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NILI Faculty and Staff

Dr. Janne Underriner
Research Associate Professor

Janne Underriner is the former director of the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI). She is a linguist and holds a doctorate in linguistics from UO. She is a co-founder of the Northwest Indian Language Institute. Underriner first became active with language revitalization in 1996 when she was asked by the Klamath Tribes’ language program to assist Elders and apprentices in developing Klamath language curriculum and teaching materials for their community and schools. She is a curriculum, assessment and materials developer, teacher trainer, and language and program evaluator. She works with the Tribes and the State to develop Native language policy: the NW Indian Language Benchmarks (2000), the American Indian Language Teaching License (2001) and Native language policy in the Oregon University System (2011). She is a consultant to Oregon’s Department of Education. Her research interests include the relationship between language, culture and health; collaborative research models that strengthen Tribal communities and academic institutions; teaching and assessment strategies for Indigenous languages; and the relationship of pragmatics, word order and intonation.

Email: jlu@uoregon.edu

Judith Fernandes
Language Teaching Consultant

Judith Fernandes has taught language for most of her adult life. She has an interdisciplinary masters degree in immersion education from the University of Oregon. When she retired from teaching in the public school system, she joined the NILI team and began working with tribes of the Pacific Northwest. Her specialties are immersion language teaching, writing curriculum, oral assessment and teacher training.

Email: jfern@uoregon.edu

Joana Jansen
Associate Director of Project Development and Coordination 

Joana Jansen focuses on the overlap of Native American language documentation with language revitalization, and her work integrates research, teaching, and outreach. She is a linguist, teacher trainer, curriculum developer and project manager, and is the coordinator of NILI’s yearly Summer Institute. She works with speakers and learners of Native languages at the UO and beyond to support language documentation, description, archiving and teaching goals. She holds a doctorate in linguistics from UO. Research interests include language teacher education, collaborative research models for mutually beneficial work involving academic institutions and Tribal communities, and linguistic description, analysis and revitalization of the Ichishkíin/ Sahaptin language.

Email: jjansen@uoregon.edu

Robert Elliott
Interim Director, Northwest Indian Language Institute 

Robert Elliott has worked as a classroom based instructor, online instructor and teacher trainer at the University of Oregon’s, American English Institute and the Language Teaching Studies MA program. He has contributed at NILI since 2009 as a technology specialist and instructional designer. He has coordinated the NILI online education classes, has lead several youth outreach projects training tribal High School students to develop digital language materials for younger learners, and is currently overseeing the development of the NILI Resource Center, an online source for materials for Indigenous language teachers.

Email: robert@uoregon.edu

Jaeci Hall
Administrative Assistant

Jaeci Hall is a recent Ph.D. graduate of the UO Linguistics department.  She works on language revitalization of her heritage language Nuu-wee-ya’ through linguistic analysis of archival language materials.  She collaborated on the Nuu-da’ Mv-ne archival database, an instance of Indigenous Languages Digital Archive (ILDA). She creates langauge learning materials for Nuu-wee-ya’ communities and supports the inclusion of Indigenous methodologies in linguistic resarch. She speaks her langauge with her children, mending generations of broken intergenerational transmission.

Email: jaecih@uoregon.edu

 

NILI GEs

Regan Anderson
Ichishkíin Researcher and Curriculum Assistant (GE)

Regan Anderson has worked with NILI since 2009. She is a PhD Candidate in the Critical and Sociocultural Studies in Education program at the University of Oregon (UO). She holds a Masters in Language Teaching and a Bachelors in Linguistics, both from the UO, where she has taught Ichishkíin language classes under the mentorship of Yakama Elder, Tux̱ámshish, Dr. Virginia Beavert since 2013. Additionally, she taught language at the Ichishkíin summer language bootcamp at Yakama Nation both years it was offered (pre-pandemic). Regan also collaborates with members and departments of the Yakama Nation on Ichishkiin materials and curriculum development, program development, teacher training, and language documentation, and assists Tux̱ámshish with various other projects. After graduating, Regan hopes to continue her work with the Ichishkiin language community focusing particularly on supporting family language use in the home and teacher language training.

Email: randers6@uoregon.edu

Brittany Parham

Brittany Parham has worked at NILI for four years and is currently our administrative GE. She received her BA at UO where she studied Linguistics and Ichishkíin. She will soon graduate with her MA in language teaching and will continue on into the Linguistics doctoral program. She has been working with Dr. Virginia Beavert and learning Ichshkíin for 5 years. 

Email: bparham@uoregon.edu

NILI Research Associates

Carson Viles

(Sixes, Joshua, Chetco, Lower Chinook) works on the Southwest Oregon Dene Languages Project team, as part of an NSF Documenting Endangered Languages grant (BCS-1562859). He is the primary point of contact for the project, coordinating outreach to heritage communities, linguists and collaborators. Carson’s work is also focused on transcription of audio materials and linguistic analysis. Alongside Jerome and Jaeci, he also maintains Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’, an online digital archive of Oregon Dene language resources. Carson is enrolled at the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, and is happy to be doing work that brings Nuu-wee-ya’ out of the archives and back into the community. He holds a BA from the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon.

Email: cviles@uoregon.edu

Jerome Viles

(Sixes, Joshua, Chetco, Lower Chinook) works on the the Southwest Oregon Dene Languages Project team, as part of an NSF Documenting Endangered Languages grant (BCS-1562859). Jerome specializes in database management and transcription of written and audio language materials. Jerome oversees Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Digital Archive. Jerome is active in phonological and orthographic analysis of archival materials, alongside Carson and Jaeci. Jerome works to bring archival materials to the descendants of language authorities, and is honored to do that work for his own community. He is enrolled at the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. Jerome holds a BA in Linguistics and a MA in Non-Profit Management from the University of Oregon

Email: viles@uoregon.edu