Back to the Native American languages index
Our update is finished now, and Native Languages of the Americas is ready to welcome new members and volunteers. Please see our
new and improved How You Can Help page if you would like to work on one of our projects
with us!
As our site now has more than 2000 pages of language information, articles, and links pages, we have stopped using this page to announce each new page we add,
but are still using it to announce general news and new sections as they are added to our site. Thanks for your interest!
Sponsored Links
Oct 11, 2021: Happy Indigenous People's day!
We have been hard at work updating the links on the main language pages on our website, but we also have a new project to announce--
we are working on adding information and materials related to the Native languages of Brazil. Did you know there are more than 200 indigenous
languages of Brazil? Needless to say, this is a big project! You can see our progress
here. We have added vocabulary pages for 37 new languages so far, and are
in the process of preparing more. Send us email if you would like to pitch in.
June 18, 2021: We are currently developing a new worksheet series, Members of the Family. For this project, we will need pictures
of faces for a family tree-- so we are putting a call out for Native artists interested in drawing some for us! Send Laura an
email if you are interested in helping with this project.
Mar 10, 2021: Native Languages of the Americas is pleased to announce our 2020 and 2021 language grants, which you can see at our
grant awards page. We look forward to seeing the results of all these
great projects! If you would like to help us support them, click here
for our donations page.
Oct 18, 2020: Our apologies for the lack of updates to the "What's New" page. The volunteer whose idea it was became too busy
to maintain it, and since not many people click through to it, it didn't seem important. However, this fall we have gotten three emails asking
about it and whether we are still active, so we figured we'd better check in. Yes, we are still here! Our language preservation grants have been
delayed this year due to the many upheavals of 2020, but we will be making a new round of language grants soon. On the website, we have just
finished a big update to our Native American kids' pages.
Besides adding new information to most of the pages, all of the links are now current so kids should be able to click through to other
websites with more pictures and facts. Stay well everyone!
January 1, 2014: Happy New Year from Native Languages of the Americas!
Our next round of language preservation grants will be awarded in the spring.
As always, we are also able to provide free web hosting, bandwidth, and other Internet
services to indigenous language projects, and we usually have person-hours available to help with
language projects, so please feel free to
email us if there's anything else we could help with!
November 10, 2013: We have added a new series of worksheets to our language learning materials, this one about
food words. Check out the template
here if you want to submit word sets for it!
June 29 , 2013: We are moving the question-and-answer section of our website to a new blog platform
to make it easier to answer and interact with people's questions. This is a work in progress, but please feel free to
visit our Native American blog, or submit a question to us!
May 9 , 2013: It was hard to choose from the many excellent finalists, but we have selected six projects
to fund for our 2013 Language Preservation Grants this spring: a dictionary of the Western Shoshoni language,
a Gwich'in Athabaskan-language production of a Shakespeare play, Mi'kmaq-language translations of children's books,
support for an Oglala Lakota immersion preschool, audio and video recordings from the Shiwiar community in Ecuador,
and preparation of traditional Tunica texts. Congratulations to all the people involved in these six projects!
April 2, 2013: We are now in the final process of selecting our 2013 Language Preservation Grants for this
spring. Please feel free to continue to send grant requests but they will probably not be considered until next year.
Thanks to all!
January 1, 2013: Happy New Year from Native Languages of the Americas!
We are again issuing a call for small grants related to Native American language preservation, maintenance
and revival. Our next round of grants will be awarded in the spring.
Please see our Native American language grants
page for more details. Priority is given to tribally sponsored projects.
As always, we are also able to provide free web hosting, bandwidth, and other Internet
services to indigenous language projects, and we usually have person-hours available to help with
language projects, so please feel free to
email us if there's anything else we could help with!
June 15, 2012: We have chosen five projects to fund for our 2012 Spring Language Preservation Grants.
