Convening 2022
Project Planning for Language Documentation and Research
The major event of 2022 was a convening of students and scholars who are interested in and already engaging in language science with a focus on language documentation. As originally proposed, the convening was held immediately before the beginning of the Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang 2022) which was hosted by the University of Montana in June and July.
The convening served to broaden participation across the Montana tribal colleges in language science. Invited participants included researchers and teachers from Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU) in Montana, scholars and consultants at the University of Montana, the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) scholars and consultants, and five students who attended CoLang 2022 which was held on the University of Montana campus. There were 26 invited and 20 attended.
The five CoLang 2022 attending students were selected in collaboration with the members of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of CoLang 2022. The LOC members developed a scholarship application for prospective CoLang attendees in March. There were 34 applications. The evaluation was conducted based on their experience in language research and language work. Three among the five were from the Indigenous communities. A requirement of the scholarship was attendance at the convening.
The convening topic was "Project Planning for Language Documentation and Research", held on June 12, the convening addressed the ongoing issue of bridging language research (linguistics) and community concerns (language revitalization). While a typical direction is to talk about language documentation and its application for language revitalization, the convening emphasized the community-based method and began with a discussion regarding community concerns. The participants were given a number of tasks aimed at building ‘grassroots’ curriculum and language lessons. These tasks initiated the discussion at each table which had a planned grouping of stakeholders from different backgrounds.