Native American Languages

Collection Access Update:

While the museum remains closed to the public through May 11, the Native American Languages Collection remains committed to assisting students, researchers, and donors with their work and inquiries during this time.

Throughout the Spring 2020 semester, we will continue to respond to research requests, provide access to copies of collection files, and accept donations electronically, so please contact us using this form with your questions and we’ll get right back with you right away.

Founded in 2002, the Native American Languages collection at the Sam Noble Museum provides invaluable resources to researchers, educators and students. The collection includes audio and video recordings, manuscripts, books, journals, ephemera and teaching curricula, including lesson plans, from more than 175 Native North American languages. This collection is intended to be a resource center where scholars and community members develop mutually beneficial relationships by preserving language resources, conducting research, providing services to Native American communities and educating the community about the importance of Native American languages and cultures.

Materials have been donated to the collection from a variety of individuals and groups, including tribal members and families, linguists and anthropologists, community language projects, teachers and students and other archives. Through outreach programs like the Breath of Life workshop and the annual Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair, the collection also fosters public education opportunities so that visitors can develop an awareness, appreciation and understanding of Native American languages.

The collection and activities sponsored by the department are aimed to preserve valuable linguistic resources, support language retention and revitalization, celebrate linguistic diversity and further the intellectual heritage of these languages.

For an overview of the collection, the activities of the department, and our facilities, check out this presentation.

Please feel free to contact us at 405-325-7588 for general information and programming, 405-325-3332 for accessing the collections, or email us at language.samnoblemuseum@ou.edu.