History of the Language Conservancy
Breathing new life into endangered languages
THE STORY OF A MOVEMENT
- In 2005, Lakota Language Consortium, one of the most active Native American language movements in the US, recognized the critical need for an organization that could assist endangered Native languages on a national level. Many of the issues facing the Lakota language – the lack of adequate teaching materials, the lack of teacher-training opportunities, the lack of online and media resources - were issues common to Native languages nationally.
The Consortium helped establish The Language Conservancy (TLC) with the expectation that a national organization could help pool resources and information as well as replicate best-practice solutions to the many problems facing tribes as they revitalize their languages.
- Today, The Language Conservancy provides support to five endangered Native American languages including Lakota and is working hard to increase access to funding, technical support, and public support for many others.
TLC is the country’s leading organization of its kind, providing applied and on-the-ground solutions to language communities, while also working to engage and inform the broader US public about the problem of language loss in the United States and the world.
- The Language Conservancy estimates that within the next five years over 10,000 Lakota children will be exposed to their native language through our materials and due to our advocacy efforts. In addition, many of our learners are expected to achieve fluency in their native language in the next decade. TLC's mission is to bring this kind of revitalizing effort to as many Native American language communities as we can.
We expect that TLC's efforts to stop language-loss by providing advocacy and exceptional services and material to Native language communities in the US will grow and spread to encompass indigenous languages world-wide.
