This program provides funding for projects to support assessments of the status of Native languages in an established community, as well as planning, designing, restoration, and implementing of Native language curriculum and education projects to support a community’s language preservation goals.

The program provides funding for community-based projects that ensure continuing vitality of Native languages through immersion-based instruction. Programs funded under the EMI notice of funding opportunity must meet the requirements for either a Native American Language Nest, or a Native American Survival School.

The DLI-DEL Fellowships are offered as part of a joint, multi-year funding program of NEH and NSF to develop and advance scientific and scholarly knowledge concerning endangered human languages. Fellowships support individuals who are junior and senior linguists, linguistic anthropologists, and sociolinguists to conduct research on one or more endangered or moribund languages.

This program supports doctoral research focusing on building dynamic language infrastructure (DLI). Developing language infrastructure includes the documentation and preservation of languages in ways that articulate or advance linguistic theory, as well as the use of digitization techniques and novel computational methods that support and advance the study of language. 

The NEH Awards for Faculty program seeks to strengthen the humanities at TCUs by encouraging and expanding humanities research opportunities for individual faculty and staff members. The program is open to all faculty and staff members including full time, part time, adjunct, and retired faculty at TCUs. While the program welcomes programs in all areas of the humanities, projects related to Indigenous knowledge that sustain and strengthen tribal languages and/or cultural traditions are especially encouraged.

This funding opportunity is provided for Tribes to aid in documentation and revitalization of languages that are at risk of disappearing. Past grant proposals were rated on the extent to which funding would document, preserve or revitalize a Native language; the degree to which the language addressed by a proposal risks extinction; the likelihood that the instruction to be funded would revitalize the language by preventing intergenerational disruption; and the number of students or percentage of Tribal members the proposal would benefit. While only federally recognized Tribes and Tribal organizations are eligible for the Living Languages Grant Program, grantees can retain for-profit and non-profit community groups to perform a grant’s scope of work.

This funding opportunity is for eligible tribal nations whose ancestral homelands were traversed by the Lewis & Clark Expedition (see website for full list). Proposals are accepted for Native language education programs, curricula, or projects; documentation and recording of Native language for preservation and future education; or for Native students studying an individual language.

Language Legacies grants provide funding for language documentation and revitalization, and for linguistic fieldwork that serves both the Native community and the field of linguistics. Support for publication is a low priority, although it will be considered. The language involved must be in danger of disappearing within a generation or two. Endangerment is a continuum, and the location on the continuum is one factor in our funding decisions. There are also specific eligibility requirements (see website for full list).

The Phillips Fund of the American Philosophical Society provides small grants (average award of $3,000) for research in Native American linguistics, ethnohistory, and the history of studies of Native Americans in the continental U.S. and Canada. Eligibility for grants is preferred for younger scholars who have received a doctorate. The award is available annually and grants are submitted through the American Philosophical Society’s website.