Unravelling P’urhépecha Textiles with Uekorheni AC
10/21/2024
Three P'urhépecha community members visited D.C. to study textile patterns, embroidery, and craftsmanship of P’urhépecha collections held at NMAI and NMNH and relevant archives at the NAA to disseminate knowledge surrounding traditional textiles to community members from a P’urhépecha perspective.
Interning with RV: Capturing the Natural World with the Person at NMNH
10/28/2024
Summer 2024 Recovering Voices Intern Jab'ellalih Ixmatá Schaaff Reflects on Anthropology at Natural History and shares her experience working with the Community Research Program visits.
10/29/2024
From July 10-July 16, Recovering Voices hosted three Indigenous Wauja women from two villages in the Amazon basin, Piyulewene and Piyulaga. This project is a continuation of a 2016 Recovering Voices visit that brought three Wauja men to the Smithsonian.
NMNH Peter Buck Fellow Chris Urwin documents more than 300 canoe-related objects from the Pacific Islands cared for by the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).
05/13/2019
A group of weavers from the Republic of the Marshall Islands took part in a two-week Recovering Voices Community Research Program visit to study historic plaited mats held by the Department of Anthropology at NMNH. These finely plaited mats, called jaki-ed or nieded in Marshallese, were worn in the past by people of the Marshall Islands.
COLING RISE NMNH Fellow Jesse van Amelsvoort reflects on his time at the Smithsonian investigating the question: How can writers who are marginalized for linguistic and/or ethnic reasons make sure they are heard and seen the way they want to be?
From April 25 to September 27, 2019, Marta Ostajewska took a part in Coling grant at the Smithsonian. As an artist and researcher her work deals with horizontal relations in site-specific activities. Learn about her outcomes during her time in Washington, DC.
The Native American Languages Early Publication Project
12/17/2018
Cadence Thakur reflects on her experience working with The Native American Languages Early Publication Project to promote awareness of and accessibility to the extensive historic collections of Christian literature that was translated into Native American languages in the 19th and early 20th century.
10/17/2018
In June of 2018, Queen Kapi’olani’s canoe brought together Hawaiian and Māori canoe carvers to study the gifted wa’a in Washington, D.C through the Recovering Voices Community Research Program.
3D Scanning in the Collections: Documenting a Hawaiian Wa’a
08/14/2018
Recovering Voices hosted researchers from the University of South Florida to use specialized imaging and 3D scanning for the documentation of a 19 foot long Hawaiian wa’a (canoe) donated by Queen Kapi’olani of the Kingdom of Hawai’i to the Smithsonian.
Celebrating Mother Languages: 3rd Annual Mother Tongue Film Festival
04/26/2018
In 2018, Recovering Voices hosted the Mother Tongue Film Festival for its third consecutive year, attracting over 600 people to watch and engage with 23 films in 29 indigenous or endangered languages in honor of the United Nations International Mother Languages Day.
BOL 2017 and the Science of Language Revitalization
08/03/2017
The fourth National Breath of Life (BOL) Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages 2017 hosted by the Smithsonian Institution and the Myaamia Center successfully concluded on Friday June 9, 2017.
06/15/2017
Three Zuni elders and a museum educator from the Zuni Cultural Resources Advisory Team (ZCRAT) visited the Smithsonian Institution to study ancestral knowledge of farming in efforts to produce educational videos to teach students and community members about traditional agriculture.
Video Calls and Virtual Realities: Tlingit Communities Connect Through Technology
05/24/2017
During a two week Community Research Visit in March 2017, Tlingit researchers employed technology to open their visit to their communities in Southeast Alaska, focusing on increasing and spreading Tlingit language and knowledge.
Myaamia Students in DC for the National Breath of Life...
05/09/2017
Starting in 2015 and continuing in 2017, Miami Tribe (Myaamia) students have traveled to Washington, D.C. to work with Dr. Gabriela Pérez Báez, Curator of Linguistics at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in this curatorial process.
What you missed at the 2nd annual Recovering Voices Mother Tongue Film Festival...
05/03/2017
Over the course of five days in February 2017 over 750 people gathered in Washington, DC to watch 32 films in 33 languages from across 6 continents at the 2nd annual Mother Tongue Film Festival.
11/01/2016
Three Wauja men made the strenuous six-day, 5,000 mile journey to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC to visit to the museum collections and support their community’s efforts to document the language while providing unique opportunities for knowledge exchanges.
Chance Meetings – Biliirr performance at NMNH, Smithsonian
04/15/2016
A performance group of three sisters who use music to explore language revitalization and their Yuwaalaraay traditions from inland eastern Australia shared their talents and culture at Q?rius.
Apsáalooke Revitalizing the Past; Formatting for the 21st Century
04/11/2016
The Apsáalooke embarked on creating a smart phone app that allows members of their tribe access to their cultural heritage held by museums, such as historic Crow beading that included men’s shirts, bags, cradle boards, dolls and much more.
