The Institute for Indigenous Knowledge serves as a comprehensive center for both research and education. It fosters a collaborative environment for scholars and Indigenous community partners who are committed to the study of Indigenous knowledge and sustaining it within the lives of Indigenous peoples.
IIK’s research and educational initiatives include topics of particular interest to contemporary Indigenous nations and people and that reflect the commitments of our IUB faculty. This includes Indigenous philosophy and thought, language and culture, history, health and wellbeing, environmental sustainability and justice, food security and sovereignty, housing, community and economic development, land rights, legal justice, social justice, and education.
Within IIK is its Center for the Documentation and Revitalization of Indigenous Languages (CDRIL). It collaborates with Indigenous partners to systematically record Indigenous languages and sustain and revitalize them within the culture groups to which they belong. It does so through the creation and sharing of print and digital resources such as audio and visual recordings, dictionaries, grammars, language curricula and instructional materials, language planning documents, monographs, research articles, biographies, histories, stories, as well as ethnographic and linguistic fieldnotes.
