In March of 2016, SNLC co-hosted the Six Nations Language Conference with one of our partners, Six Nations Polytechnic. The conference provided an opportunity for community members, language workers, learners, educators, researchers and language activists to share information.
For this conference, we sought to deepen our understanding of language documentation, lexicalization, information technology and community language revitalization strategies.
The March language conference was well attended and many important ideas were shared. Our invited speakers included representatives from all of the six Haudenosaunee languages, as well as researchers and linguists working with Indigenous languages in California and Hawaii.
Marianne Mithun stressed the importance of documentation for grammar learning; Leanne Hinton stressed the importance of documentation for posterity; and Larry Kimura showed us the importance of documentation for lexical broadening. The conference videos can also be viewed on our Youtube channel! Check it out here.
I'll be discussing some highlights from each talk in future posts!