The Lummi Nation received a $200,000 grant from the Indian Affairs Office of Indian Economic Development to help fund documenting and revitalizing its Native language and combat a decline in its native-speaking population.
The Living Languages Grant Program will award $7 million in grants to 45 American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes and Tribal organizations, according to a release from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs.
For at least the past 150 years, Tribes within the U.S. have seen their Native languages suppressed and eliminated by a number of factors, including federal boarding and other types of schools that forced American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children to forgo speaking the language of the ancestors, the release states.
"Native language preservation has for many years been cited by Indigenous leaders as important to their self-preservation, self-determination and sovereignty. Native preservation and language revitalization is a critical priority because languages go to the heart of a Tribe's unique cultural identities, traditions, spiritual beliefs and self-governance," Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said in the release. "Through the Living Languages Grant Program and other inter agency efforts, the Biden-Harris administration is working to invest in and strengthen the nation-to-nation relationship and ensure that progress in Indian Country endures for years to come."
During the 2021 White House Tribal Nations Summit last November, the U.S. Department of the Interior, Health and Human Services created a new inter-agency initiative as an effort to help preserve and protect Native languages and promote using, practicing and developing the languages.
A total of 59 applications were received and weighed on the extent to which funding would document, preserve and revitalize Native language, the risk the language could become extinct, the likelihood instruction would help revitalize the language by preventing intergenerational disruption, and the number of students who would benefit, the release states.
Grants ranged in size from $59,290 to $200,000. The Puyallup Tribe of Indians received a $139,931 grant, according to the release.
The Bellingham Herald has reached out to the Lummi Nation asking what the grant could mean for the preservation of its language.
