Research Team

Tehota’kerá:ton, Dr. Jeremy D. Green is Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), wolf clan and from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. His scholarship focuses on language acquisition planning and the role of assessment and evaluation for proficiency development of second language (L2) learners of Indigenous languages. Most recently, he collaborated with diverse stakeholders to design a language and culture mentorship program to help adult Mohawk L2 learners increase their speaking proficiency from the Advanced to the Superior and Distinguished levels. Importantly, to guide learning and create culturally relevant assessment and evaluation tools, this work identified descriptors of Superior and Distinguished level performances specific to the language and culture context within which the language is learned and used.

Tehota’kerá:ton earned his Doctorate in Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization from the University of Hawai’i at Hilo in 2020. His dissertation collected, organized and presented a wide variety of language teaching and learning methods deemed effective for the Mohawk language for ease of use by Mohawk language teachers.

Dr. Kari A. B. Chew is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation. Her scholarship focuses on the motivations and experiences of adult additional language learners who are reclaiming their Indigenous heritage languages. Dr. Chew earned her Doctorate in Language, Reading, and Culture from the University of Arizona in 2016 and she is now an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Education at the University of Oklahoma.

Her current research focuses on adult Indigenous language learners, Indigenous language curriculum, and the role of technology in Indigenous language education (e.g. by connecting learners who live outside their communities to their languages).

While her Postdoc Fellowship concluded in the summer of 2020, she remains involved with the NEȾOLṈEW̱ Partnership as a collaborator. She also is a co-investigator on the SSHRC Connection Grant project “Exploring Innovative and Successful Adult Language Learning Methods in Canadian and US Indigenous Communities” (2018-2021).

Nicki is of Jewish ancestry and grew up on Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səl̓ilwətaɁɬ, and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territories in Vancouver. She has an M.A. in Language Education from the University of British Columbia and has been working in language education for 15 years as a teacher, researcher, and education consultant. Since 2013, Nicki has supported Indigenous language revitalization initiatives with organizations such as UNICEF Peru, the BC Ministry of Education, and Kwi Awt Stelmexw.

Nicki is a PhD candidate in Education under the supervision of Dr. Onowa McIvor. Her doctoral research will explore success factors in adult immersion education for language reclamation through a case study with the Squamish Language Proficiency Certificate Program. Nicki is the founder of Esperanza Education, the facilitator of the Spanish for Social Justice Teacher Network, and the mamá of two bilingual daughters.

Robyn Giffen is of German and English ancestry and grew up on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, AB. She spent most of her adult life in Kelowna, BC, living, studying, and working on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Sylix and Secwepemc people. She now lives as grateful settler on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen peoples.

As a NEȾOLṈEW̱ research assistant, Robyn currently contributes to the NILLA project. She has an M.A. from the University of British Columbia specializing in Linguistic Anthropology and has worked on Indigenous language revitalization projects in Ghana, Alaska, and Vancouver, BC. Robyn is now a PhD student in Education at UVIC, focusing on Indigenous Language Revitalization. Her research project will analyze and evaluate the Where Are Your Keys (WAYK) teaching and learning method.

Adam Stone is a PhD student of Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a Research Assistant with the NILLA project, where his responsibilities have included informing NILLA map design through surveys of similar maps that exist elsewhere, and the production of supplementary language distribution maps. His main research interests include geolinguistics, supporting Indigenous language education, GIS cartography, and acoustic phonology, and he is currently also serving in other mapping projects focusing on Indigenous and minority languages in Kurdistan, Iran, and Canada. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with family, rock climbing, visiting new countries, and learning new languages.

Many wonderful people have contributed to the work of NEȾOLṈEW̱ over the years. They are (in alphabetical order of last name):
Adar Anisman, Carolyn Belleau, Emily Comeau, Nicole Davies, Pierre Iachetti, Samaya Jardey, Barbara Jenni, Zola Kell, Anureet Lotay, Layla chuutsqa Rorick, Robby Smoker-Peters, Danielle Sullivan.