This panel discussion highlights a collaborative initiative to digitally restore, provide access to and curate the oldest recordings in the Library of Congress collections, the 1890s wax cylinder recordings of the Passamaquoddy tribal nation of Maine. The collaboration involves the Passamaquoddy community, the American Folklife Center and university-based digital platforms -- the Mukurtu content management system and Local Contexts, which develops Traditional Knowledge (TK) attribution labels for heritage materials based on indigenous cultural protocols. Passamaquoddy elders have been reviewing the sonically restored recordings, transcribing songs and stories in their language, adding enhanced metadata and generating TK labels to enrich the Library's catalog records and the newly-launched collection website. The discussion focuses on several aspects of the initiative, ranging from control of indigenous intellectual property to digital repatriation to emerging digital technologies to ethical curation and community outreach. In particular, Passamaquoddy community members describe the critical importance of ethnographic field recordings for sustaining cultural memory, preserving native identity and stemming the loss of language. They perform songs learned through listening to the recordings, including the first public performance of a song not heard since its documentation 128 years ago.

Gabriela Peréz Báez discusses surmounting the challenges of linguistic and cultural revitalization. The Smithsonian Institution's Recovering Voices initiative provides source communities access to collections in federal cultural agencies, notably those at the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, to foster community-based research for the purpose of language, culture and knowledge revitalization. The model enables collections-based research in a federal repository setting as well as collections-based research in the field.

From Hollywood films on the big screen to sacred writing deep within the Earth, from long-lost voices captured in wax cylinders, Native people are fighting to keep their languages and ways of life alive. Though many of the approximately 170 Native languages spoken across the United States remain at risk today, it is a time of hope. A revolutionary effort to revitalize traditional languages is unfolding across Native America; and Native innovators are applying 21st-century technologies to save a core element of their culture and inspire future generations. "Language Is Life" highlights how Native heroes are using every tool to recover, revitalize and restore their linguistic traditions. This episode from the PBS series explores the use of a laser-assisted needle to recover Passamaquoddy songs recorded over a century ago and housed at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. It shows a team creating digital scans of Cherokee writing hidden under graffiti in a Georgia cave. In addition, Manny Wheeler (Navajo) shares his mission to dub Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars into Navajo. Their successes are changing Native America and the world at large.

The introduction of ideas taken from international intellectual property regimes to communities of indigenous peoples can lead to serious repercussions. This presentation discusses some of the results of the arrival new ideas and language about music and ceremonial ownership on central aspects of the musical, artistic, and economic life of a group of Brazilian Indians known in the literature as the Suyá, but who now prefer to be called Kïsêdjê. It examines shifts in language and concepts related to performing the music of others and the impact of these on their musical performances, body paint, and material culture based on data collected since 1971, recent publications by Brazilian scholars, and discussions on e-mail using a linguist intermediary. Presented by Anthony Seeger, Distinguished Professor of Ethnomusicology, Emeritus, UCLA, as part of the 2015 Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture series on April 8, 2015.

Noted Native American scholars, authors, and civil rights activists Walter Echo-Hawk, Malinda Maynor Lowery, LaDonna Harris, and Tim Tingle look back at the long Native American struggle for equality, examine current barriers for sustaining community ways of life and identity, and address the path ahead for Native nations and communities. The event is moderated by Letitia Chambers and co-sponsored by the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries & Museums, the Institute for Museum & Library Services, the Ak-Chin Community Council and the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation.