Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas

Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas
Name	Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas
Formation	1981
Type	Scholarly society
Headquarters	Berkeley, California
Region served	Americas
Language	English, Indigenous languages of the Americas
Leader title	President

Contents

Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas is a scholarly organization dedicated to the documentation, analysis, revitalization, and promotion of the Indigenous languages of North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. Founded by linguists, anthropologists, and native speakers, the society fosters collaboration among researchers associated with institutions such as University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of Toronto, and National Autonomous University of Mexico. Its membership spans faculty from University of Arizona, University of Texas at Austin, and University of New Mexico as well as community scholars from nations including the Navajo Nation, Quechua people, Maya peoples, Mapuche, and Inuit communities.

History

The society emerged in the early 1980s amid growing interest in fieldwork exemplified by figures like Edward Sapir, Franz Boas, Morris Swadesh, Noam Chomsky, and Raymond Dietrich and institutions such as Smithsonian Institution, American Philosophical Society, and American Anthropological Association. Early meetings involved researchers linked to programs at University of California, Los Angeles, Cornell University, University of Chicago, Yale University, and University of California, Santa Cruz. Key formative events included collaborative workshops that paralleled conferences held by Linguistic Society of America, International Congress of Linguists, and Societé Internationale de Linguistique. The society expanded in response to growing documentation projects like those funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and provincial initiatives in Ontario and Québec.

The society’s mission emphasizes descriptive linguistics, comparative reconstruction, language teaching, and community-based revitalization. It supports fieldwork training practiced by scholars from University of California, Santa Barbara, University of Washington, University of British Columbia, and Indiana University Bloomington and partners with community organizations such as First Nations University of Canada, Assembly of First Nations, Native American Rights Fund, and tribal language programs on reservations like Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Tohono Oʼodham Nation. Activities include hands-on workshops inspired by methods from researchers like William Poser, Leanne Hinton, Kenneth Hale, Ives Goddard, and R.M.W. Dixon; public outreach modeled on initiatives by Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian; and collaboration with governmental bodies such as the Canadian Heritage and state agencies in California and Alaska.

Annual meetings are held in coordination with locations across the Americas, often co-located with events hosted by Linguistic Society of America, American Anthropological Association, Canadian Linguistic Association, and regional conferences such as Congreso Internacional de Lingüística. Past plenary speakers have included scholars affiliated with MIT Press, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and leading community advocates from Zapatista movement, Aymara organizations, and Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The society organizes specialized workshops on phonetics tied to laboratories at Haskins Laboratories, syntax seminars influenced by work from Columbia University, and field-school offerings in partnership with Simon Fraser University and University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Governance follows a elected board structure featuring officers such as President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer drawn from members at institutions like University of California, Davis, Rutgers University, University of Kansas, Pennsylvania State University, and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Advisory committees include Indigenous representatives from organizations such as National Congress of American Indians, Consejo Nacional de Cultura y las Artes (Chile), and regional tribal councils. Membership categories accommodate students, emeritus scholars, community members, and institutional subscribers from archives such as the American Philosophical Society Library, Library of Congress, and the Munk School of Global Affairs.

The society administers awards and grants supporting fieldwork, documentation, and language teaching, with funding mechanisms analogous to programs at the National Science Foundation, Endangered Language Fund, and Ford Foundation. Notable prizes recognize lifetime achievement, early-career research, and community collaboration, following a tradition seen in honors like the MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and disciplinary awards from the Linguistic Society of America. Grant recipients have included researchers working on languages such as Chinook, Tsimshianic languages, Arapaho language, Wakashan languages, Cariban languages, Tupi languages, and Panoan languages, and have partnered with repositories including the Endangered Languages Archive and the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America.