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From http://nativetimes.com/index.php/news/federal/11964-hhs-announces-new-funding-to-preserve-native-languages-strengthen-early-childhood-development-and-tribal-courts

HHS announces new funding to preserve Native languages, strengthen early childhood development and tribal courts
August 18, 2015

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell today announced up to $5.8 million to help tribal communities boost early learning and development services, enhance native language revitalization efforts, and assess and improve the handling of child welfare cases including abuse, neglect, guardianship and adoption. HHS will award $4.2 million for Native American language revitalization, $600,000 for the Tribal Early Learning Initiative (TELI), and $1 million for the Tribal Court Improvement Program (TCIP).

…HHS, through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), is funding 17 new grants totaling $4.2 million to help Native American language revitalization efforts. Use of Native languages has been declining for decades. This funding will help preserve and strengthen tribal communities’ cultures and identities by supporting the use of Native American languages. One special category of Native language revitalization grants, the Esther Martinez Immersion grants, will be awarded to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation of Montana to launch a language immersion nest, serving children through age 3. The Bitterroot Salish dialect, spoken on the Flathead Reservation, is critically endangered with less than 1 percent of the tribal members using it for daily communication and only 30 fluent speakers, all over age 50.

Other Tribes and Native American organizations that will receive new funding for Native Language projects include: Stone Child College (Montana), Chickaloon Native Village (Arkansas), Passamaquoddy Tribe (Maine), Sitting Bull College (North Dakota), Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (Oregon), Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (Michigan), Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians of Michigan (Michigan) Kaw Nation (Oklahoma), Igiugig Village (Arkansas), Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association Inc. (Arkansas), the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (California), Rural America Initiatives (South Dakota), Red Cloud Indian School Inc. (South Dakota), Lakota Language Consortium (Indiana), the 'Aha Kane Foundation for the Advancement of Native Hawaiian (Hawaii), and Para I Probechu'n I Taotao-ta Inc. (Guam).

Read the full article at http://nativetimes.com/index.php/news/federal/11964-hhs-announces-new-funding-to-preserve-native-languages-strengthen-early-childhood-development-and-tribal-courts