Tunica Language Project

In 2010 Tunica-Biloxi Tribal Council Member Brenda Lintinger approached Tulane University linguistics professor Judith Maxwell suggesting a collaborative relationship between the two institutions with the goal of reviving the Tunica language. Dr. Maxwell enlisted the help of Tulane linguistics students. Along with tribal members who had been working on their own to revitalize the language, this Tunica Language Working Group, or Kuhpani Yoyani Luhchi Yoroni (KYLY) in Tunica, studied the structure of the language as laid out in Mary Haas’s Tunica grammar.¹ The group developed a standardized orthography, published a children’s book adapting two of the Tunica stories that Sesostrie Youchigant had told to Mary Haas.²

Over time, ideas for the project grew in both number and complexity. Additional publications, language summer camps, immersion workshops, and cultural activities would require organization and coordination. The Tunica-Biloxi tribe responded to these needs by creating the Language & Culture Revitalization Program (LCRP) in 2014.

The Tunica-Biloxi Language & Culture Revitalization Program (LCRP) was created as a new department of the Tunica-Biloxi tribal government. The LCRP provided more structure and funding for the continuing efforts to reintroduce and teach the language to the wider community, as well as funding for cultural education.

I started working with the project in the winter of 2016. I attended every immersion workshop and summer camp until 2020, and began attending again in 2023 when in-person workshops and camps resumed.

The LCRP was able to obtain funding to hire a linguist to work with them in Marksville full time, and I became the tribe’s first on-site linguist in 2017. I was responsible for helping other LCRP staff analyze historical documentation, create new pedagogical materials, develop curricula, teach language classes, and improve community access to the Tunica-Biloxi library.

Just before my departure in 2018, I assisted the LCRP in drafting a grant proposal to the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) requesting funding for the training of Tunica language teachers. The three-year grant would fund the hiring of language apprentices for whom LCRP staff would serve as mentors. The mentors would teach them the Tunica language and Tunica-Biloxi cultural practices. The goal of the grant was to have the apprentices complete the language and instructor training, gain intermediate mastery of the language, and become Tunica language instructors.

The ANA grant was successful, and Tunica-Biloxi tribal members were hired as language apprentices by the LCRP. Three of those language apprentices, having gone through three years of language and cultural training, have become assistant language instructors.

KYLY has continued as an umbrella group comprising the membership of LCRP alongside Tulane faculty, students, alums, and other interested scholars.

In recent years, the group has released a frequently-updated online dictionary and a language learning textbook.³

Tulane continues to provide volunteers to support the LCRP during the annual winter immersion week and annual summer camp.