Euchee (Yuchi) Language Project, Inc.

Project Purpose The project will create Yuchi youth culture bearers through immersive experiences reconnecting them with Yuchi worldview, spiritual practices, and traditions. It will increase the number of well-prepared Yuchi leaders capable of assuming critical community roles, ensuring cultural continuity and revitalizing our cherished traditions.

The project will increase Yuchi Language proficiency in students, parents/caregivers, and language instructors by creating an intentional focus on the Yuchi worldview and deep cultural knowledge.

General Operating Support

Yuchi Language Project and Salish School of Spokane Learning Exchange

This project utilizes four interrelated objectives to create new mother-tongue speakers of Yuchi by reconnecting to the land using nature-based education.

This project will serve Yuchi youth and their families as we provide immersion language education at the Yuchi Immersion School, focusing on elementary grades. We will offer community classes focused on revitalizing our unique culture, ceremonies, stories, and land knowledge. We will continue to build our capacity as we learn from Elders, train teachers, and exchange with other Indigenous language programs.

Capital Campaign

This project will address the Yuchi community's most critical need which is to create new speakers and restore the natural transmission of the Yuchi language in our homes by focusing on family based immersion.

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COVID-19 Response

The project will restore the vitality of the Yuchi language in our homes, ceremonies, churches, and community, by increasing the proficiency of young Yuchi learners and utilizing improved immersion teaching methods. It also seeks to train new apprentice instructors and accelerate language acquisition through the development of science-based language curriculum.

The project seeks to restore the vitality of the Yuchi language in our homes, ceremonies, churches, and community, by creating a new cohort of young Yuchi speakers through a year-round immersion program. It also seeks to increase language acquisition through the production of video learning materials and instructor certification.

The ultimate purpose of this project is to increase the capacity of Yuchi youth to be successful both as professionals and as culture bearers. This project will create a framework to ground Yuchi youth in their unique cultural identity as a basis for preparing them to succeed in any educational or work setting. This project will address the need for cultural continuity by empowering youth to be lifelong leaders in the Yuchi community, mentoring them in making healthy choices and connecting them with a support network.

The ultimate purpose of the project is to 1) retain the Euchee language as the key to our unique worldview and culture as Euchee people, by teaching it to children and youth, 2) utilize the vast knowledge and wisdom of the last 4 elders who grew up speaking Yuchi as their first language and learned to live off the land through agriculture, 3) increase participation and knowledge of traditional agricultural practices among children and youth through hands-on teaching and learning, and 4) create leadership opportunities for youth and develop their fundraising and business management skills