The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. The oral history interviews are a rich resource on many topics, such as storytelling and family histories; descriptions of holiday celebrations, traditional farming, schools, education, health care, and the uses of traditional medicines.

Among the very first activities of the American Folklife Center (AFC) -- created in 1976 -- was the Federal Cylinder Project (FCP), a large-scale initiative to preserve and provide access to historic and fragile field recordings captured on wax cylinders, many dating back to the late nineteenth century. In particular, the initiative focused on some 9,000 cylinder recordings of Native American cultural expressions, with the aim of sharing copies with those communities to further their work in linguistic maintenance and reclamation and ownership of cultural heritage.

This collection—part of Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s “Living Nations, Living Words” signature project—contains audio recordings of 47 contemporary Native American poets reading and discussing an original poem. Listen to Joy Harjo, Louise Erdrich, Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, Layli Long Soldier, and other featured voices.

Presented here are selections from the American Folklife Center's collections documenting Omaha music traditions.

During the 19th century, conflict between Native Americans and American settlers was at an all-time high. Western expansion was more than just cowboys and gun fights at the O.K. Corral--it was a movement marked by battles and bloodshed between immigrants coming to stake a claim and a people who had already done so. Novelist, screenwriter and activist Michael Blake discussed his new book, "Indian Yell: The Heart of an American Insurgency." Sponsored by the Center for the Book and Friends of Libraries U.S.A., one of the center's national reading promotion partners, the event was held in conjunction with the American Library Association's annual conference. In addition to presenting his new book, Blake discussed his previous research about Native Americans, his novel "Dances With Wolves" (1988) and the subsequent award-winning film of the same name.

Vine Deloria Jr., of the Standing Rock Sioux, is one of the nation's prominent spokesmen on Indian nationalism. He is the former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, and served on the faculties of the University of Arizona and the University of Colorado. His book, "Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto," brought national attention, and he has followed with more than 20 books including "Spirit and Reason: the Vine Deloria, Jr. Reader" and "Power and Place: Indian Education in America." Deloria was the recipient of the 1996 Native American Writers Circle Lifetime Achievement Award and the 1999 Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year Award.