They include a Chinook Jargon language project from the Cowlitz tribe, a Yup'ik language spelling bee, a
project to create Lakota language classroom materials, and two small grants to assist in a Seneca web application
and purchase Nooksack language materials. We hope to be able to provide additional funding for some of the other
excellent proposals we have received later this year. Congratulations to all the people involved in these five projects!
January 1, 2012: Happy New Year from Native Languages of the Americas!
We are again issuing a call for small grants related to Native American language preservation, maintenance
and revival. Our next round of grants will be awarded in the spring.
As always, we are also able to provide free web hosting, bandwidth, and other Internet
services to indigenous language projects, and we usually have person-hours available to help with
language projects, so please feel free to
email us if there's anything else we could help with!
September 1, 2011: We have chosen four projects to fund for our 2011 Language Preservation Grants.
They include the production of an Aleut-language flashcard game, an Ojibwe language class for teenagers,
support for the Sac and Fox Nation's master-apprentice language learning program, and support for tribal
Chemehuevi language maintenance programs.
We had many outstanding submissions this year and wish we could have supported more of them.
Congratulations to all the people involved in these four projects!
July 8, 2011: Congratulations to Pinny and her husband on the birth of their winula Kayla!
June 15, 2011: We are in the final process of selecting our 2011 Language Preservation Grants. Thanks to all of you for your patience--
we received a record number of grant applications this year! Please feel free to continue to send grant requests but they will almost certainly not
be considered until next year, as our plate is full for the time being.
Feb 27, 2011: We are now answering language queries and other online questions at our new
mailbag page. It is still under construction so we appreciate
your patience!
December 20, 2010: We are issuing another call for small grants related to Native American language preservation, maintenance
and revival. Priority is given to tribally sponsored projects. We are also always able to provide free web hosting, bandwidth, and other Internet
services to indigenous language projects, and we usually have person-hours available to help with language projects, so please feel free to
email us if there's anything else we could help with!
June 1, 2010: We have chosen four projects to fund for our 2010 Language Preservation Grants. They include a project analyzing
and presenting traditional Kwakwaka'wakw songs; a project supporting the production of a DVD of the languages of Table Mountain
Rancheria (Yokuts and Western Mono); a project recording the Mountain Maidu language; and a project producing a Navajo-language
computer game. Congratulations to all the people involved in these four projects!
January 1, 2009: Happy New Year from Native Languages of the Americas! We have more than 3,500 pages on our website now,
including language materials for 440 different indigenous languages of North, Central and South America. We have also added new kids' pages
to our United States Native Americans section, including word searches to
use in the classroom, how to say "Hello" in the tribal languages of each state, and a comparison of animal names in the languages of each state.
Other recent projects we have supported include a language learning coloring book for kids produced by the Hualapai tribe and
an Ojibway language learning computer game.
January 5, 2008: Happy New Year! The Ioway documentary we helped produce has been completed, and soon the project's recordings
of the Chiwere (Iowa-Otoe) language will be made available. We have recently added a new section on
culture areas of the Americas. We have also
added more materials to the Facts for Kids educational section of our site, including illustrated pages on
Native American houses,
Native American hairstyles, and
breechcloths with leggings,
as well as new fact sheets for the Southeastern tribes (Caddo,
Alabama, Coushatta,
Creek, Choctaw,
Chickasaw, Catawba,
Seminole, Calusa,
and Yuchi,)
Plains Indian tribes (Crow,
Arikara, Assiniboine,
Lakota and Dakota Sioux, Mandan,
Hidatsa,
Kiowa, Osage,
Pawnee, Comanche,
Ioway, Otoe,
Missouria, Omaha,
Ponca, Kansa,
Quapaw, Tonkawa,
and Wichita)
and the Nez Perce,
Ute,
Shoshone, and
Apache tribe. We now have fact sheets for kids on 77 tribes in all.
If you would like to help us work on another one please contact us.
