Frequently Asked Questions:
A: If you are Indian, first of all, learn your people's language--even as a second language. Second of all, teach it to your kids. (Or your grandkids, if, like Orrin, you already missed your chance at your kids.) Here is Laura's excellent essay about restoring Indian languages. If you would like to become involved with our organization, please visit the page about our non-profit work to learn how you can volunteer some of your time or make a donation to us on behalf of endangered Indian languages. You can also link to our site from your website or blog, to help spread the word!
A: So far we have used donations to purchase dictionaries and other American Indian language materials, computer equipment, and office supplies; to pay technicians to help maintain our website; to make small grants to native speakers working on language preservation projects; and to purchase language learning and support materials for tribal members living off-reservation. Future donations may also be used for travel expenses, audio recording equipment, and the direct support of tribal language programs and other educational endeavors involving native languages. We are a 501-c-3 nonprofit educational organization and contributions are tax-exempt in the United States.
A: Of course not! If the answer to your question isn't on our FAQ or our public language site, send us email or visit our free Indian language queries page. There are some kinds of questions we can't be much help with, though, so please read the rest of this FAQ page first.
A: Yes. We can give financial support to any tribal or tribally sponsored language learning program, to non-tribal educational projects that we feel promote native language use, and to individual tribal members working to record or present language materials. Unfortunately, we do not have the funds available to support large projects at this point in time. We are able to make small grants (particularly those that will cost $1000 or less), and we are also able to provide free web hosting, technological assistance, and volunteer-hours to any Indian language preservation effort. Please check our grant information page and send us an application if you think we might be able to help you.
If you have a more expensive native language teaching or preservation project which you are seeking funding for, please feel free to send us email about it. Even though we cannot fund large-scale projects ourselves at this time, we do have contacts we may be able to pass along to you. As a nonprofit group, we are also able to serve as fiscal sponsors for qualified organizations who are trying to apply for grants. Be sure to include the amount of funding you are seeking and the exact nature of the project.
A: All our own language materials are available online (go back to our homepage to find it.) If you are a tribal member living off-reservation, we can purchase language learning materials for you and your family if they are available in your people's language. Inquire by email (please include your exact tribal affiliation.) We cannot offer that free service to non-tribal members. However, we do have language learning worksheets, picture dictionaries, numbers, pronunciation guides and other materials available online which you are welcome to print out and use.
A: No, we don't. Two good sources for Native American language learning books and tapes are Various Indian Peoples Publishing and Buffalo Trails.
A: Yes. All of the materials on our website may be freely used for noncommercial educational purposes.
A: Yes, you can use our website to help with your school report. Go to our Native Americans index (or our new Native American Kids index if you are a younger student) and explore the links there to learn more about the language and culture of an Indian tribe. You can use any of the information there for your report.
If you have a specific question that you cannot find an answer to, it's OK to email us and ask-- but please do not just send us the essay question you were assigned! We can not do people's homework for them.
A: Yes, as long as you link back to our website from the page where you have used our information.
A: You will need to ask your teacher for the bibliography format he or she wants you to use. The authors' names are Laura Redish and Orrin Lewis, and the title of our website is Native Languages of the Americas. The site was first created in 1998 and last updated in 2009.
A: Yes, you can read it at this link.
A: No, thank you. We realize our 'look' is rather bare-bones, but that is by design--this website is intended to be one that will not crash the kind of computers they have at Indian grade schools, and that means no flash videos or rippling pools or background music. Sorry.
A: Native Languages of the Americas has no paid employees (all of our members are volunteers). If you would like to volunteer with us, please see our How You Can Help page for volunteer opportunities. We do sometimes have freelance work available doing data entry or editing our web pages. We pay $10 an hour for that and it's only a few hours a week. Drop us an email if you're interested. Also, if you are fluent in an Indian language and are seeking work as a translator or interpreter, we'd be happy to take your name and refer the people who ask us about paid translators to you.
A: No. We are not a genealogical organization and cannot research your family tree for you. However, Orrin has written a new page on Native American genealogy which may help provide you with a starting point in your search for your ancestors. Good luck!
