Last spring, the UW hosted the Pacific Northwest Council for Languages, which advocates for the value of world languages as a core curriculum. One of the most memorable events at this conference was the Lushootseed welcome, power song, and masterclass by q̓ʷat̓ələmu (Nancy Jo Bob), Nisqually Language Resource Center Manager, and qəɫtəblu (Tami Hohn), Assistant Teaching Professor in American Indian Studies (AIS). Bob and Hohn are working with AIS and local tribes to build linguistic resources, such as starting a House of Living Languages at the UW, creating a Nisqually language app and keyboard, translating documents, and more.

Chris Teuton, chair of AIS, argues that language revitalization is “part of the healing process. We are trying to recover from…colonial history.” He further contends that Native American knowledge “is really grounded in our language — the grounding of stories, our storytelling traditions, our words for the natural world, words that describe our social relations.”