NILI supports, strengthens, and advocates for language revitalization efforts in Indigenous communities.
NILI creates and consults with communities on teacher training, language pedagogy, materials and curriculum development, assessment, language documentation, policy, applied linguistics, and educational technology including online learning. NILI provides outreach services and training on Indigenous language revitalization, restoration, and teaching efforts to a regional, national, and international audience. NILI also helps attract, retain and educate Indigenous students at the University of Oregon. In this way, it meets not only the needs of our tribal partners in Oregon, but also meets these UO goals: 1) graduate and undergraduate education 2) diversity 3) external relationships with tribal communities.
The idea that grew into NILI came when language teachers from the Northwest attended the American Indian Language Development Institute, our big sister program in Arizona, and wanted to have a similar program closer to home. In 1997, elders, apprentices, and administrators from language and education programs from 10 Tribes asked the University of Oregon for Indigenous language teacher training. Today, NILI also attracts, retains and educates Indigenous University of Oregon students to do language work, meeting the university's goals to provide strong graduate and undergraduate education, increase the institution's diversity, and maintain relationships with Tribal communities.
NILI works with Indigenous communities to revitalize and support language and other cultural knowledge. In that effort, we exchange methods, strategies, curriculum, vocabulary, and even, on occassion, ceremonies and stories. NILI works with communities to enhance and promote the use and amplification of that knowledge, but we make no claim to the knowledge itself. That ownership remains with the Indigenous communities and people in them, and NILI will resist any claims on that knowlege that come from outside the communites we work with.
