About the NW-NALRC

The Northwest Native American Language Resource Center (NW-NALRC) was  established at NILI by a federal grant in 2023 to serve the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington in coordination with the National NALRC in Hawai’i, and in partnership with the 2 other regional NALRCs. The NW-NALRC has 4 overall goals that we strive to meet:

• Support Language Teaching and Use: Support the teaching and use of Alaskan Native / Native American (AN/NA) languages in educational systems pre-K-Adult through work with Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs), State Education Administrations (SEAs), Local Education Administrations (LEAs), and Tribal language programs;
• Teacher Development: Build Native language teaching expertise and support the recruitment/retention of AN/NA language teachers;
• Technical Assistance: Provide technical assistance to AN/NA language programs seeking other Federal resources; and
• Resource Hub: Provide materials, research, models, programming, curriculum, and assessment resources through Resource Hub.

We do this work by, among other efforts:

• Promoting Indigenous Language teacher expertise through our Summer Institute, online classes and workshops; creating professional learning communities; providing ‘coffee hours’ where we are open to meet with anyone in our service area.
• Developing and disseminating models, promising practices, and example policies on: teacher certification, language medium education, and inclusion of Indigenous languages in schools.
• Providing materials, research, models, programs, curriculum, and assessment resources through the Resource Hub.
• Delivering technical assistance for grant seekers through trainings and coffee hours