A: Sorry, but free translations are not a service we have time to provide to the public. If you're not finding the native language materials you need on the Internet you can visit our native language translation fundraiser and we can do a translation for you in exchange for a small donation to our organization or a link to our website. Otherwise you are welcome to use the many free online resources we have collected on our site. Select the language you are looking for from our index of Indian tribes and browse through the links there--there are online dictionaries and phrasebooks, homepages of fluent speakers who might translate something for you, mailing lists and bulletin boards about the language where you could post a request, and in some cases even professional translators. If there isn't any link that is useful, you might also try going to the official homepage of a tribe or nation that speaks that language and sending them email asking to be referred to a native speaker you could pay to translate it for you. Many tribes will oblige you.
A: Go to one of our language pages, scroll down to the "Dictionaries and Glossaries" section, open one of the dictionaries, and look up the word "dog" (or cat, or horse, or snake, depending on the species of your pet). If you don't like it or can't pronounce it, try another language. Repeat as necessary. Be aware, housecats are not native to the Americas, so most Indian words for them are borrowed from European languages. If you have a cat, maybe you should try a Middle Eastern language instead. If you would like a more personalized name for your pet, Orrin has started providing some animal name suggestions as part of a fundraiser for our organization--visit our new Native American Names page.
A: That depends on what you mean by a "Native American name." If you want a medicine name for your child, you will have to arrange a naming ceremony with an elder from your family's tribe. No one can do this for you over the Internet, and anybody who claims they can is taking advantage of you. If you want to give your child a name that honors your Native American ancestors, you can always choose a native variant of a Biblical name (such as Kateri, an Iroquois version of Catherine) or adapt a word from a native language into a name that you think sounds nice. See our page on Native American Baby Names for more information.
A: No. It is against Orrin's religion to name a human being he has not met. Naming traditions are different from tribe to tribe, but you can't just get a name from a stranger in any of them that we know of. If you want a native name for yourself I recommend talking to an older relative or an elder in your family's tribe to arrange a naming ceremony. The giving and receiving of medicine names is a sacred religious tradition of great spiritual significance and really cannot be done over the Internet any more than a baptism could.
A: Sure. Go to the language page corresponding to the tribe your character belongs to, scroll down to the "Dictionaries and Glossaries" section, open one of the dictionaries, and look up the word "flower" (if the character is female) or "hawk" (if the character is male). That ought to suffice for your purposes. If you don't like it or can't pronounce it, look up some other basic animal words till you get one you like. You should not take a real Indian's name for a fictional character without permission, as many native traditions consider this disrespectful. But general words like "flower" or "hawk" are fair game. If you would like a more personalized name for your fictional character, Orrin has started providing some fictional name suggestions as part of a fundraiser for our organization--visit our new Native American Names page.
A: We have put up a page of Native American Books because of being asked this question so frequently. It's still under construction, but you can check out the current crop of good book links (there are a few audio tapes and movies in there, too).
A: There sure is a lot of fake "Native American" art out there, isn't there? Well, we have put up a new page of American Indian Art linking to some genuine Indian artists for you to visit. It's by no means exhaustive, and we welcome additions to this page. These are just some of our favorite sites which one of us happened to know about. The art is very beautiful and was all made by American Indian or Inuit people, not by scammers.
We do not know anything about "Native American goddesses." There have never been any Cherokee goddesses, so Orrin does not have any personal knowledge about this subject whatsoever. Laura says there were goddesses worshipped in Central America but they were completely dominated by their husbands and sons so you might not want to read about them. In any event, we do not have the same spiritual beliefs you do, will not bless you or give you a spiritual name or assign you a spirit guide or cast a spell on your behalf, and do not have any special goddess information for you.
No. Native Languages of the Americas is not a religious organization. Laura is not Indian, so she could not help you if she wanted to; and Orrin does not want to. Please understand that Indian spirituality is not evangelistic like Christianity, it is private and entirely cultural. You cannot convert unless you become part of the cultural group, and if you had done that, you wouldn't be looking for help from a total stranger over the Internet, would you? I think you will find that most Indians are happy to tell you about our cultures and even let you participate in powwows and other events, but you can't 'convert' to 'Native American' any more than you can convert to being black, and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably trying to make some money off of you. See Orrin's page for a more complete discussion of American Indian religion and how not to learn about it.
