This dissertation explores the way Kotiria/Wanano (E. Tukanoan, Kotiria hereafter) women of the Brazilian "Alto Rio Negro" (ARN) contrive (McDowell 1990) "kaya basa" "sad songs" using linguistic and musical resources to construct songs that express loneliness and other private emotions, while also creating alliances…

In this paper, we analyse the cultural models (or folk theory of language) that the Mapuche intellectual elite have about Mapudungun, the native language of the Mapuche people still spoken today in Chile as the major minority language. Our theoretical frame is folk linguistics and studies of language ideology, but we have also taken an applied…

This article expands our understanding of how language-minoritized children's communicative competence interrelates with schooling. It features a verbal performance by a young Native American girl. A case is made for greater empirical specification of the real extent of children's non-school-sanctioned communicative competence. The case disrupts…

This dissertation is a study of diverse linguistic resources and contentious identity politics among indigenous Amazonian Kichwas in the city of Tena, Ecuador. Tena is a rapidly developing Amazonian provincial capital city with a long history of interethnic and interlinguistic contact. In recent decades, the course of indigenous Kichwa identity…

Building on 18 months of fieldwork in the Bolivian highlands, this dissertation examines how traversing landscapes, through the mediation of spatial practices and spoken words, are embedded in systems of belief. By focusing on "wak'as" (i.e. sacred objects) and on how the inhabitants of the Altiplano relate to the Andean deities known as…

Language decline in many immigrant and ethnic communities is always a persistent problem in America. To prevent Native tribal languages from becoming obliterated, several organizations have been founded to document and teach Indigenous languages, a number of tribes have crafted ambitious language policies, and Congress approved the Native American…

The Wapanakamikok, or Eastern Land People, have been forced to do a great deal of moving about since the beginning of European contact in 1607. The Lenape dialect of their common language is spoken today primarily in Oklahoma and Canada and descendents of Wapanakamikok groups are scattered in Wisconsin and Kansas as well. (The other two dialect…

This volume contains 22 conference papers concerned with Algonquian languages and culture: (1) "Cheyenne Vowel Devoicing," by W. Leman and R. Rhodes; (2) "An Analysis of Upper Delawaren Land Sales in Northern New Jersey, 1630-1758," by R.S. Grumet; (3) "Ethnology in the Works of Rowland E. Robinson," by G.M. Day; (4)…

Culturally appropriate means of conducting language research among American Indians is critical for maintaining cooperation and for increasing the depth of data collected. The apprentice-elder and fictive kinship models used in research with two Siouan-speaking tribes are discussed, as well as their practical applications, the importance of…

Literacy is a social concept more reflective of culture and context than of formal instruction and can be used for cultural transmission within a society or for cultural imperialism when imposed from outside. The Algonquian-speaking Micmac Indians used pictographs, petroglyphs, notched sticks, and wampum as written communication to serve early…

Academic fieldworkers in language-endangered communities must be able to undertake all aspects of linguistic work, elicit linguistic information from speakers, document naturally occurring speech data, present research results in a comprehensible manner to the community and to academia, and develop cooperative programs based on mutual trust.…

To successfully maintain endangered Native American languages, Native communities must collectively recognize their language's vulnerability and commit to its continuity. Linguists need more experience with fieldwork and pragmatics, knowledge of various language transmission practices in cultures other than their own, an understanding of cultural…

This bibliography lists 1,679 doctoral dissertations and master's theses on Native American languages. The entries represent graduate work completed at colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom between 1892 and 1992. Citations for this bibliography were gathered through an extensive search of the printed…

An American Indian (Arapaho) educator portrays various levels of student response and receptivity toward teaching from an Indigenous perspective by recounting some of his teaching experiences at universities in Montana, Canada, and Australia. A class of Native students who had to negotiate for their grades in a treaty written in Arapaho and…

Linguists working with endangered American Indian languages must realize that fieldwork is a cooperative venture, requiring that control be relinguished to the community. The relationship with the tribe must be negotiated, and linguists must return something concrete to the community in terms of language revival. Working in language teams that…