Engaging Native American Publics considers the increasing influence of Indigenous groups as key audiences, collaborators, and authors with regards to their own linguistic documentation and representation. The chapters critically examine a variety of North American case studies to reflect on the forms and effects of new collaborations between language researchers and Indigenous communities, as well as the types and uses of products that emerge with notions of cultural maintenance and linguistic revitalization in mind. In assessing the nature and degree of change from an early period of "salvage" research to a period of greater Indigenous "self-determination," the volume addresses whether increased empowerment and accountability has truly transformed the terms of engagement and what the implications for the future might be.

Engaging Native American Publics considers the increasing influence of Indigenous groups as key audiences, collaborators, and authors with regards to their own linguistic documentation and representation. The chapters critically examine a variety of North American case studies to reflect on the forms and effects of new collaborations between language researchers and Indigenous communities, as well as the types and uses of products that emerge with notions of cultural maintenance and linguistic revitalization in mind. In assessing the nature and degree of change from an early period of "salvage" research to a period of greater Indigenous "self-determination," the volume addresses whether increased empowerment and accountability has truly transformed the terms of engagement and what the implications for the future might be.

The accomplishments and enduring influence of renowned anthropologist Dell Hymes are showcased in these essays by leading practitioners in the field. Hymes (1927-2009) is arguably best known for his pioneering work in ethnopoetics, a studied approach to Native verbal art that elucidates cultural significance and aesthetic form. As these essays amply demonstrate, nearly six decades later ethnopoetics and Hymes's focus on narrative inequality and voice provide a still valuable critical lens for current research in anthropology and folklore. Through ethnopoetics, so much can be understood in diverse cultural settings and situations: gleaning the voices of individual Koryak storytellers and aesthetic sensibilities from century-old wax cylinder recordings; understanding the similarities and differences between Apache life stories told 58 years apart; how Navajo punning and an expressive device illuminate the work of a Navajo poet; decolonizing Western Mono and Yokuts stories by bringing to the surface the performances behind the texts written down by scholars long ago; and keenly appreciating the potency of language revitalization projects among First Nations communities in the Yukon and northwestern California. Fascinating and topical, these essays not only honor a legacy but also point the way forward.

Stories are important in all human societies, and especially in those whose languages are threatened with extinction. "They aren't just entertainment," writes Laguna Pueblo novelist Leslie Marmon Silko in "Ceremony." "They are all we have . . . to fight off illness and death. You don't have anything if you don't have the stories." The contributors to this volume, all linguists and linguistic anthropologists concerned with the revitalization of indigenous languages, draw on that understanding as they explore Native American storytelling both as a response to and a symptom of language endangerment. Edited by Paul V. Kroskrity, the essays show how traditional stories, and their nontraditional written descendants, such as poetry and graphic novels, help to maintain Native cultures and languages.

Highlighting language renewal programs, "Telling Stories in the Face of Danger" presents case studies from various North American communities that show tribal stories as vehicles of moral development, healing, and the construction of identity. For the Arizona Tewa, storytelling is tied to the growth and development of children, as well as to the cultivation of corn and other staples. In some Apachean and Pueblo groups, people are traditionally scolded with the rebuke: "Didn't your grandmother ever teach you the stories?"

Several essays presented here describe successful efforts to maintain, revitalize, and renew narrative traditions or to adapt them to new institutions, such as schools. Others consider less successful efforts, noting conflicts among older and younger tribal members or differences between academic and traditional language expertise or between insiders and outsiders. The contributors, some of whom are members of the communities they describe, also examine the use of narrative as an act of resistance.

"Telling Stories in the Face of Danger" bridges the gap between anthropology, linguistics, and Native American studies. It will engage readers in a crucial dialogue as it brings ethnographic research to bear on language endangerment.

Beliefs and feelings about language vary dramatically within and across Native American cultural groups and are an acknowledged part of the processes of language shift and language death. This volume samples the language ideologies of a wide range of Native American communities"" from the Canadian Yukon to Guatemala"" to show their role in sociocultural transformation. These studies take up such active issues as insiderness in Cherokee language ideologies, contradictions of space-time for the Northern Arapaho, language socialization and Paiute identity, and orthography choices and language renewal among the Kiowa. The authors"" including members of indigenous speech communities who participate in language renewal efforts"" discuss not only Native Americans conscious language ideologies but also the often-revealing relationship between these beliefs and other more implicit realizations of language use as embedded in community practice. The chapters discuss the impact of contemporary language issues related to grammar, language use, the relation between language and social identity, and emergent language ideologies themselves in Native American speech communities. And although they portray obvious variation in attitudes toward language across communities, they also reveal commonalities"" notably the emergent ideological process of iconization between a language and various national, ethnic, and tribal identities. As fewer Native Americans continue to speak their own language, this timely volume provides valuable grounded studies of language ideologies inaction"" those indigenous to Native communities as well as those imposed by outside institutions or language researchers. It considers the emergent interaction of indigenous and imported ideologies and the resulting effect on language beliefs, practices, and struggles in today's Indian Country as it demonstrates the practical implications of recognizing a multiplicity of indigenous language ideologies and their impact on heritage language maintenance and renewal.

In Regimes of Language, ten leading linguistic anthropologists integrate two often segregated domains: politics (without language) and language (without politics). Their essays contribute to an understanding of the role of language ideologies and discursive practices in state formation, nationalism, and the maintenance of ethnic groups, on the one hand, and in the creation of national, ethnic, and professional identities, on the other. Moving beyond a preoccupation with ideologies of cultural "others," the volume includes reflexive analyses of European language philosophy and historical linguistics, US academic ideologies of language, political discourses by US journalists and elite image advisors, and the impact of Christian missionaries on indigenous peoples in the Papua New Guinea highlands.