On July 15, 2016 Recovering Voices will begin accepting Community Research Program applications for 2017. Each year Recovering Voices, an initiative of the Smithsonian within the National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Anthropology, supports community scholars in their efforts towards language and knowledge reclamation and revitalization. We are excited to finish out 2016, which is our fifth year of supporting community efforts through the Community Research Program and we look forward to 2017.
The purpose of the Community Research Program is to support indigenous communities in their efforts to save, document, and enliven their languages, cultures, and knowledge systems. Supported research projects bring groups of community scholars from around the world to the Smithsonian to examine specific objects, specimens, and documents related to their heritage and to engage in a dialogue with Smithsonian collections and archives staff in order to recover and revitalize their language and knowledge. Thus far, Recovering Voices has supported eleven separate community research visits with two more planned for Fall 2016. The impact of these research visits on the community has been significant. Likewise, the visits have been invaluable for the Smithsonian collections and archives records. With each visit, new knowledge and important information about the objects and documents comes to light and is added to the records. The result is that the historic collections at the Smithsonian are revived and updated, as are the language and knowledge systems of the visiting community scholars. We provide several supplemental documents to assist applicants in preparing proposal materials. This call for proposals happens on an annual schedule so if you are not ready to apply by the deadline, you have plenty of time to prepare a proposal for the following year. Projects selected for support will be for the whole of 2017.
The next call for proposals after this will take place in July 2017, and subsequently July 2018. The 2017 Community Research Program call for proposals will close on September 15, 2016. Each proposal can request up to $10,000. Interdisciplinary, intergenerational and collaborative projects are encouraged. The guidelines and materials required for the application package are all included on our website: http://recoveringvoices.si.edu/resourcesandgrants/grants.html To learn about past supported projects visit our Community Research page. You will also find information about recent projects on our blog.
Images: 2015 Community Research Programs (from left to right) Wasco, Wanapum and Cheyenne.
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