Indigenous communities around the globe are using technology to help maintain and revitalize their threatened languages and cultures. Thousands of tribal communities, from East Africa to the outback of Australia to the forests of the Northwest Pacific Coast, are creating educational programs using digital tools to record the stories and oral traditions of their elderly last speakers.
Living Tongues Institute, where invited, will assist indigenous communities and researchers in their efforts to revitalize and maintain their threatened languages. By using appropriate written materials, video, still photography, audio recorders, and computers with customized language software, as well as Internet-accessible archiving where possible, Living Tongues Institute helps empower communities to preserve ancient traditions with modern technology. To date, our teams have helped produce and launch over one hundred Talking Dictionaries for community use.
Language Technology Kits have been given to over a dozen communities, along with follow-up training and capacity building during our digital skills workshops. To date, we have held many such workshops in India, the USA, Chile, Guatemala, Zimbabwe, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, and Colombia (see complete list below).
LIST OF WORKSHOPS
2010 – Language Revitalization Workshop at the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa, New Mexico, USA.
2011 – Language Revitalization Workshop in Shillong, Meghalaya, India.
2012 – Digital Skills Workshop at the Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Bogotá, Colombia
2013 – “Voces Duraderas” Digital Skills Workshop at the Biblioteca de Santiago in Chile.
2013 – Digital Skills Workshop in Pohnpei, the Federated States of Micronesia.
2014 – Digital Skills Workshop at the African Language Research Institute (ALRI) at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, Zimbabwe.
2014 – Talking Dictionaries Workshop at the Academia de lenguas mayas (ALMG) in Guatemala City, Guatemala.
2014 – Traditional Ecological Knowledge Workshop at UNITECH in Lae, Papua New Guinea (part 1)
2015 – Traditional Ecological Knowledge Workshop at UNITECH in Lae, Papua New Guinea (part 2)