Project and their newly launched Native Language Program for Cochiti Keres.
Students will be trained in ILI’s IBM Training Lab on February 2-4, 16-18 and March 2-4.
“This project carries on the vision and mission of ILI to teach and share in practical ways the creativity and imagination of the students,” says Jerry Hill (Oneida), ILI’s Board President. “ILI’s technology training and tools help make these ideas shareable. We at ILI expect the new materials produced by the students will have a multiplier effect in generating more materials and in motivating their peers to create simple but powerful materials in their Native languages.”
Everett Chavez, Superintendent of the SFIS states, “We are very pleased with the opportunity that ILI provides our students through this grant to learn easily accessible technology to express their thoughts about their communities and commitments to language and culture preservation.”
Three of the student works will be selected to submit to the All Roads Film Festival of the National Geographic Society, where the best of submissions from various high schools will be showcased on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10 AM at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe.
The Indigenous Language Institute is a national non-profit organization headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico that serves all Native American nations in the US and First Nations in Canada. ILI’s mission is to provide vital language related services to native communities so that their individual identities, traditional wisdom and values are passed on to future generations in their original languages.
1501 Cerrillos Road, U-Bldg.
Santa Fe, NM 87505
Tel: 505-820-0311 Fax: 505-820-0316
Email: ili@ilinative.org
Website www.ilinative.org
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