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

亚利桑那州是15种美洲土著语言的家园，隶属于5个不同的语系，因此代表了巨大的多样性。美国国会于1990年通过了《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制定为政策。尤曼语族的派亚群在美国-墨西哥边境两侧，亚利桑那州和墨西哥的下加利福尼亚州使用。Pai语言社区保持着密切的联系和知识交流，特别是在生态和环境领域。无论是学者（语言学家、人类学家）还是土著居民（长者、传统文化传承者），这些专家都知道语言编码了大量专业的传统生态知识（TEK）。不幸的是，当语言濒临灭绝时，传统知识往往是第一个丢失的。该项目将调查如何最好地记录这些用Pai语言编码的传统土著科学知识，并将为获取适当的知识制定协议。帕伊语生活在一个生物多样性显著的地区，那里的收成、植物的寿命和季节的时间界限正在迅速转变。这一点，再加上所有白族语言的严重濒危状况，使得这项工作非常紧迫。该团队由土著科学家和语言学者领导和组成，这意味着活动将以社区利益为首要目标。其他更广泛的影响包括扩大美洲原住民在语言和生态科学方面的参与，制定有关TEK等敏感材料的知识产权协议，以及扩大其说派伊语的部落国家之间的双边合作。该项目由华拉派印第安部落领导，汇集了六个派部落，其中五个来自亚利桑那州——华拉派、哈瓦苏派、亚瓦派-阿帕奇、亚瓦派-普雷斯科特、麦克道尔堡亚瓦派——以及墨西哥下加利福尼亚州的派派部落。这个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。这个跨学科的团队包括生物学家、语言学家、民族植物学家，以及来自6个派社区的长老和专家。项目活动的重点是通过语言协作培训TEK文档所必需的技能：转录和注释、凭证和标本收集；音系与变异的比较分析；物品清单;以及数据管理和存档。植物物种和与之相关的土著民族科学是一个敏感和专有的领域。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使用有着重要的了解，这些知识深深植根于仪式或宗教活动中。这种敏感性与制药和其他用途的潜在商业利益相结合，这在记录TEK时增加了潜在的争议性问题。该项目将推动以土著为基础的方法来记录植物和语言知识。该团队将传播他们如何为这个专门文档开发IP协议，并传播协议本身。该项目将为今后记录派社区丰富的语言和文化遗产奠定基础，无论是单独记录还是比较分析。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.