Indigenous Language Databases and Dictionaries

These databases and dictionaries either have a primary focus on Indigenous language materials or are collections with significant amounts of Indigenous Language materials. 

In order to support the Alaska Native Language Center's mission of documenting, promoting, cultivating, and revitalizing Alaska Native languages and culture, the Alaska Native Language Archive houses documentation of the various Native languages of Alaska and helps to preserve and cultivate this unique heritage for future generations. As the premier repository worldwide for information relating to the Native languages of Alaska, the Archive is responsible for conserving and facilitating access to documentation and resources on Alaska's 20+ Native languages, including through partnerships with Native organizations across the state.

AILLA is a digital language archive of recordings, texts, and other multimedia materials in and about the indigenous languages of Latin America. AILLA's mission is to preserve these materials and make them available to Indigenous Peoples, researchers, and other friends of these languages now and for generations to come.

Digitized Indigenous print journalism covering nearly 200 years of published tribal newspapers throughout the US and Canada.

The John Carter Brown Library Indigenous Language collection contains texts in one or more Amerindian languages for the period before the nineteenth century. This collection includes all identified books with native American languages–whether they contain a one-page vocabulary list or are entirely in or on an native American language. Besides the many grammatical studies, dictionaries, and thematic vocabulary lists, genres such as speeches, dramatic dialogues, scriptural excerpts, catechisms, and other religious texts are included, as are manuscript sources held by the library.

A list of links related to US Latinx based Oral History projects.

There are more than 800 surviving Native American languages linked to more than 800 tribes in North, Central, and South America. This nonprofit site addresses all of them with informative learning aids like maps locating the tribes in each state, picture dictionaries, pronunciation guides, grants, and much more. Occasionally resources for teachers (such as word search puzzles) are included.

Created by the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota, this online Ojibwe dictionary includes “detailed Ojibwe language entries, audio, historical photographs, photos of objects in [the Minnesota Historical Society’s] Anishinaabe collection, video clips, and excerpts from historical documents.”

The Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Language Portal links the 19,000-entry online Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary with an extensive archive of videos of conversations and activities of Passamaquoddy-Maliseet speakers. The Portal is designed as a resource for language learning and research.

Launched in April 2000, to record the voices of South Asian authors for the Library of Congress' Archive of Recorded World Literature, the project has captured the readings of prominent South Asian poets, novelists, and playwrights. The authors recorded so far represent more than fifteen of the languages of India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The online version of the Te Aka Māori-English, English-Māori Dictionary and Index, aimed at supporting learners of Māori. New entries and additional meanings are continually added.

The purpose of Ulukau, the Hawaiian Electronic Library, is to make these resources available for the use, teaching, and revitalization of the Hawaiian language and for a broader and deeper understanding of Hawaiʻi.  Ulukau is a coined word given as the name of this web-based library. The word refers to unexplained supernatural interpretive powers. It is the hope of the authors of Ulukau that in the same way that unexplained supernatural interpretive powers can be divinely given to a person, so knowledge and understanding can come to the person who makes the effort to read the language and the words of this electronic library.