Conversations of the Meskwaki People: Today’s Voices Recorded and Published with Audio

FAIN: FN-285925-22

Yolanda Pushetonequa
Unaffiliated independent scholar

Research and writing leading to a book, with an audio component, that documents and archives conversational Meskwaki language as spoken today in central Iowa.

Meskwaki, an Algonquian language, is spoken in central Iowa. Meskwaki is endangered, with a small and diminishing number of aging fluent speakers. Out of 1,400 tribal members, fewer than 200 are fluent. Meskwaki has one of the most extensive archived collections of text corpora, from manuscripts created by fluent speakers one hundred years ago. The texts are not accompanied by audio recordings; hence, there is a significant gap in documentation. With this fellowship I will conduct fieldwork to digitally record, document, and archive conversational Meskwaki language as it is spoken today. Recorded conversations between fluent first language speakers will reveal previously undocumented phenomena unique to the modern speech community. I will record conversations in Meskwaki between fluent first language speakers to capture naturalistic, linguistically-rich interactions. I will select a sample of the conversations and publish them in a book which will include an audio accompaniment.