MASHANTUCKET, Conn. – When English colonist-settlers in 1637 were planning the surprise attack on the village of Mystic that has come to be known as the Pequot War, the Puritan Roger Williams recorded the Indian words oohoomooahkee and kupahkamuk.

Oohoomooahkee refers to owl land, owl country or a place of many owls, and indicates a place of traditional cultural and spiritual importance to Pequots. Kupahkamuk has been translated as ”refuge or enclosed structure” and refers to the Great Cedar Swamp – the heart of ancestral Pequot territory at the center of the nation’s reservation – that was refuge and sustenance for the Pequots in times of war and conflict for more than 10,000 years.

The printed program for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s fourth biennial Conference on the Reclamation of Indigenous Languages included two pages of pronunciation and phrases from the Pequot language under the heading ”Nupeeqatotooa – I speak Pequot.” The two-page guide was emblematic of the big strides Mashantucket and other tribal communities have made in reconstructing their languages – the living, breathing vessels of peoples’ cultures.

The conference was held at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center Feb. 20 – 22.

By coincidence, Feb. 20 was International Mother Language Day – the day on which the nonprofit organization Survival International announced that an indigenous language dies on average once every two weeks, underlining the urgency of language revitalization for all indigenous peoples.

The conference drew its largest attendance to date, with more than 200 people from all over the United States and Canada attending.

”It’s the biggest registration we’ve had,” said Charlene Jones, secretary of the tribal council, chairman of the Historical and Cultural Preservation Committee, and conference organizer.

The conference included three keynote speakers and almost 40 presenters, who shared their work in revitalizing indigenous languages and their academic and cultural uses.

”I think from our last conference we’ve learned a few things, one being that many of the attendees aren’t just researchers; they’re actually practitioners in their respective communities and they’re working with all forms of language reclamation processes, policies and practices. And from the feedback we’ve had, they like the idea of incorporating not only the research, but how it’s applied in designing curriculum for various levels, or ways that language can be incorporated into the arts,” Jones said.

Leanne Hinton gave the keynote address on opening day. Hinton was the director of the Survey of California and other Indian Languages for close to 30 years at the University of California – Berkley, where she is now a professor emerita. She is widely published and has consulted with tribes all over North America.

Hinton talked about the Master-Apprentice Language Learning Program, regarded as the most effective language learning program for adults trying to obtain conversational fluency in an endangered language, and the ”Breath of Life” language workshop for California Indians without speakers, which helps people learn how to find and use old documentation in archives for revitalization purposes.

Professor William ”Pila” Wilson and Kauanoe Kamana presented a keynote address on the Hawaiian language revitalization movement and policy development.

Conference topics included instructional techniques, linguistics in the context of preservation and reconstruction, technological innovations, and the artistic application of language.

Among the conference’s presenters were James Vukelich on freeware for indigenous language resources, Bruce Pearson on literature and formal grammar in language study, Jon Reyhner on indigenous language immersion, Leon Valliere on dialect preservation, and Jon Nichols on word families in Algonquian language dictionary and vocabulary development.

There were also two roundtable discussions on dictionary-building and community language project policy development.

The language conference is woven into the development of Mashantucket’s own language program.

Back in 1995, Jones asked Kathleen Bragdon, professor of anthropology and director of graduate studies at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, how the language could be brought back to the community.

”Her suggestion was to bring all the researchers and linguistics specialists together in one place and see what was out there. And that’s what led to the conference,” she said. ”For many years, it was my hope that the council would embrace such an idea and they did and we had our first conference in 2002.”

The nation went from having no curriculum, policies or processes in 2002 to having more than 24 beginner class graduates, advanced language classes, printed materials, street signs and a dedicated language lab with computer language programs and research materials.

”Language is living. Language is breathing every day,” Jones said. ”Even though we’re doing the research from historical documentation and from applied research in the field, it is still living, so it changes and its needs need to be met based on the needs of the community.”

It’s the community that drives the research, she explained.

”You actually have to do it from the roots of the community, from the community’s needs, and I think that’s why you see it in song and dance and art and poetry. I think that’s what’s making this conference so wonderful.”