The University of Arizona will open a new center this fall to help lead Indigenous language revitalization efforts.
It’s one of four centers around the country designated and funded by the U.S. Department of Education to empower tribal communities to revitalize and maintain their languages.
The U of A center will primarily serve Indigenous communities in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah and will work collaboratively with the other centers in Hawaii, Nebraska, and Oregon. Its directors say that the core of their work will be to partner with tribes that tailor Indigenous language education to their communities.
According to Ethnologue, a catalog of the world’s languages, the United States is home to 197 living Indigenous languages, and all but four of them are endangered.