In June, Quartz Colvin, a current graduate student, attended The Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang). This institute brings together the world’s leading academics, community scholars, and Indigenous language activists to provide training in language documentation, revitalization, and collaborative practices.
CoLang 2024 was jointly organized by the Arizona State University (ASU) and Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, one of many federally recognized tribes in the Phoenix, Arizona area. This was the first year where the institute had co-equal partnership, between a university and tribal organization in the conceiving, planning, funding, and hosting of this world class institute.
The month-long institute is split into two parts. The first two weeks are workshops on different aspects of academic and community relationships, and different tools to foster language reclamation. The last two weeks are ‘practica sessions’ where participants use what they learned in the workshops and apply them to working with an Indigenous community.
Quartz participated in the Cook Islands Māori practicum that focused on developing natural language processing (NLP) tools for Māori language revitalization. More information on the practica sessions for the 2024 institute can be found here.