Tyler Peterson

“Tamayame Language Resources Project (Santa Ana Keres)”
2024-2025: National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship

Keresan is an isolate family of Native American languages that are spoken in several pueblo communities in central New Mexico. Tamayame (kee) is the name of the Keres language spoken in the Pueblo of Santa Ana, the smallest of the seven Keresan pueblos by population. Although there are no official numbers, it is estimated that there are fewer than 75 people that still speak Tamayame fluently, most of whom are in their 60s and older. Other than a sketch grammar and word list (Davis 1964), there is no contemporary linguistic documentation of Tamayame. Even though it is possible to hear people speak Tamayame in ceremony, it is experiencing a steady and rapid decline in use within the community. Many community-driven reclamation efforts are actively underway to reverse this familiar trend of language loss, but these efforts lack the support that would be provided by a base of recorded, analyzed, and accessible Tamayame language. Taken together, these facts point to the need for a set of foundational linguistic resources for Tamayame. This project responds to this need by creating for Tamayame (1) a dictionary, (2) a description of the core grammar, and (3) a set of transcribed and analyzed texts. These resources will be integrated to form a linguistic infrastructure that we call the Tamayama Language Resources Project (TLRP).

“CoLang 2024: Institute for Collaborative Language Research”
2023-2024: National Science Foundation: Dynamic Language Infrastructure - Documenting Endangered Languages

CoLang is an international institute which creates multi-dimensional networks and provides quality training for anyone interested in language work, including language activists, teachers, linguists, and students from all types of communities. CoLang workshops provide hands-on skills in language reclamation, documentation, and related fields as practiced in collaborative, community-based contexts. Arizona State University (ASU) and the O’odham-Piipaash Language Program (OPLP) of the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community (SRPMIC), one of several federally recognized tribes in the greater Phoenix area, have joined forces to cohost CoLang 2024. Located in the northern Sonoran desert - on the world's unique desert biospheres - and adjacent to the city of Phoenix, ASU and SRPMIC are close neighbors. the theme for CoLang 2024 is “Creating Partnerships, Honoring Neighbors, Building Capacity”. To our knowledge, this will be the first co-equal partnership, from day one, between a university and tribal organization in the conceiving, planning, funding, and hosting of an Institute. Indeed, our theme can be seen as a step in the evolution of CoLang, whereby educators, and indigenous community language scholars and activists meet and build their capacities in a setting that was shaped by a truly collaborative vision between a traditional institution of higher learning and a tribal-run language program - one that is facing many of the familiar challenges in documenting and revitalizing their languages that indigenous language communities around the world face. Both organizations bring unique resources, scholars, expertise, and opportunities to the Institute that we believe will make for a special learning experience. An important aspiration of CoLang 2024 is to serve as a model for how such a co-equal enterprise can lead to a productive and sustainable partnership between neighbors, and how institutions such as ASU can honor and serve their neighbors in a meaningful way.

"Preserving And Revitalizing The Abaa'ja (Yavapai) Language in the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation" 
2022-25: Administration for Native Americans; Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation

The overall goal of this 36 month Project is to preserve and revitalize the seriously threatened Abaa’ja (Yavapai) language in the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation. This project will support this goal by conducting training workshops on acquiring key legacy language resources, building a Yavapai dictionary and developing curriculum materials. Follow-up project workshops and meetings will produce actionable plans for building a Yavapai dictionary and comprehensive curriculum. In addition, student linguists will identify and assist the FMYN in acquiring legacy resources by the end of the Project. The Project will also build the technology infrastructure needed to support sustainable language documentation, maintenance and revitalization efforts, through the acquisition of recording (audio and video) equipment for the purposes of recording the remaining Yavapai speakers within the Nation. Taken together, these tasks, plans and equipment represent the establishment of an Abaa’ja Language Lab – the permanent home for FMYN Abaa’ja language documentation, learning, and revitalization efforts.

Assessing and Documenting the Vitality of Native American Languages
2016-19: Documenting Endangered Languages (NSF-NEH DEL BCS # 1601738)

This pilot project responds to the fact that there is not a current systematic assessment of the Native American languages of the United States. As such, the initial step is to create a model for grass-roots assessment that can be shared with tribal communities throughout the U.S. This project departs from traditional language documentation research in that it will lead to the documentation of language status, aiming to meet a national need. This aim will be achieved in collaboration with Native American community-based researchers in Arizona, Montana, and New Mexico. Working together with specialists in qualitative and quantitative data analysis and processing, a model of language vitality assessment will be developed and piloted creating a cohort of community researchers versed in research protocol, assessment design and implementation, data collection and management, data storage and use of assessment data for grant-writing. In doing this we broaden participation and empower the community language practitioner. To give you an idea of some of the (preliminary) results this project has yielded, in January 2019 we held a training workshop at the Tohono O'odham Community College in Sells, Arizona, where our project collaborators took on the role of training the workshop participants in survey design, using the methods and materials we developed as part of our project.