Center for the Documentation and Revitalization of Indigenous Languages

The Center for the Documentation and Revitalization of Indigenous Languages (CDRIL, "see-drill") is located within the Institute for Indigenous Knowledge and is integral to its mission. CDRIL collaborates with Indigenous partners to systematically record Indigenous languages and sustain and revitalize them within the culture groups to which they belong.

It does so through the creation and sharing of print and digital resources such as audio and visual recordings, dictionaries, grammars, language curricula and instructional materials, language planning documents, monographs, research articles, biographies, histories, stories, as well as ethnographic and linguistic fieldnotes.

CDRIL is vitally concerned with ensuring that its vast archive of a broad range of Native American linguistic material is returned to the tribal nation communities and individuals from which it came. Work is ongoing to reach the ultimate goal of having tribal nation source communities and individuals steward the collection, determining for themselves access protocols and permissions. Interested parties should contact IIK-CDRIL (iik@iu.edu) for information regarding this process.

Much of the archival material in CDRIL was collected under the auspices of the American Indian Studies Research Institute and the Center for the Documentation of Endangered Languages, out of which was formed the Institute for Indigenous Knowledge and the Center for the Documentation and Revitalization of Indigenous Languages. The CDRIL collection includes more than 2000 hours of audio and video field recordings and hundreds of thousands of documents digitally archived in accordance with Harvard/IU Sound Directions Initiative and AES standards. 

CDRIL continues to educate its associates and partners in methods of documenting Indigenous languages and using the resulting material for language revitalization and reclamation purposes. This work involves teaching contemporary digital recording techniques for recording speech events and conducting other linguistic fieldwork. These techniques are essential for language documentation and application to Indigenous family and community language planning goals. 

Current projects include:

• Documenting Diné (Navajo) and Lakota ways of communicating
• Numuchadooana Kai Nasumu'wakwuna: Sustaining the Indigenous Northern Paiute Language
• Digitizing hundreds of thousands of paper documents from the Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R. Parks collection
• Digitizing and archiving approximately 600 hours of tapes from the
  Alfred W. Bowers Collection. (Mandan and Hidatsa).
• Preparing approximately 40,000 tokens for the Online Pawnee Dictionary.
• Digitizing and archiving 28 videotapes of various Nakoda, Hidatsa and Mandan speakers.
• Transcribing Alfred Morsette's songs into Western Notation.

A partial list of Indigenous music and oratory releases includes: