$2.1 million grant to expand reach of Myaamia Center indigenous language program

For decades, staff at the Myaamia Center have used archival resources and technology to preserve and teach the language of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, sharing their techniques with other indigenous communities.

Now, thanks to a $2.1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, the Center will be able to expand the reach of its National Breath of Life program to support even more indigenous communities across the country.

National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages was first established as a workshop in California in 1996, and the first national workshop was held in Washington, D.C. in 2011. The Myaamia Center, an initiative of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma housed on Miami University’s campus, became the institutional home for National Breath of Life in 2013.

The Myaamia Center’s language revitalization model starts with archive work. Staff members have traveled the country looking for primary documents relevant to their language to digitize them before translation. Many of the documents are written in old French, so reconstructing the Myaamia language requires going from old French to modern French before translating to English and finally back to Myaamia.

Over the decades, the center has built out a database of documents and language details. That database is the foundation of the Indigenous Language Digital Archive, which can now be used by other tribes and language learners.

“This whole process of language revitalization and research took the Miami Tribe 20 to 30 years to really get it down and figure out the process that works well,” said Stella Beerman, communication specialist for the Myaamia Center. “Once they had that process down, they were like, ‘Other communities shouldn’t have to start this whole thing from scratch. We should be teaching others how to do this.’”

While the center has already shared its work with multiple indigenous communities, the Mellon Foundation grant will allow National Breath of Life to double its community archivist apprenticeship program, hire more staff and launch a fellowship program for advanced language revitalization.

National Breath of Life currently has 10 apprentices in its community archivist program, learning how to digitize and analyze language resources from archives. Beerman said they hope to double that number this year thanks to the grant.

Why language revitalization?

As the U.S. was colonized by European settlers, many indigenous children were forced into boarding schools as part of a deliberate effort to repress indigenous culture. According to Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, children were forbidden to speak their native languages and “separated from their families and cultural ways for long periods.”

Jerome Viles, a development trainer with National Breath of Life, is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in Oregon. For him, the work of language revitalization through National Breath of Life and with tribal communities helps to undo some of the cultural damage caused by the boarding school system.

“It’s healing work for our communities,” Vile said. “Language was targeted … It wasn’t by choice that people aren’t speaking their language today, and there’s a lot of wounds in communities around that language loss and cultural loss more broadly.”

Viles began as a participant community with National Breath of Life during its biannual conference in 2015, completing archival research into the Nuu-wee-ya’ language. Now, as a development trainer with the organization, he works with communities across the country as they obtain archive materials and work to build dictionaries.

“Archival work is really foundational to language revitalization in a lot of communities, specifically when you’re lacking speakers, but it’s hard work to get funded,” Viles said. “We’re really excited that we’re able to fund this type of work for these communities and try to give people that boost.”

Once indigenous communities progress far enough in archival work, they can begin teaching their languages to others.

Beerman, a 2022 Miami alumna, has experienced the impact of language revitalization both as a learner and as a staff member. Members of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma like Beerman are eligible for the Myaamia Heritage Award Program, a structured experience for undergraduates at Miami to learn more about their culture while on campus.

As part of the program, students like Beerman spend a year in a class dedicated to the Miami Tribe’s language and culture.

“That was the first time I got to really deeply engage with the Miami language,” Beerman said. “Nobody in my family spoke it while I was growing up. I had attended some youth programs as a child, but really nothing that taught you the language in that in-depth way.”

The Myaamia Center is led by executive director Daryl Baldwin, a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Baldwin codirects National Breath of Life with Gabriela Pérez Báez, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Oregon. The Mellon Foundation previously awarded more than $500,000 to the Myaamia Center in 2021 to support National Breath of Life.