Māori Performances Highlight Cultural Interactions at Environmental Film Festival
04/07/2016
Te Tini A Maui is the first Māori group to perform at the museum following the screening of the film Ever The Land (2015, 93 mins Directed by Sarah Grohnert) in conjunction with NMNH and the Embassy of New Zealand.
The First Annual Mother Tongue Film Festival a Success
03/07/2016
Recovering Voices was proud to present the inaugural Mother Tongue Film Festival from Sunday, February 21st to Saturday, February 27th, 2016.
A Holistic Revitalization Approach from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes
12/03/2015
Members from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma, spent the first week in November (2015) studying many facets of Cheyenne heritage in the Smithsonian’s collections and archives.
Not Just for Fun: The Cultural Significance of Cheyenne Games
11/12/2015
In November 2015, Cheyenne members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma conducted research as part of the Recovering Voices Community Research Program to access and study materials related to the Cheyenne language and culture, with a focus on games.
How Can a Single Hat Connect the Past to the Present?
10/15/2015
Three hundred years ago, a man wearing a woven spruce hat died on a snowy Northern Canadian glacier. That single woven hat has served as a thread for Master Haida weaver Delores Churchill, spending the last fifty years devoting her life to mastering the craft of weaving.
09/09/2015
During the week of August 31 to September 4, the Wasco group spent time using both collections and archives to find new vocabulary and increase their stock of Wasco cultural images for their Kiksht dictionary.
06/17/2015
In 2015, at the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages in Washington, D.C, 14 different languages were represented at the 2-week workshop, all of which will benefit to some degree from the notes, photographs, and vocabularies of the J.P. Harrington collection.
Can This Document Help Revitalize the Tututni Language?
06/10/2015
For the past week Breath of Life 2015 participants have been carefully analyzing archival documents, sound recordings and collections in the NAA. Tututni is one of the 14 languages represented this year at the National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages held in Washington, D.C. from June 1-12, 2015.
Šmuwič (Barbareño Chumash) speaker, Maura Sullivan returns to Breath of Life
06/05/2015
A Šmuwič (Barbareño Chumash) speaker and language learner, Sullivan attended the 2013 BOL in D.C. Maura returns to BOL this year as an Ivan Sag Fellow, LSA Chicago, on a path towards completing graduate studies in Linguistics.
2015 National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages Begins with a Boom
06/03/2015
Monday June 1, 2015, marked the official opening of the 2015 biennial 2-week National Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages on the National Mall, Washington, D.C.
Wanapum Technology in the Smithsonian Collections: Two Fishing Ring Net Weights
05/26/2015
During their research visit to the Smithsonian on April 20-22, The Wanapum Band of Priest Rapids was able to study fishing ring net weights for the purpose of learning how to make these again and determine how they work to weigh down drift nets for gill fishing.
Wanapum Community to Fish Out a Piece of Lost History from NMNH Collections
04/14/2015
From April 20-22, 2015, three community members of the Wanapum Band of Priest Rapids, WA will work in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History's (NMNH) and National Museum of the American Indian's (NMAI) collections with one goal in mind: to study and recreate a Wanapum “fishing wheel."
Stride for Thrive Update: Stepping towards Language Reclamation & Revitalization
03/12/2015
After months of training, hundreds of miles under foot, and with 40+ language names printed on the back of her ‘Stride for Thrive’ shirt, Gabriela Pérez Báez completed her third marathon run in honor of International Mother Tongue Day (February 21).
02/21/2015
The Meskwaki dictionary was created over a 40-year period during which Dr. Ives Goddard and Dr. Lucy Thomason transcribed and analyzed some 27,000 pages of archival material in the National Anthropological Archives written by native Meskwaki speakers over 100 years ago.
Myaamia Students Rejuvenate Myaamia Language and BoL 2015 at the NAA
01/30/2015
BoL organizers, Myaamia Center and Recovering Voices, decided to create a unique, hands-on learning experience for the Myaamia students from Miami University. The Myaamia Center selected 3 tribal students: Kelsey Godfroy, Megan Mooney, and Ian Young who were accompanied by Jarrid Baldwin, an alumni, and the son of Daryl Baldwin raised as a speaker of Myaamia to participate in the process of archival material selection directly at the NAA.
Words Connect Us: A Reflection on Why Language Matters
01/14/2015
In an effort to capture the significance and value of language a film “Language Matters” with Bob Holman, a film by David Grubin, uses three examples of endangered languages - in Goulburn Island, Australia, Wales, and Hawaii - to illustrate the significance that language holds, calling attention to the alarming rate at which the world is losing its languages, and exploring what can be done to respond to this crisis.
04/11/2014
Recovering Voices’ researchers seek to document these languages and knowledge systems and collaborate with communities in order to help sustain and revitalize them. A Smithsonian Initiative, Recovering Voices is housed at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), and in partnership between NMNH and the National Museum of the American Indian and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
