Indigenous Language Institute (ILI)

The Indigenous Language Institute (ILI)
The Indigenous Language Institute is a New Mexico based intitution, that researches, teaches, and shares information and tools to empower Native American communities to make their languages "seen and heard everywhere and by everyone" (ILI website). To achieve their goal in making indigenous languages visible, vital, and valuale, ILI provides to Native American language activists the materials and training needed to develop indigenous language textbooks, teaching aids, films, digital stories, flyers, brocures, toys, and signane. ILI also partners with Languagegeek© to provide customizable keyboard and Unicode fonts to enable Native American communities to spread their revitalization efforts online. The ILI also hosts annual symposia and workshops, and offers merchandise customizable to a number of different indigenous languages.

The Indigenous Language Insitutes mission statement: "The Indigenous Language Institute provides vital language related services to Native communities so that their individual identities, traditional wisdom and values are passed on to future generations in their original languages."

The Indigenous Language Institute's philosophy: "ILI’s guiding philosophy is to “help create speakers” of endangered indigenous languages while we still have speakers left. This work is URGENT. Collectively we must work diligently with haste within a ten-year window, careful not to duplicate efforts, to turn the tide of language decline so that indigenous languages become a vibrant component of everyday life in Indian communities."

ILI is a member of the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity and a part of the Endangered Languages Project.



Links for ILI
The Indigenous Language Institute website