MISSION, Ore. (AP) — The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation have released an online dictionary of their language to preserve it and help new learners pick up the dying tongue.
The project is a collaboration between the confederated tribes’ language program and Amazon Web Services, an Amazon subsidiary that provides cloud-based platforms on a pay-as-you-go basis, the East Oregonian reported Wednesday.
The tribe established a language program in 1996 to preserve Umatilla by recording elders and teaching the language to tribal youth and adults. The reservation in northeast Oregon is home to three area tribes, the Cayuse, the Umatilla, and the Walla Walla.The online dictionary, which includes a Umatilla keyboard, is available for free here: https://dictionary.ctuir.org.
