Staff report

PEMBROKE - “Native Voices: Colonial and Contemporary Issues in Native Language Revitalization,” a presentation by Richard A. Grounds, Ph.D., will be held Nov. 15, at 7 p.m. in the Thomas Assembly Room of the Native American Resource Center on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

The talk is free and open to the public.

Grounds is of Yuchi and Seminole heritage. He is project director for the Euchee (Yuchi) Language Project based in Sapulpa, Okla., working with the five remaining fluent Yuchi speakers.

After completing his doctorate at Princeton Theological Seminary in the history of religions, he taught at St. Olaf College in Minnesota and at the University of Tulsa. He taught courses on cultural diversity and religious tolerance.

Grounds was also on the faculty of the Pew Foundation program in religion and American history administered through Yale University. He is co-chairman of Native Traditions in the Americas Group at the American Academy of Religion.

Working for the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, Grounds was a director for the General Commission on Christian Unity and Inter-religious Concerns of the United Methodist Church.

Grounds was co-convener of the hemispheric indigenous conference, “Our Living Languages, Our Living Cultures,” held in Oklahoma City in 2002. He serves on the statewide board of the Intertribal Wordpath Society in Oklahoma and is currently co-chairman of the Program Council on the board of Cultural Survival, which has launched a national campaign to protect the most critically endangered native languages in the United States.

He presented on “Indian Stereotypes and American Identities” at the Atlanta History Center; on museums and cultural prostitution at the American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Meeting; and on conflicts between anthropological research and cultural continuity for traditional communities at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting.

The Native American Resource Center (NARC) is located in Old Main. Light refreshments will be served and copies of Grounds' anthology “Native Voices: American Indian Identity and Resistance” will be available for purchase.

The program is sponsored by the American Indian Studies Department and NARC. For more information about the lecture, contact Jane Haladay by calling (919) 521-6485 or by e-mail at haladay@uncp.edu.