Thanks for posting!  During the three-week session, we worked with two Alaskan languages, Aleut (from the Aleutian Islands) and Han Athabascan, spoken along the Yukon River in both Canada and Alaska.  Both languages are severely endangered, and we were fortunate to have native speakers of both to work with the groups, who got quite a lot out of the experience.  The third language, Miyako, is a Ryukuan language from Okinawa, Japan.  Two Japanese linguists worked with a Miyako native speaker, all of who traveled here to Alaska.

If I'm not mistaken, a fair amount of descriptive work has been done on the Aleut and Hän Athab. languages — Is the work with them to build up/preserve lexicon and stylistic material, or to develop teaching materials for new speakers? 

On another point, did the workshop(s) give attenders some suggestions about what languages they might work on or did they come with projects in mind?

You're quite right.  Aleut is fairly well documented, especially by the Norwegian linguist Knut Bergsland and now by Anna Berge at the Alaska Native Language Center.  Berge led this practicum, with the emphasis being how to use archival materials in language work, since we have that documentation in our Native language archive here.  Han is also fairly well researched, and the practicum leader is one of the linguists who has worked on it.  I think what he did with his group was to show them how to work with the two Han speakers in the room and get them started on Athabascan grammar, which is of course very complicated.  I wasn't in the workshop at all so I can't really tell you what else they did.

Mostly, CoLang attenders come with a language interest, often an ancestral language or the language of a community they have worked with.  There are all levels from beginners to graduate students, so some already know quite a lot.  It's almost surprising how well it works, given the different levels, but the workshops address different subjects and levels too.  Some attenders develop a language interest at CoLang, like some of the Aleut group who want to do more with that language.

Mark, Thanks for your question.  The CoLang institute provides education to participants on how to work with so-called endangered languages, those whose future is uncertain, given a decreasing number of speakers.  For one, our workshops teach linguistic methods for working on languages that are not already well-documented, like major world languages are.  Besides analyzing the grammar of the language and learning to prepare teaching materials, not all languages have practical writing systems, so there was a workshop on orthography design.  And there are always social issues concerned with dealing with people of other cultures who may have experienced discrimination.  Have a look at the CoLang2016 website: alaska.edu/colang2016.  CoLang2018 will take place in a few weeks at U of Florida.

Those are big questions!  There needs to be effective language teaching first of all, so that more people begin using the language.  Good language teaching is generally not easy to achieve but very possible.  Languages need to be documented, so that they can be taught with accurate materials.  Then there are the many social issues that minority groups and their languages experience, since small languages are often not valued by the larger society, and this has a negative effect on the group whose language it is and thus on the viability of the language.  There are a very quick few words on some of the issues facing language revitalization efforts.

It's great to see that video and to learn more about the CoLang project through these posts (and other sources). Did the Peoples in the workshops and practicum workshops receive copies/transcripts of the language spoken/recorded during the discussions?

I'm a non-Indigenous person living in Dawson City, Yukon, and am grateful to be living in a place where the Tr'ondek Hwech'in are a self-governing First Nation, first of all generally speaking, and secondly, because of the work they're doing with revitalizing the Han Language. You know about that to some degree, as Georgette McLeod was at CoLang, but that's a bit of context for me & my question.
Thanks.

Hello,  We had several people at CoLang from the Yukon, both Han and Tlingit, and at least one will attend CoLang 2018 next month.  Han was one of the languages that received major emphasis at CoLang, since there was a three-week practicum with a linguist and two native speakers.  I don't believe students received transcripts per se, but there was documentation produced in a number of workshops and practica, and they have tangible results from those.  Our public lectures were recorded and made available online, although I've been unable to access them recently.  I hope to get that fixed.

Thanks for your question!

Great to have this info, Lawrence. Could you point me to the where the public lectures should be / are available? I didn't find them in my initial search.
Mahsi cho.

Hello Meg,  Here's the link but I haven't gotten them to work lately, and am trying to get them fixed: https://www.alaska.edu/colang2016/public-events/

There were some interesting talks, and you'd have to fast forward through the first few minutes till the talk begins.

Hello Megan, Storytelling is an important part of many cultures, particularly those that place great importance on oral transmission of history and other cultural information, and that is true of many indigenous groups, where stories carry quite a lot of the important knowledge that one needs to be a full-fledged member of the group.  We have many stories recorded for Alaskan languages, some translated into English, some published, and they convey all sorts of information about worldview, knowledge of science and the environment, spiritual beliefs and more.  I like to see science education include indigenous perspectives, which of course often vary widely from Western science but give the views of people who depend on knowledge of their surroundings for their livelihood.  Some STEM education already includes this sort of information, and we have worked successfully with biologists on ethnobiology as well as geologists on land forms and sea ice, and others.  It can be challenging to bridge the gap between traditional indigenous knowledge and Western science, but it's well worth the effort, since the result can be a very rich and inclusive picture. 

I'm glad you liked the video.  The situation of endangered languages is very dramatic and attracts the interest of many people, for various reasons.  People who haven't learned their ancestral language are very concerned about possible language loss and feel the lack of the language in their own lives.  This is also true for languages that aren't endangered, but then the situation isn't urgent.  I concentrate on Alaskan Inuit languages and am in a position to support other language efforts for our twenty indigenous languages here in Alaska.  I've traveled a bit, mostly to other Inuit areas of the Arctic to learn about their situations.  In Greenland and much of Eastern Canada, Inuit languages are being passed on to children and are not in the same situation as Alaskan languages.  How can people get involved?  This happens in a variety of ways, and one of the best is to become educated in linguistics, and within the field are many paths leading to language work with communities, often for small languages that may have declining numbers of speakers.  CoLang is held every other year and offers workshops on language documentation and revitalization for all levels.  CoLang2018 will start next month at the University of Florida:  http://colang.lin.ufl.edu

You are pulling at me hard, here!  I was an ABD in linguistics, and got a little acquaintance withfield techniques, and Algoquian languages, then went off into science and science ed.  Now approaching retirement, I've wondered if I could make some small contribution in the study of some endangered language, while my ears hold out. Hm.