Sorry, we don't do dream interpretations. If you're looking for someone to help you analyze your dreams, here is the URL of a lady who does telephone consultations about dreams and their meanings: Kathleen Jenks, Dream Interpretation Coach. Good luck.
A: We don't have any tattoo pictures, but you can read Orrin's article on American Indian tattoos if you like--he has some important advice for tattoo-seekers, and we have links to a few sources that may be valuable for you.
A: Because those things are false. Here is our Internet Myths page explaining and debunking these and other rumors and misbeliefs about Indian languages and native peoples.
A: Some things are legitimate controversies of history. We don't know exactly what, if anything, Pocahontas did to save John Smith; we don't know who killed Anna Mae Aquash; and we don't know (though we may have deeply held religious beliefs about it) what our ancestors were doing 30,000 years ago. In these cases, we have tried to include links to sites which present both sides of the story. We will not delete the site you disagree with, but if you send us a link to a site presenting another view, we may include it as well. We do not include links to sites which are factually incorrect (see Internet Myths) or offensive, and we do not link to the sites of people who are fraudulent or exploit American Indian religious traditions. If you think any of these is the case, then please contact us. Otherwise, we will not delete a site which contains legitimate and substantially correct information about a Native American language or people.
A: We can't be the wannabe police. Neither of us even really feels we have the right to be, and we definitely do not have time. Readers will have to judge for themselves the value and integrity of websites they read. We will de-link any sites which are factually incorrect, exploitative (including appropriating American Indian religions), fraudulent (including misrepresenting non-native arts and crafts as Indian-made), or offensive. If any of these are the case, send us email explaining the situation and we will try to remedy it. But if it's a matter of your ex-boyfriend saying he's half-Apache and you saying he's lying, that is not an argument we are going to get involved in.
A: We do not include links to sites which are factually incorrect, offensive, or fraudulent (including passing off "Indian-inspired" arts and crafts as Indian-made, which is illegal.) We do not include links to sites which crash Orrin's 486 or cannot be viewed without flash or other add-ons. We do not necessarily include sites if they do not have content about an Amerindian language, and we definitely do not include sites if they do not have content about an indigenous people of the Americas. If there's a very small amount of Indian content and a whole lot of other stuff, we won't necessarily include it. Our site is categorized by languages, so if you have a site about Indians in general, no matter how good it is, we cannot include it at this point in time.
Usually, though, if your site is about an Indian language--probably if it is about an Indian tribe at all--we just don't have your URL. Please email it to us, and we'll add it.
A: Here is my homepage. It tells a little about me. Here is our webpage for the Cherokee language and culture. There are more than 200 links there that will help you learn about my people. Here is the link to my tribe, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.
A: I'm not. I'm not native at all. I don't have any information about Indian peoples except what I've learned from this project--and I've put all of that on the webpages.
A: No. Not every old Indian is a medicine person, any more than every old Italian is a priest. I do not have any religious authority as a Cherokee or as a Christian. I'm just an ordinary person. I believe in Cherokee traditions, I believe in Christ, and I believe the two are not incompatible. I also believe Andrew Jackson is in Hell.
A: When this project became too large for Laura to host it on her personal site anymore, we ended up applying the new domain name to her original site, and she moved her personal files elsewhere. You can find the links to their new locations here.
A: Laura has an AIM account as tjekanefir. You're welcome to IM me there, but I can't promise to respond (I have small children I'm sometimes chasing after). Orrin does not have an AIM account (at least not the instant-messenger kind! :-D )
A: No. This is not an official publication of any Indian tribe or nation, and we are solely responsible for its content. We do try to contact any tribal webmasters that we can find to ask them if they have any corrections or additions to make, and we are grateful to many of them who have taken the time to give us guidance. Our policy is to honor all requests from any official representative of an Indian tribe or nation in any way possible.
A: Native Languages of the Americas does not take any position on any non-linguistic Indian issue. Our linguistic opinion is that Indian languages have been forcibly driven to the brink of extinction by aggressive assimilation, not just drifted into disuse, and that by maintaining the pride, prestige, and practicality of bilingualism, many of them can still be saved. Just look at Navajo.