Join Us in June 2007

There is a discounted fee for pre-registering online by May 18, 2007, 5 pm EST.
We will still accept online registration past the May 18th deadline, but the registration rates will be raised.

"Working together we can bring back the language" or, as stated in
Anishinaabemowin, one of the many endangered languages, "Pane gdaa maamwizimii wii pskaabimigaag maanda zhigiizhweyin." This year at the 14th annual SILS (Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium) language instructors, technology experts and linguists will gather again to share the work, and the dreams, of language communities all over the world. We ask questions of ourselves and one another. We challenge the limits and the expectations regarding the survival of linguistic diversity and cultural continuity. We look for ways in our modern world to understand and teach our language to our children and to the children of the seventh generation. Symposiums on teaching indigenous languages have been held annually since 1994 under the co-sponsorship of Northern Arizona University's Bilingual Multicultural Education Program and its Center for Excellence in Education. Jon Reyhner at Northern Arizona has served as participant, archivist, and inspiration for many of the previous conferences. Information about all previous gatherings can be found at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/History.html .

The conference has always focused on the linguistic, educational, social, and political issues related to the survival of the endangered Indigenous languages of the world. Presentations have featured a wide range of information, ranging from marketing the value of native languages, to implementing immersion teaching programs, to using Total Physical Response teaching techniques, to developing indigenous language textbooks useful for children, and even to teaching languages over the telephone.

Right now there is a heightened sense of urgency to preserve and promote endangered languages. In 1990 The Native American Languages Act was passed, and as recently as December of 2006, congress again gave voice to the issue with The Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act. According to the National Science Foundation, at least 3,000 of the world's 6,000-7,000 languages (about 50 percent) are about to be lost. The enormous variety of these languages represents a vast, largely unmapped terrain on which linguists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers can chart the full capabilities-and limits-of the human mind. Many of the scholars interested in saving languages are networked though the LINGUIST List and the Institute for Language Information and Technology (ILIT) led by Anthony Aristar and Helen Aristar-Dry at Eastern Michigan University. As co-hosts of this year's symposium these linguists emphasize the power and potential of working together. As the second co-host, the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan represents one of many language communities fully-engaged in creating "language warriors." Their efforts to honor speakers, inspire students, train teachers, and preserve Anishinaabemowin, offer hope that some languages, like the wolf and bald-eagle, may one day come off the "endangered" list. The 2007 SILS gathering will truly be a place where language scholarship and activism can be combined.

Please join us in setting a course for a future where endangered languages are nurtured, documented and re-presented by speakers and scholars together. We are particularly interested in ways you may be using technology in language documentation and preservation; how your community is attempting self-documentation; innovative educational ideas you may wish to share; and ways you are measuring proficiency as an outcome of your efforts. Find out more about how to submit proposals and register by clicking on the tabs above.