Community collaborations: best practices for North American indigenous language documentation

Abstract

This article describes a collaborative project for language documentation involving the North American indigenous languages of Mohave and Chemehuevi. We define the essential elements of field methods and of project design while proposing a basic model for collaborative community-based projects in language documentation. Our recommendations apply to community-based projects in North American indigenous communities; however, we anticipate that they will be extendable worldwide to others working in the field of language documentation.