The ASU Library Channel presents the tenth installment of The Simon Ortiz and Labriola Center Lecture on Indigenous Land, Culture, and Community with Legacies of the Tribal Languages of Arizona: Gifts or Responsibilities presented by Ofelia Zepeda
Ofelia Zepeda is a Regents' Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship for her work in American Indian language education, maintenance and recovery. She is a member of the Tohono O'odham Nation of southern Arizona, born and raised in Stanfield, Arizona. Zepeda's work in linguistics includes the first pedagogical grammar of the Tohono O'odham language, A Tohono O'odham Grammar, as well as other topics on the O'odham language, Native American language shift, language endangerment and documentation. In addition Zepeda is a poet with publications in both Tohono O'odham and English. She has three books of poetry, Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert, Jewed I-hoi/Earth Movements and Where Clouds are Formed. In 2009 she collaborated on a public arts project that included engraving of some of her poems on boulders north of the University of Arizona campus. Other public art includes work in Passages at South Mountain Community College Library in South Phoenix. Zepeda is currently the director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI), one of the longest running Indigenous language training institutes in the country. She is also the series editor of Sun Tracks, a book series publishing Native American writers at the University of Arizona Press.
ASU Sponsors:
American Indian Policy Institute
American Indian Studies Program
Department of English
Faculty of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Indian Legal Program in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Labriola National American Indian Data Center
Women and Gender Studies in the School of Social Transformation
External Sponsor: The Heard Museum - heard.org
lib.asu.edu/librarychannel