LEANNE HINTON is professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley, and director of the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, a research unit which focuses on research and documentation of Native American languages. Her research fields include sociolinguistics, language change, and language and music, as well as a major focus on the preservation and restoration of Native American languages. She consults widely for language maintenance and restoration programs in California and the Southwest.
A presentation of the ways in which indigenous peoples and the professionals who work with them are approaching language revitalization. School programs, language camps, and mentored language learning will be discussed, as well as programs for reviving languages with no speakers, and on the other end of the scale, efforts to expand the functions of indigenous languages that still have a large number of speakers. This talk will also examine how language revitalization relates to cultural revitalization, with special focus on ethnobiology and the environment. Examples are the relationship between language revival and the native basketry revival in California, and the relationship between language and environmental preservation in British Columbia.