Preserve American Indian Cultures

Sage and Sweetgrass Association is a non-profit association working to create a web site of dictionaries of all American Indian languages. We believe that in order to learn a language it must be heard. Thus the main emphasis of our dictionaries is the audio feature of our dictionaries.

Our mission is “to preserve American Indian cultures by saving their languages”. We believe that urbanization and old practices of assimilation on reservations has decreased or minimized American Indian values, pride and traditions, and caused cultural heritage loss and low parental engagement among American Indian populations. The result has been high mortality rates, suicide, substance abuse and addiction, hopelessness, lack of skill development, poor academic achievements, and general lack of community leading to dysfunction. Since a language is the heart and soul of a culture, our efforts to record and preserve these languages can be the root of recovery of our American Indian cultures.

Our dictionaries would complement language programs of individual tribes as well as support those individuals and groups learning the languages that are not affiliated with a tribe and not located on a reservation. In essence, we expect a majority of our visitors to be urban Indians. According to the 2000 U.S. census, urban Indians account for 60% of those identified as American Indian.