August 12, 2007: Our apologies for not updating the What's New page in so long. We have, however, been very busy updating
the rest of the site. We have more than 2000 pages now, covering more than 250 different languages. New sections include
Native Americans in different countries,
South American languages,
Central American languages,
and Caribbean languages; we have also added clickable
maps to our
North American languages,
United States Native Americans and
Canadian First Nations index pages,
and one for Central and South American cultures.
(The
Mexican Indian language index is still under construction, but
many of the individual Mexican language pages are completed.)
We also have a new worksheet series about numbers, and have expanded our
animals template to include more Central and South American animals to make it easier for indigenous people in those countries to use.
We have added a section for Native American myths and legends,
as well as an archive of the folklore materials we have ourselves.
January 10, 2007: Happy New Year! We have added a new series of worksheets to our language learning materials, this one about
colors. Currently, we are working on adding
audio to our language pages (such as this Lakota page). Please
contact us if you are a native speaker (or have access to a native speaker) and would
like to make recordings for the site. We have a small budget available to provide recording equipment and other supplies you might need.
August 21, 2006: We are adding a new series of
illustrated worksheets to the
online language learning materials we offer at our site. This one is about parts of the body
and has a black-and-white printable version that can be used in the classroom. Enjoy!
June 12, 2006: The second half of the Ioway documentary we've been helping to fund is being filmed
as we speak. I will let everyone know when it is available for purchase. Besides the interesting cultural and historical information presented by both Iowa
tribes, the DVD will include a huge track of language material from the one remaining Ioway elder who is fully fluent in the Chiwere (Iowa-Otoe)
language. Invaluable stuff!
May 30, 2006: We have added five pronunciation guides for Algonquian languages
to our website. As always, feedback is welcomed. We're also looking out for native speakers to record sample words for those pages, if anyone is interested.
April 7, 2006: We have begun adding picture dictionaries to our website,
with photos of animals with their native names. If anyone would like to add a picture dictionary in a new language, just let us know.
February 4, 2006: Two new projects which are progressing slowly but steadily are adding pictures to our
Native American website for kids and adding maps to our website of
US American Indian Tribes State By State. If anyone has pictures you'd
like to see added to the kids' pages, go ahead and send them to us!
November 20, 2005: We had a big push this year to add pages for all the living and recently dormant languages of the US and Canada, since some
readers were getting the incorrect impression that languages we didn't have pages for yet didn't exist or that we considered them unimportant. They should all be
available from our Indian tribes menu now. We still do not have pages for many living
languages of Mexico, Central America, South America or the Caribbean. If you have information about one of these languages and would like to help us
add a page, please contact us.
July 6, 2005: Many new vocabulary pages have been added over the last few months, and also more links pages. The other big news lately is that
we're producing a movie! (Well, we're funding it anyway, through a humanities grant.) It's a documentary on the Ioway tribe, including some language
recordings from Ioway elders. We will let you know when it's available.
January 19, 2005: We have added so many more pages of American Indian vocabulary this month that I am not going to list them all individually here;
you can reach them all from the American Indian words index. Also, we have put up a new page
with our Native American writing guidelines, in case you want to submit an article to us but have
been too shy. (-:
December 9, 2004: Laura has conquered HTML graphmaking, and we now have charts comparing vocabulary words from related languages in
the Algonquian, Athabaskan,
Caddoan, Hokan,
Iroquoian, Mayan,
Muskogean, Penutian,
Salishan, Siouan, and
Uto-Aztecan language families. We have also added vocabulary lists for some new languages,
and are currently pondering what to do about long-extinct languages of which we have nothing remaining but vocabulary lists written down by non-native
people centuries ago. Is it really valuable to put Powhatan words from John Smith's notebook into a chart with Ojibwe and Cree words we actually know the
pronunciation of? I mean, the guy couldn't even spell English words the same way in two different letters; who knows what sounds the
Virginia Algonquians were really uttering when he decided to write down "pawpaxsoughes"? Opinions on this question are
welcomed.
