November marks Native American Heritage Month, a time to honor the rich cultures, traditions, and histories of Native communities. In celebration, the American Heritage Center is spotlighting collections that support the revitalization of Indigenous languages, particularly the Arapaho language, through the archives. By preserving and sharing these invaluable resources, the AHC contributes to ongoing efforts to keep these languages alive. Among the valuable resources housed at the AHC are the Zdeněk Salzmann Arapaho Indian research papers, the Wyoming Folklife Archive, and the John Roberts papers. Each of these collections offers unique tools for re-discovering and teaching the Arapaho language.
These three collections contain a variety of tools and resources that enable the revitalization of the Arapaho language. For example, the Salzmann papers contain English to Arapaho dictionary cards that are broken up alphabetically and contain many words translated from English to Arapaho. The example below is the “antelope” card from box 18 of the collection.
Salzmann’s collection also contains musical performances and interviews with members of the Arapaho tribe concerning their language and culture. The 21 reel-to-reel and 92 audio cassette tapes can be used to help develop an understanding of the language, the culture, and provide a place to start learning the language.
The records of the Wyoming Folklife Archive contain documents related to Arapaho language classes that have been developed, materials related to an Arapaho language camp, as well as a copy of the famous Disney movie, Bambi translated into Arapaho.
In 1994, Dr. Steve Greymoming, a professor of Native American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Montana, worked with the Walt Disney Corporation and Wyoming Indian Schools to create a dubbed copy of the iconic Disney movie into Arapaho. Dr. Greymoming led the translation efforts with assistance from students and staff at Wyoming Indian Schools. Arapaho actors then spoke the translated dialogue, leaving only the music in English. This project premiered in November of 1994 and Disney provided the Arapaho nation with 2,000 VHS tapes of the movie. In October of 2022, this version of the film was added to Disney’s streaming service, Disney+. Bambi became the first Disney movie to be dubbed in a Native American language and became another tool in revitalizing the language.
The John Roberts papers contain material regarding Roberts’ mission work on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Roberts was an Episcopalian missionary who in 1883 was sent to the reservation to work among the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Indians and to organize missions among the white settlers in the adjacent territory.
While at his post, Roberts translated many of the biblical texts and church materials into the Arapaho and Shoshone languages with assistance from Michael Whitehawk, Fremont Arthur, and Charles Lajoe. While these documents were created to help anglicize the Native population, researchers and linguists have begun to utilize them to re-discover and revitalize the Arapaho language. For example, Roberts’ papers contain a document of Arapaho words listed on a few sheets of paper, page four of which is depicted below. This list can teach the language without religious connotations, like many of the other texts in the collection.
These three collections are a small sampling of what the AHC holds that could help in the efforts to revitalize the Arapaho language. Archives possess a wealth of materials that can be utilized to rediscover and revitalize Native American languages. By nature, they hold historical recordings, documents and other materials that can be used to teach endangered languages. Modern language revitalization efforts often involve close partnerships between archivists, linguists, and tribal communities to ensure responsible access and respectful use of archived materials. Archives involved in these types of include the American Philosophical Society and the California Language Archive.
Projects like these have also led to the creation of the Indigenous Language Digital Archive. A project where multiple tribes can access and contribute to a digital repository of their languages, allowing for broader collaboration and knowledge sharing. Similarly, the California Language Archive (CLA) at the University of California, Berkley, “holds one of the nation’s largest repositories of Indigenous American language materials. For most of the archive’s history, however, these materials were largely inaccessible to tribal members. With National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding, the CLA has been able to digitize most of its collection, making it much easier for tribal communities to make use of those materials in their language revitalization efforts.” [1] These projects highlight the success of digitization efforts in the archive and display the benefits of digitizing records.
Archivists and archives, however, have access to and contain materials that are sensitive to native people and their culture. As such, archives involved in revitalization efforts have worked to ensure that sensitive materials can only be accessed by authorized individuals and respect tribal sovereignty and cultural information. They have also had to address potential biases in their collection material, as it may have been collected by non-native researchers. The University of Nebraska Press published a book of essays in 2021 titled Indigenous Languages and the Promise of Archives.[2] This collection of essays discusses the impact and the roles that the archive has played in, and could continue to play, in revitalization efforts.
The American Heritage Center is proud to contribute to the preservation and revitalization of Indigenous languages. As we continue to digitize more of these invaluable resources, we invite researchers, tribal members, and anyone interested in linguistic heritage to explore our collections and join in the effort to keep these languages alive.
Supporting Wyoming’s Indian Education for All
The AHC’s work in Arapaho language revitalization, the Center’s K-5 Teaching Resources – Indigenous Tribes of Wyoming exhibit, and our extensive archival holdings serve as valuable resources for educators implementing Wyoming’s Indian Education for All mandate.
These primary source materials—including photographs, documents, manuscripts, and more related to Wyoming’s Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes—are available through digitized resources, online exhibits, and with assistance from Reference Department staff to help teachers educate students about the cultural heritage, history, and contributions of Wyoming’s tribal nations while supporting Wyoming Social Studies Standards.
For more information about using the Center’s resources, contact the AHC’s Reference Department at ahcref@uwyo.edu.
Post contributed by AHC Processing Archivist Brittany Heye.
[1] NEH For All, “Making Language Archives Accessible.” Accessed Nov. 1, 2024.
[2] Link, Adrianna, Abigail Shelton, and Patrick Spero, “Indigenous Languages and the Promise of Archives” from the New Visions in Native American and Indigenous Studies series, University of Nebraska Press, 2021.
