The Cultural Conservancy - Indigenous Languages Restoration Project
 |
| Apache recordings from the Guy Tyler Collection cover |
In 2000, the estate of amateur ethnographer Guy Tyler contacted the Storyscape Project with an intriguing proposal and a unique opportunity to assist with Native American cultural preservation and revitalization.
Guy Tyler was an amateur ethnographer who conducted ethnographic audio recordings of Native Americans primarily in the American Southwest over a forty-year period of time.
In one room of Tyler’s Southern California home were shelves of aging reel-to-reel tapes of native stories, songs and native speakers in 22 different languages, some of which were thought to be extinct. Tyler’s estate asked that we assist in archiving this invaluable legacy. We agreed, but on one condition, that the next of kin of those recorded determine the conditions of the archive, and that copies of the recordings be repatriated to the tribes and native communities where the languages were spoken.
The Berkeley Language Center (BLC) at the University of California at Berkeley generously offered to restore the reel-to-reel tapes by transferring them onto a digital format. The BLC has state of the art archival facilities with climate-controlled vaults and archival capabilities on duplicate computer hard drive systems. Some of the tapes were so old, they had to be baked in an oven to adhere the magnetic strip to the tape. The BLC provides written content sheets of each recording and depending on the conditions of archive and access, visitors to the Center can either listen to or duplicate the recordings.
 |
| Guy Tyler – Photograph courtesy of the Guy Tyler estate. |
Guy Tyler Collection Inventory
Through the assistance of grant funds, The Storyscape Project was able to repatriate over 600 compact disc recordings to over 70 tribes. Native songs, stories, and languages are returning home to be used in their cultural education and language immersion preservation and revitalization programs.
Awakened Voices: recordings of indigenous language and song find their way home.
(Reprinted in part from News from Native California, 2000)