Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma

The Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma will address a priority in the community by developing resources to preserve and sustain the Shawnee language. Out of the 3,438 Eastern Shawnee citizens, there are fewer than five elders who are fluent speakers of the Shawnee language. The project will draw on best practices to produce a 500-word Shawnee-English lexicon, including a dictionary and thesaurus, and a Shawnee language website and app. Project staff will learn digitization processes, and the resulting resources will benefit Shawnee tribal citizens nationwide as well as teachers, students, and researchers.