Bri Alexander

Research Interests

• Language reclamation and renewal
• Land, territoriality, space, place
• Relationality and kinship
• Shawnee and Cherokee languages
• Descriptive linguistics
• Indigenous Knowledge Systems
• Community-collaborative methodologies
• Health and well-being

Background

Bri Alexander (Shawnee Tribe | ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ) is a Native American land and language reclamationist and linguistic anthropologist. Centering Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and cosmologies, her research reimagines Shawnee land and language as processes of relationality with a more-than-human world and reclamation as a ceremonial process of renewal. Ultimately, her work challenges normalized conventions in academia, including research design, citational practices, methodologies, and writing genres.

She is a mentee of first-language speaker, cultural bearer, and former Absentee Shawnee Tribe governor George “Fi fe” Blanchard. Under his mentorship, she has been a language instructor, teacher trainer, curriculum developer, and the director of the Shawnee Tribe’s mentor-apprentice program. She has also written Shawnee language children’s books and developed language materials for the Absentee Shawnee Tribe.

In the past, she has also worked with the Cherokee Nation’s language department to create online language learning resources and immersion curriculum, as well as trained immersion teachers. She is eternally grateful to Dr. Eva Garroutte, Dr. Ellen Cushman, Howard Paden, and Ryan Mackey for their unwavering support of her work, and to Ed Fields for teaching her what she knows and to ᎮᏍᏗ ᏱᏣᏖᎸᎲᏍᎨᏍᏗ.

In addition to the above, she also does archival work and researches the health effects of Indigenous language use.

Publications

Whalen, D., Lewis, M., Gibson, S., McBeath, B., Alexander, B., & Nyhan, K. (2022). "Health effects of indigenous language use and revitalization: A realist view." International Journal for Equity in Health, 21: 169.

Alexander, B. (2022). "Workshopping for the indigenous future: indigenizing approaches that shift indigenous language reclamation ideologies and increase perceptions of possible futures." In Sandman, S., Bischoff, S., & Clegg, J. (Eds.) Voices: Perspectives from the international Year of Indigenous Languages. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication, 27: 13-26.

Silva, W.D., Fountain, A., Alexander, B., Roberts, C., Bluecloud, M., Dupris, J., & Marks, J. (2022), "NAMA in the IYIL 2019 Perspectives: Celebrating 20 years training Native scholars in linguistics." In Sandman, S., Bischoff, S., & Clegg, J. (Eds.) 

Alexander, B. (2020) "Frames." AAAL Graduate Students' NewsVoices: Perspectives from the international Year of Indigenous Languages. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication, 27: 165-178.letter, 5 (1).

Alexander, B. (2018). "To speak or not to speak: A call for meaningful distance-learning materials for peripheral heritage language learners." Western Conference on Linguistics Proceedings, 23: 11-17, Boise, Idaho, 20-21 October.