The Team Building the Tutelo-Saponi Monacan Living Dictionary Receives A Grant from Native Voices Endowment

We are pleased to announce that Living Tongues Institute is part of a research team that received a grant from The Endangered Language Fund’s “Native Voices Endowment” to support the creation of the first-ever Tutelo-Saponi Monacan Living Dictionary. Led by indigenous historian and language activist Dr. Marvin Richardson, the goal of the project is to provide enrolled members of the Monacan Indian Nation, as well as other indigenous people of Tutelo, Saponi and Monacan descent, with a comprehensive mobile-friendly digital language resource.

By the end of 2023, the Tutelo-Saponi Monacan Living Dictionary will house over 3,000 words and phrases alongside accurate audio recordings paired with engaging and culturally relevant images and videos. It will serve as a basis for language revitalization in the Monacan Indian Nation in Virginia as well as the Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, and Sappony Tribe in North Carolina, as well as the Ohio Band of Saponi.

Collaborators include principal investigator Dr. Marvin Richardson (Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe), Anna Luisa Daigneault (Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages), Corey Justin Roberts (PhD Candidate in Linguistics at the University of Arizona), Dr. David Kaufman (linguistic anthropologist), Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson (Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages) and Matthew Richardson (Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe).

Photo of collaborators building the Tutelo-Saponi Monacan Living Dictionary
Top row, from left to right: Dr. Marvin Richardson (Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe), Anna Luisa Daigneault (Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages), Corey Justin Roberts (PhD Candidate in Linguistics at the University of Arizona). Bottom row, left to right: Dr. David Kaufman (linguistic anthropologist), Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson (Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages)