Building Capacity in Documentation of Language and Traditional Ecological Knowledge for Hualapai, a Native American Language, and Other Pai Languages

亚利桑那州拥有 15 种美洲原住民语言，属于 5 个不同的语系，因而具有巨大的多样性。 1990 年美国国会通过的《美洲原住民语言法案》将承认美洲原住民语言的独特地位和重要性纳入政策。尤曼语系的派语支系在美国和墨西哥边境两侧、亚利桑那州和墨西哥下加利福尼亚州使用。拜语社区一直保持着紧密的联系和知识交流，特别是在生态和环境领域。无论是学术界（语言学家、人类学家）还是土著（长辈、传统文化传承者），这些专家都知道语言编码了大量专门的传统生态知识（TEK）。不幸的是，随着语言濒临灭绝，传统知识往往首先消失。该项目将研究如何最好地记录这种用拜语编码的传统本土科学知识，并将制定获取适当知识的协议。拜语是在一个生物多样性丰富的地区使用的，那里的收成、植物的寿命和季节的时间界限正在经历快速的转变。再加上所有拜式语言都处于严重濒危状态，使得这项工作变得非常紧迫。该团队由土著科学家和语言学者领导并组成，这意味着活动将以社区利益为首要考虑。其他更广泛的影响包括扩大美洲原住民对语言和生态科学的参与，制定有关 TEK 等敏感材料的知识产权 (IP) 协议，以及扩大讲拜语的部落国家之间的两国合作。该项目由 Hualapai 印第安部落领导，汇集了六个 Pai 民族，其中 5 个来自亚利桑那州：Hualapai、Havasupai、Yavapai-Apache、Yavapai-Prescott、Ft.麦克道尔·亚瓦派（McDowell Yavapai）——以及墨西哥下加利福尼亚州的派派部落人民。该项目将把培训和协作决策作为这种比较语言和 TEK 文档的方法论。这个跨学科团队包括生物学家、语言学家、民族植物学家以及来自 6 个拜族社区的长者和专家。项目活动侧重于通过语言进行 TEK 记录所需技能的协作培训：转录和注释、凭证和样本采集；音韵学和变异的比较分析；数据库；以及数据管理和归档。植物物种和与之相关的本土民族科学是一个敏感且专有的领域。利益相关者社区对当地生态及其传统日历周期、天气模式和植物物种的用途拥有丰富的知识，这些知识深深植根于仪式或宗教活动中。通过制药和其他用途获得商业利益的潜力加剧了这种敏感性，这在记录 TEK 时增加了潜在的争议问题。该项目将推进基于本土的植物学和语言知识记录方法。该团队将传播他们如何为此专门文档开发 IP 协议并传播协议本身。该项目将为未来记录拜族社区丰富的语言和文化遗产奠定基础，无论是单独的还是通过比较分析。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The state of Arizona is home to 15 Native American languages belonging to 5 distinct language families, thus representing tremendous diversity. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. The Pai subgroup of the Yuman language family is spoken on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, in Arizona, and in the Baja California state of Mexico. The Pai language communities have maintained strong connections and exchanges of knowledge, especially in the ecological and environmental domains. Whether academic (linguists, anthropologists) or indigenous (elders, traditional culture bearers), these experts know language encodes a tremendous amount of specialized traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). Unfortunately, as languages become endangered, that traditional knowledge is often the first to be lost. This project will investigate how this traditional indigenous scientific knowledge, here encoded in Pai languages, should best be documented and will develop protocols for accessibility of the appropriate knowledge. The Pai languages are spoken in a region of significant biological diversity, where harvests, the lifespan of plants, and the temporal boundaries of seasons are undergoing rapid transition. This, together with the severely endangered status of all Pai languages, makes this work highly urgent. The team is led by and composed of indigenous scientists and language scholars, meaning activities will be conducted with community benefits foremost. Other broader impacts include broadening participation of Native Americans in the language and ecological sciences, the development of intellectual property (IP) protocols regarding sensitive material like TEK, and the expansion of a binational collaboration between its Pai-speaking tribal nations. Led by the Hualapai Indian Tribe, the project brings together six Pai nations, five from Arizona -- the Hualapai, Havasupai, Yavapai-Apache, Yavapai-Prescott, Ft. McDowell Yavapai -- and the Paipai tribal people of Baja California, Mexico. This project will situate training and collaborative decision-making as a methodology for this kind of comparative language and TEK documentation. The interdisciplinary team includes biologists, linguists, ethnobotanists, and elders and experts from each of the 6 Pai communities. Project activities focus on collaboratively training in skills essential to documentation of TEK through language: transcription and annotation, vouchering and specimen collection; comparative analysis of phonology and variation; databasing; and data management and archiving. Botanical species and the indigenous ethnoscience associated with them represent a sensitive and proprietary area. Stakeholder communities possess significant knowledge of the local ecology and its traditional calendar cycle, weather patterns, and uses of botanical species, with such knowledge deeply embedded in ceremonial or religious activities. That sensitivity is compounded by the potential for commercial benefit through pharmaceutical and other uses, which adds potentially contentious issues when documenting TEK. The project will advance an indigenous-based approach toward documentation of botanical and linguistic knowledge. The team will disseminate how they develop IP protocols for this specialized documentation and disseminate the protocols themselves. The project will establish a foundation for future documentation of the rich linguistic and cultural heritage of the Pai communities, both individually and from a comparative analysis.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.