Edwin Ko, Lecturer and Research Scientist of Linguistics, receives critically endangered language grant from National Endowment for the Humanities

Edwin Ko, Lecturer and Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Linguistics in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a grant of $448,551 by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The grant will support Ko and his co-primary investigator Albert Lacson, Associate Professor of History at Grinnell College, in collecting and sharing new recordings related to Umóⁿhoⁿ (Omaha), a critically endangered language.

From June 2025 – 2028, Ko and Lacson will not only record, transcribe, and analyze examples of Umóⁿhoⁿ in conversation – they will also digitize existing documentation of the language, provide online access to Umóⁿhoⁿ cultural heritage materials, and permanently archive their papers and recordings at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, PA.

“My interest in this project comes from my desire to contribute towards social justice in light of the history of colonialism that has marginalized Indigenous peoples and suppressed—or in some cases, even erased—their presence across the globe,” Ko said. “Many of the approaches that we will use in recording stories and conversations, which constitute a significant gap in the documentation record, involve community-based participatory research methods, such as Photovoice, History Harvest, and place-based oral histories.”

Ko and Lacson also plan to share best practices for documenting languages with Umóⁿhoⁿ community members, which will enhance their access to existing materials on the language and help them record other Umóⁿhoⁿ speakers to preserve and revitalize the language for future generations.

“I hope that employing these methods will empower the Umóⁿhoⁿ people by centering their voices, experiences, and agency. The recordings will also provide different perspectives on similar topics that will lend insights into Umóⁿhoⁿ epistemologies, ontologies, axiologies, pedagogies, and spirituality for scholars of Umóⁿhoⁿ descent, as well as further enhance existing language revitalization and reclamation efforts in the community.” 

The National Endowment for the Humanities is the only federal agency in the United States dedicated to funding the humanities, and has awarded nearly $6 billion in grants to museums, universities, libraries, and other avenues for scholarship and study of the humanities since its founding in 1965.