Recovering Voices Indigenous Digital Archive Pilot:

Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’

National Breath of Life - Smithsonian - 2017

Introductions

Language Background -

Where we are from

Language Background - Language Growth

• Multiple community and tribal based revitalization efforts
• Limited by access to searchable materials and creation of pedagogical resources

Nuu-da’ Language Project: Background

• Started with separate family-based, grassroots level language work
• In 2014 started seeking funding to support compilation and access to language materials:
• 1000s of pages of handwritten notes: Dorsey, Harrington, Jacobs, and more collected between 1880s and 1960s
• At least 40 hours of recordings collected between 1940s and 1960s
• While all publicly available, accessibility was limited due to location, format and orthographies

Nuu-da’ Language Project:

Breath of Life 2015

Nuu-da’ Language Project: SWOAL NSF DEL Grant

Purpose is to support:

• Community Access
• Orthographic standardization
• Database creation
• Linguistic Analysis

Using materials in public archives (including NAA)

Nuu-da’ Project Needs for a Database

• Capacity for linguistic analysis
• Searchable format
• Ability to handle variation within token types
• Ability to deal with lots of raw data
• Accessibility to ongoing language revitalizers
• Academically rigorous
• Long-term safe-keeping of data
• Interoperability

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Databases Tried Main Issues

• FLEx
• Toolbox
• Miromaa
• Filemaker Pro
• TshwaneLex
• Perl (to develop our own database)

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• Managing metadata for token variation
• Not designed specifically for archival data
• Verb Paradigm support
• Complex Athabaskan Verb structure

Examples of Database Issues - Token variation

Dorsey (1884) collected 11 different tokens of ‘man’ including:

• 9 different forms
• Different accent patterns
• 3 different initial sounds
• 3 different middle consents
• Vowel variations

Reliability of Dataǃ

Examples of Database issues - Paradigms

Return to Breath of Life 2017!

• We were asked to Pilot RVIDA at Breath of Life 2017 by Recovering Voices
• This was at a critical point in deciding how to manage our data.
• Seemed to be a perfect fit for our needs

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Benefits of RVIDA to Nuu-da’ Project

• Tokens tied directly to digital surrogate
• Transcription and transliteration capabilities
• Morphological, analysis
• Orthographic/phonological analysis (Example: k’vn-da’ or ‘vn-da’)
• Dialectic analysis
• Handles analysis of audio and written material
• Powerful search functions
• Flexibility
• Direct support from like-minded experts
• Indigenuity
• Multiple searchable comment fields
• Non-Hierarchical data format
• On-demand Transliteration

RVIDA Process - Front end

RVIDA - Pilot: Extra demands

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• Committed Community Researchers
• Committed Community Linguist
• Time dedicated to the project
• Funding and support
• Technical skills
• Patience with technology bugs

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What RVIDA isn’t

• Not intended to replace FLEx or other linguistic analysis software.
• Not intended to replace dictionary creation software
• Not out of beta-testing
• It is a digital archive first
• with search and database functionalities

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Suggestions for you - no matter the software you use!

• Spreadsheets Rock!!! - interoperability with everything
• Consider using standardized spreadsheet templates
• Consistency and standardization
• Audio - plan ahead and ask for advice
• Practice archiving best practices…
• Digital archives versus databases

Shu’ shaa-nii-la!