The LSA is delighted to announce that its Executive Committee (EC) has approved the creation of a new Natives4Linguistics Special Interest Group (SIG), which is open to all LSA members. The development of this SIG emerged from needs identified by the participants of the Nattives4Linguistics satellite workshop*, which brought Native American linguists and community scholars to the 2018 LSA Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, to discuss and promote the integration of indigenous needs and views in the discipline.

The new SIG follows up on several years of activities focused on broadening the participation of Native Americans in the LSA's core mission, the scientific study of language and its applications. These efforts included a Workshop on Building Capacity in Linguistics and Endangered Languages at Tribal Colleges and Universities at the 2017 Annual Meeting; a Symposium on Sharing Our Views; Native Americans Speak About Language and Linguistics at the 2018 Annual Meeting; and a session on Natives4Linguistics 2018 – Sharing Our Findings at the 2019 Annual Meeting.

The goals of the SIG will include the following:

Increasing the participation of Native American and other Indigenous peoples at the annual LSA meeting as well as within the discipline of Linguistics.

Developing and promoting strategies to better incorporate Native American and other Indigenous needs and values about language into linguistic science. This includes sharing these with LSA leaders and assisting them with implementation.

Creating a space for Indigenous community scholars and linguists, and non-Indigenous linguist partners to network and gain insight on relevant issues concerning Indigenous communities and their respective languages. All interested LSA members are welcome to attend and participate.

Read more about the new SIG.

*supported by the National Science Foundation Documenting Endangered Languages Program under grant no. 1743743.