Conference: Child Language Acquisition Symposium for Indigenous Communities

The Indigenous Child Language Research Center (ICLRC) is hosting the Child Language Acquisition Symposium for Indigenous Communities (CLASIC) to support and grow language nest programs across the US and Canada, where infants, toddlers, and young children are immersed in an Indigenous language so that they are raised as fluent speakers. This two-day gathering fosters empirical research in partnership with language nests by creating cultural and educational opportunities for both Indigenous community members and linguistic researchers. CLASIC accomplishes this goal by virtue of its uniqueness as a conference that equitably brings together community language programs, the families of children who attend these programs, and those who may carry out research with these programs. The conference provides equal time and opportunity for each of these diverse stakeholders to speak to and be heard. Such dialogue should result in partnerships among language nests and between language nests and researchers. Very little acquisition research is done with Indigenous languages. This conference provides a venue for language nest representatives, parents, and linguistic researchers to have important discussions of how first language acquisition research and language revitalization initiatives among very young children can support one another. The conference supports a primary goal of ICLRC, which is to work in partnership with communities to ensure the vitality of child language acquisition of Indigenous languages and to disseminate knowledge on child language acquisition research in an ethical and responsible way. Additionally, conference discussion can identify empirically supported developmental paths for Indigenous language acquisition, inform language policy, and shape evidence-based curriculum. The unique research focus of CLASIC draws attention to first language acquisition among Indigenous communities, groups that have historically been underrepresented in child language research. This conference supports initiatives for Indigenous people to lead important child language acquisition research collaboratively and with their own communities. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.