- Email:
- dibsmith@iu.edu
- Campus:
- IU Bloomington
Dillon Tautunu Fruean-Smith (He/him) is Sāmoan with family ties to the villages of Avalua, Faleʻula and Vailoa i Palauli in Sāmoa, as well as Mesepa in American Sāmoa. He was born on the island of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. He moved to Indianapolis in 2001, where he has been involved as a member of the Polynesian diaspora community, through the 501(c)(3) organization the Indiana School of Polynesian Arts since 2009. After completing his undergraduate studies at Indiana University - Bloomington (IUB), and his M.A. at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Linguistics, he is now a Ph.D. Candidate in Linguistics at Indiana University - Bloomington. He is a founding member of the Chin Languages Research Project (CLRP), a collaboration started by Dr. Kelly Berkson between linguists at IUB and colleagues who are members of the Burma/Myanmar Chin community of greater Indianapolis. Involvement in the CLRP led to his current personal research, which focuses on how motion is encoded in the Lutuv language, one of the 30+ languages spoken by the displaced peoples of the Chin community of greater Indianapolis.