November 22, 2004: We've been working on the American Indian vocabulary
section of our site. It's got enough material on it that we are making it available now, but it is, of course, still very much under construction... currently
completed vocabulary sets include Abnaki words,
Blackfeet words,
Cheyenne words,
Cree words,
Lenape words,
Maliseet-Passamaquoddy words,
Micmac words,
Munsee words,
Ojibway words,
Potawatomi words,
Apache words,
Navajo words,
Tlingit words,
Mohave words,
Cherokee words,
Mohawk words,
Maya words,
Chickasaw words,
Choctaw words,
Creek words,
Nez Perce words,
Lushootseed Salish words,
Crow words, Dakota Sioux words,
Lakota Sioux words, Osage words,
Comanche words, Hopi words,
Shoshoni words, Tohono O'odham words, and
Kiowa words. That seems like a lot, now that I type them all in. (-: But there are only 5-10 words
for each language so far.
November 12, 2004: We have four of our pages translated into French now:
Les amérindiens, Langues amérindien,
Les atikameks, and
Histoire atikamekw.
Thanks to our francophone volunteers!
October 7, 2004: We have added three more kids' pages: Sac and Fox,
Miami, and Illinois
Indians.
September 17, 2004: We have finally split our Miami-Illinois page. The Miami
and Illinois tribes spoke the same language, but they are distinct tribes with different culture and history, so now we have new
Miami and Illini pages.
September 5, 2004: We are having a very positive response to our dog names fundraiser. By popular demand we have added a new page about
American Indian Baby Names, with explanations, cautions, and suggestions for people looking
for Native American names for their children. If this saves even one more poor child from being named "Svaha" because his parents read on an Internet list
that it was a "Native American" name, I have done a good deed today. ;-) We have also added two more states to our US Tribes pages:
Vermont and New Hampshire.
August 26, 2004: Several more additions to our US Tribes pages: Connecticut,
Massachusetts, Montana,
Rhode Island, and Texas. Also, we have
put up a non-partisan page about American Indian voting. Please, everyone, take the time to register
today.
August 14, 2004: We added three new states to our US Tribes pages: Michigan,
Wisconsin and Wyoming. I also
updated Orrin's tribal tattoo page to include more information because we are still getting a lot of mail asking about it.
August 6, 2004: Native Languages of the Americas has a new fundraiser: Indian Dog Names.
Since so many people send us email asking for names for their dogs, we figured, why not turn it into a fundraiser. So we will name one dog (or horse or other pet)
for every $10 donated to our cause. We'll see how it goes. (-:
July 20, 2004: Our website has passed 3 million hits now!
We are launching a new section, US American Indian Tribes State By State.
We are using this section to link to all the Indian tribes in each state and also give their snail mail addresses. Eventually we hope to put other resources without websites
of their own onto these pages, and add maps. States currently featured are Alabama,
Minnesota and Maine.
July 1, 2004: We have updated links for most of the language pages last month, and we have also finished our art pages, adding subpages for
Indian peace pipes,
kachinas, Native American dolls,
native drums,
totem poles, Native American masks,
and other Native American sculpture. We are still looking over submissions of art sites, and
accepting more submissions.
June 22, 2004: We have added some new art subpages this week: porcupine quillwork,
moccasins, amulet bags, and
Native American greeting cards. We are also in the process of upgrading our organization's computers...
June 8, 2004: We are almost done with the Facts for Kids pages now. The new additions are Cherokee
and Lumbee facts. We also split the
Cherokee culture page off from the main Cherokee page to make room for more language materials,
and we added new art pages on Native American jewelry,
Native American pottery and Native American painting.
May 21, 2004: We added three new pages to our site for Yurok culture,
Yurok facts for kids, and
Wiyot facts for kids. Also, we added two new art pages,
Native American beadwork and
star quilts. Thanks to everyone for the art suggestions!
May 2, 2004: We added six new pages to our site for Gros Ventre,
Cheyenne and
Blackfoot culture, and
Gros Ventre,
Cheyenne kids pages, and an
Black feet kids' pages. Also Orrin wrote a brief page on
Native American herbs.
