Native American Languages Preserved with Technology

Indian tribes have really embraced technology, but when it comes to solutions and tools that can help them save their languages, their arms could not be open any wider.

As the Indigenous Language Institute sees it, there is a definite symbiosis from old knowledge and new tools. To show tribes just how harmonious this relationship can be, ILI launched, in collaboration with the University of Washington, a workshop series in 2001 called Ancient Voices, Modern Tools: Native Languages and Technology.

More than 300 Native American languages have already been lost, according to Santa Fe, N.M.-based ILA, and more than 75 of those languages went extinct over the last century.

Read the full story here.

A Digital Story created by Deborah S. Bia. The story is about the history of Canyon De Chelly. It is told in the Navajo Language.

Media Blueprint Projects Documenting Media Tech in Indian Country

Native Public Media, a resource and advocacy organization dedicated to strengthening and expanding Native American media capacity, has launched the Media Blueprint Project in an effort to document and expand the state of media technology in Indian Country.

Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Benton Foundation, the project’s eventual goal is to build infrastructure that will enable tribal communities to utilize broadband technology. Read more at American Indian Report.

Blue Ray Technologies plans expansion on Blackfeet land

Spokane, WA-based Blue Ray Technologies, the largest U.S. indie Blu-ray manufacturer, is planning to build a plant on Blackfeet Indian land in Montana, said representatives for the tribe and the company. 

The company plans to build plants on Indian land in the hopes of helping the Blackfeet Nation and soon other tribes to develop a technological source of income and educational skills.

“This is about ‘No American left behind,’” said DVD pioneer and Blue Ray Technologies founder Erick Hansen. “Schools, especially those on tribal lands, are just not preparing kids for the future. It’s not only the outsourcing to China and India in the new tech industries, it is more important. No American left behind. Period.”

Read more about it here.