Hello, and welcome to Native Languages of the Americas!
We are a small non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting the indigenous languages of the Western Hemisphere. On our website, we are working to provide a complete library of the available online materials about the more than 800 Amerindian languages and the people that speak them.
The director and cofounder of Native Languages of the Americas is Laura Redish. She is a poet and linguist from Minnesota. She is also the one who does all the site maintenance and programming, so if there's something you want changed on the site, it will happen quickest if you contact her at redish@native-languages.org.
The original owner of this site is Orrin Lewis. He is a Cherokee man who has done work in linguistic preservation with many Indian languages of Oklahoma. Due to health reasons Orrin's involvement with the project has been scaled back, but you can still write to him. Orrin's original homepage is now here.
We are happy to talk to you about our organization, this website, and American Indian language preservation. However, please look at this FAQ list first, to save yourself (and us!) some time and energy.
As for other Indian issues, Orrin has written articles on some of them, if you would like to read them: Native Americans and the Bering Strait theory, blood quantum, mixed-bloods, and Indian wannabees, the YMCA and the Y-Indian Guides/Princesses, Native American religion and spirituality, increasing Native Americans' Internet visibility, and myth of the Cherokee princess. However, we want to make clear that those are his personal opinions and not necessarily those of the Cherokee Nation, not necessarily those of the websites we link to, not necessarily Laura's, not necessarily his own family's, and the opinions espoused by some of the websites we link to here aren't necessarily his. Native Languages of the Americas is maintaining neutrality on all these things. Our goal is to preserve and promote Indian languages, and only that.
Thank you for coming here. We hope you enjoy the site!
Laura Redish, Director
Orrin Lewis, Tribal Coordinator