April 20, 2004: Our new Native American arts and crafts page has gotten such a positive response that I've fleshed it out with some pictures. The
subpages now include Native American Baskets,
Native American Clothes, Southwest Art,
Northwest Coast Art,
and Dreamcatchers. I'm still taking nominations of favorite native artists
to add to the list so keep the suggestions coming!
April 12, 2004: We added four new pages to our site for Kickapoo and
Arapaho culture, and
Kickapoo and
Arapaho Indian kids pages.
March 29, 2004: We have added a new page for Native American Art because
we have been asked to recommend an Indian artist often enough. Laura had to lock up her credit card while she prepared this page.
Some of this stuff is unbelievably beautiful--take a look! I also added a sitemap to our
website because a few people have asked me to put a search function on our page and I don't have time to implement that yet. (-:
March 19, 2004: We added new pages this month for Cree,
Innu, Atikamek,
Metis, Menominee,
Fox and Sauk, and
Potawatomi culture, as well as children's pages for
Cree, Innu,
Atikamekw,
Menominee, and
Potowatomi. Got a new bookshelf for our offline library, too!
March 1, 2004: We split our Ojibwe page in half (Ojibwe language and
Chippewa/Ojibway culture), updated the
Ottawa Indian page, and added kids' sections for the
Chippewas and
Ottawas.
February 6, 2004: Orrin has finished his page on Native American genealogy.
We hope it helps you in your search.
January 7, 2004: We have uploaded an Ojibwe bible passage which was submitted to us,
and also added a new article about Algonquian words in English. Orrin is working on a basic
resource page for American Indian genealogy now, since we do not have the time or expertise to respond to the daily queries we get about this topic but feel
bad deleting so much unanswered email. Look for it this month!
January 1, 2004: Happy New Year! We have added nine new children's pages to our site:
Lenape, Munsee,
Nanticoke, Mohican,
Mohegan, Powhatan,
Shawnee, Wampanoag tribe,
and one on the Algonquian tribes in general.
December 17, 2003: Added three new subpages for Algonquin,
Lenape, and
Mi'kmaq culture, and updated our incomplete language pages
(Apache, Arikara,
Assiniboin, Caddo,
Cayuga, Chickasaw,
Chipewyan, Choctaw,
Comanche, Crow,
Dakota, Haida,
Heiltsuk, Haisla,
Hidatsa, Hochunk,
Hopi,
Hupa, Inuktitut,
Iroquois, Karok,
Kiowa, Kwakiutl,
Makah,
Mohawk, Muskogee,
Navajo, Nootka,
Nez Perce, Oneida,
Onondaga, Pawnee,
Pueblo,
Seneca, Shoshoni,
Tlingit, Tsimshian,
Tuscarora,
Wyandot, Wichita,
Zuni, and Indian Sign Language)
so that each has 3-5 good links. It's frustrating to reach an 'under construction' page that's no help at all--now they will at least point visitors in the right directions.
December 10, 2003: Our 'Facts For Kids' sections have gotten very popular and we are moving them to their own pages now:
Abenakis, Penobscot,
Algonquin,
Beothuk, Mi'kmaq,
Malecite and Passamaquoddy. I also added a
Native American website for kids and
Native American cultures for kids to direct young visitors. I did this because this week I received one suggestion
from a homeschooling educator that it would be helpful for navigation, and two letters from children pleading that their "eyeballs were falling out"
from the overload of information. (-:
November 22, 2003: We continue to reorganize our site as we add information to it. This week I split our
Native Languages of the Americas homepage so it will be faster-loading
and hopefully easier to use: the alphabetical master list of Indian tribes
and the page of Native American society and culture are now separate. I also
added a section of general Amerindian language resources to the front page for easy reference.
October 15, 2003: I added a page for fragmentary Algonquian languages
(such as Etchemin), and two for the extinct Algonquian languages Narragansett
and Nanticoke. This completes the Algonquian language family, although there
is more information we would like to add to several of the pages. Next year, we hope to begin work on the
Iroquoian languages!
