Prohibition of indigenous languages was one aspect of the cultural genocide perpetrated by the United States government and its faith based boarding schools. Today, we have fewer and fewer speakers of our languages. Currently, I am working with a local language Not For Profit (NFP) and helping them find resources.
There are many different possible resources that people can tap into, further, there are a couple different ways to get and use the support.
One of the most interesting ways that I found was AmeriCorps. Your NFP can apply to become an affiliate and have people work with your organization as long as you are willing and able to train them on a skill and supervise them in a full-time capacity for one year. We aren’t sure how they gauge capacity to administrate the would-be “VISTAs” (volunteers) and I will write a follow up going into that.
The next way is community support. This can be through things like Patreon, GoFundMe or any other of the many sites that will collect people’s money for you. GoFundMe actually has a setup that where donations will be tax deductible. Patreon also has systems in place for NFPs to be apart of the platform.
Last is everyone’s favorite: GRANTS.
Plenty of people have heard of the magical grants that lie in wait, begging for us to take that sweet, free money! Alas, this is far from the truth, especially for something as specialized as indigenous language. We are looking into a few different grants, with the largest being the Administration for Native Americans grant. They have a big one for languages that would allow some of our volunteers to go full time in developing their curriculum and getting the program out to the community. It’s large enough that it could even help fund the language immersion camp.
Two of the other ones we are looking at would be used for materials (like binders, printouts, and other basics) and to help fund the immersion camp that they are running this summer.
Native Languages of the Americas
The Densford Fund, administered by The Riverside Church
SpencerLoneFight.com 