Indian Affairs Makes Significant Investment to Protect and Preserve Native Languages

Excerpt:  “Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland announced today that the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Economic Development has awarded $7 million in grants under the Living Language Grant Program to 45 American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes and Tribal organizations. The Living Languages Grant Program provides an opportunity for Tribes to receive funding to document and revitalize languages that are at risk of disappearing because of a declining native-speaker population. For more than 150 years, Native languages in the U.S. have been subjected to suppression and elimination from a variety of factors such as federal boarding and other types of schools that forced American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children to forgo speaking the language of their peoples.”