September 12, 2003: Orrin is happy to announce the birth of his third grandchild, John Jr., on September 1st. (-:
With our new domain and simpler page design, our website is no longer suffering from bandwidth problems, which is
good, because we passed 750,000 hits this week. We added children's sections to three more of our pages and about 40
new links to the Ojibwe language page.
July 24, 2003: Added a Contributions page for anyone
who wants to support our organization (we have a PO box now, and our own PayPal account). We've also purchased some
new books for our library and will be adding some more language information to our site over the next few months.
June 6, 2003: Updated the Beothuk Indians with a
kids' section and a few new links. I also uploaded a copy of Orrin's NDN-List posting about
promoting Native American Internet websites for those
who are interested. Enjoy!
May 17, 2003: Updated pages for Lenape,
Stockbridge-Munsee, Mohegan,
Mahican,
Powhatan, and
Wampanoag.
May 1, 2003: We've finished updating all the Algonkian languages to the new format. Added some new links
to most of them while I was there; check 'em out.
March 28, 2003: Finished cleaning up and transferring our files to our new web address
(http://www.native-languages.org/). Everything should
be up-to-date now; please let me know if it's not.
March 19, 2003: Added a new page, American
Indian Books. This page is for listing general resources as well as making it more convenient to find the
specific resources in the middle of the long tribal pages.
March 14, 2003: Native Languages of the Americas has a new (and hopefully permanent) web address now:
http://www.native-languages.org/. Make a note of it--we'll
be phasing the pages off the bigorrin site soon. Also, we are now
officially a Minnesota non-profit organization.
March 3, 2003: Updated the Algonquin page, with 30 new links,
some fixes, and a kids' section. Unfortunately, the longer these pages get the more often the website exceeds Geocities'
bandwidth limits and the more often it is shut down. It's been down for at least an hour a day since I
expanded the Mi'kmaq page. This is very counterproductive, so until I can get a new website, I'm going to have to
stop expanding any of the pages. Hopefully we'll get some funding soon and be able to forge ahead again.
February 21, 2003: Finished the update to the Micmac page, adding about
50 new links, fixing a few bad ones, and adding a children's section. I also made some corrections to the
Maliseet page, thanks to Donna at Wabanaki Web for the help.
February 12, 2003: Added a page for Beothuks, since there weren't too many links for
this extinct language anyway and I already had them collected.
January 25, 2003: Doing a new update on the site, adding a children's section to each language page. Hopefully
this will save me from having to give the same responses to dozens of schoolkids' email from now on! The updates
so far are the Malecite,
Passamaquoddy,
Penobscot, and
Abenaki pages (I also
split the Maliseet and Passamaquoddy onto separate pages because their combined page was getting too big). I added
40-50 new links to each page, reindexed them, added the children's sections, and revised the introductions a little.
Hope you like them. I probably will not be adding new languages until I know what the grant situation is, so I'll be working
to update the rest of the existing language pages as I get time.
January 1, 2003: Pages currently available include Cherokee and the Algonquian languages
Abenaki-Penobscot, Algonkin,
Arapaho, Atikamekw,
Blackfoot, Cheyenne,
Cree, Gros Ventre,
Kickapoo, Lumbee,
Maliseet-Passamaquoddy, Menominee,
Mesquakie-Sauk,
Michif,
Montagnais Innu, Naskapi Innu,
Potawatomi,
Wiyot, and Yurok; the
Wabanaki Confederacy; our
contact/FAQ page;
our Internet Myths About Indians page;
Laura's page about reviving endangered languages;
Orrin's original homepage; and Orrin's articles about
blood quantum, wannabes, and Indian identity,
Native Americans and the Bering Strait theory,
Y-Indian Princess and Y-Guide programs,
Indian Princess,
American Indian religion and spirituality on the Internet, and
tribal tattoos. Currently
under construction are Shawnee and the
Shawnee culture page. We'll keep you posted!
